Why didn't the language of Latin survive?

Question

We get most of our words from either French, Greek, German, or Latin. My Question is, why did the other languages survived and Latin didn't?

Answer 1

Languages are like living organisms. They evolve with mankind and they too tend to disappear. Latin evolved into spanish, italian, french and so forth. Guess all modern languages will evolve to into something more global. Who knows

Answer 2

Latin as we generally know it (Classical Latin or Ciceronian Latin) was spoken by the powerful and wealthy Patrician class of Rome.

The Patricians were the George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons, Rockefellers, Barry Goldwaters and George Bushes of their day. They held all the political power in Rome, controlled all the commerce and owned all the slaves.

Ciceronian Latin could survive only as long as the Patricians were alive and in power in the Roman Empire.

The plebian class, the slaves, the common criminals and soldiers in the Roman Army all spoke a different kind of Latin called Vulgar Latin. It was closer to modern day Italian and Spanish in many respects.

For example, they used some words that were never uttered by an upper- class Roman like roseus "red" (Spanish rojo; Italian rosso; Romanian rosh), ninniu "child" Spanish (niño), muculatus "snot-nosed kid" (Spanish muchacho), cerevisia"beer" (Spanish cerveza; Portuguese cerveja) and caballus "horse" (Modern Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalho, Italian cavallo).

As time passed, the Patrician Class gradually disappeared from Roman society. Probably because they stopped being successful at reproducing themselves. Their numbers were already declining even when Julius Caesar came to power (44 B.C.). Malaria epidemics also killed a lot of people in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Without many Patrician speakers left to reinforce Classical Latin standards, the Latin of the common people began taking over. Especially by the 4th century A.D. The Latin of the common people - Vulgar Latin - went on to become modern Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Romanian.

Classical Latin was no longer a spoken language. However, the Catholic Church has continued to use it as a liturgical language down to modern times. It was also the language of scholarship in Europe and a sort of lingua franca among European scholars until the 18th century.

Answer 3

Latin just evolved into the other Romance (from Rome) languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.