Italic languages in the context of "Messapic"

The concept of Italic peoples is widely used in linguistics and historiography of ancient Italy. In a strict sense, commonly used in linguistics, it refers to the Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscans, speakers of the Italic languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. In a broader sense, commonly used in historiography, all the ancient peoples of Italy are referred to as Italic peoples, including the non-Indo-European ones, as Rhaetians, Ligures and Etruscans. As the Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, by virtue of the expansion of the Roman civilization, the other Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture as part of the process of Romanization.

Latin (lingua Latina or Latinum) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, including English, having contributed many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, the sciences, medicine, and law.

By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had evolved into standardised Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin refers to the less prestigious colloquial registers, attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius. While often called a "dead language", Latin did not undergo language death. Between the 6th and 9th centuries, natural language change in the vernacular Latin of different regions evolved into distinct Romance languages. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe into the early 19th century, by which time modern languages had supplanted it in common academic and political usage.

The Latins (Latin: Latīnī), sometimes known as the Latials or Latians, were an Italic tribe that included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome (see Roman people). From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium (in Latin Latium vetus), the area in the Italian Peninsula between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Rome. Following the Roman expansion, the Latins spread into the Latium adiectum, inhabited by Osco-Umbrian peoples.

Their language, Latin, belonged to the Italic branch of Indo-European. Speakers of Italic languages are assumed to have migrated into the Italian Peninsula during the late Bronze Age (1200–900 BC). The material culture of the Latins, known as the Latial culture, was a distinctive subset of the proto-Villanovan culture that appeared in parts of the Italian peninsula in the first half of the 12th century BC. Before and after their political unification under Rome in 338 BC, the Latins maintained close cultural and religious relations, including common festivals and religious sanctuaries.

The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau, with additional native branches found in regions such as parts of Central Asia (e.g., Tajikistan and Afghanistan), southern Indian subcontinent (Sri Lanka and the Maldives) and Armenia. Historically, Indo-European languages were also spoken in Anatolia and Northwestern China. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, including Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic, all of which contain present-day living languages, as well as many more extinct branches.

Today the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi, French, and German; many others spoken by smaller groups are in danger of extinction. Over 3.4 billion people (42% of the global population) speak an Indo-European language as a first language—by far the most of any language family. There are about 446 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, of which 313 belong to the Indo-Iranian branch.

The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of ancient Rome expanded. Their written attestations developed from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD. There is one text of about 4,000 words in Umbrian, but otherwise the languages are known almost exclusively from inscriptions, principally of Oscan and Umbrian, but there are also some Osco-Umbrian loanwords in Latin. Besides the two major branches of Oscan and Umbrian (and their dialects), South Picene may represent a third branch of Sabellic. The whole linguistic Sabellic area, however, might be considered a dialect continuum. Paucity of evidence from most of the "minor dialects" contributes to the difficulty of making these determinations.

The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC.

Latin and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as Lanuvian and Praenestine, which are sometimes considered dialects of Latin.

The Falisci were an Italic tribe who lived in what is now northern Lazio, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River. They spoke an Italic language, Faliscan, closely related to Latin. Originally a sovereign state, politically and socially they supported the Etruscans, joining the Etruscan League. This conviction and affiliation led to their ultimate near destruction and total subjugation by Rome.

Only one instance of their own endonym has been found to date: an inscription from Falerii Novi from the late 2nd century AD refers to the falesce quei in Sardinia sunt, "the Faliscans who are in Sardinia", where falesce is the nominative plural case. An Etruscan inscription calls them the feluskeś. The Latin cannot be far different from the original name. The -sc- suffix is "distinctive of the Italic ethnonyms".