system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why don't present-day Italians speak Latin? And where does the Italian language come from?

I am just a little lost as to why Italians speak Italian the way they do and why it bears little resemblance to Latin, which is the language of the Roman Empire.
gpt
**Actual 5-Year-Old Explanation:** Because all languages change over time. The longer a language exists and the more people use it, the more it changes from its original form. It's the same reason we don't still speak the "old-timey" English you hear in movies that are set hundreds of years in the past.

**Longer Explanation:** First of all, it's important to understand the difference between "Classical Latin" and "Vulgar Latin". **Classical Latin** is probably what you think of when you think of when you think about the language that was spoken in ancient Rome. In reality, Classical Latin was mainly used for writing and public speaking. The works that are most often studied in Latin classes (such as those from Cicero or Caesar) are representative of Classical Latin. **Vulgar Latin** is the everyday language that the average Roman citizen would speak. The word "vulgar" itself comes from the Latin word meaning "common". Vulgar Latin was the common language of the people. In the same way that you would probably use more formal, proper language when writing a paper for school than you would when talking with your friends, the Romans used a more formal version of Latin in their writing than in their speech.

Because Vulgar Latin was the common language, it evolved and changed more quickly than Classical Latin. The Romans used slang and borrowed words from other languages just like English does today. The common English spoken 50, 100, or 500 years ago is not exactly the same as the common English spoken today. Different areas of Italy also spoke different dialects of Latin, just like there are different dialects of English spoken throughout the United States and England. The more time passed, the more the language changed from its original form.

Modern Italian is heavily based on the works of Dante, who wrote *The Divine Comedy* and other works in the common language of 14th-century Florence. This was important because it was a written form of the common language that was easily understood by most Italians. Sometime in the 1800s, a standardized version of the Florentine dialect became the official language of Italy. Since then, the Italian language has continued to slowly change in the same way that almost every other language changes with time.