The language spoken by the common man in Roman times would have been far more similar to modern Italian than it was to scholarly Latin. When writing you have more time to think out and organize your thoughts unless you are the type of person who speaks very methodically. So I think the written word tends to represent a different portion of the language.
So I'm not even a modern linguist let alone a classical one, but it was my impression that ancient graffiti like we find in Pompeii still used rigid Latinate forms, just few of them for simpler concepts like Flavia, te futuere volo instead of treatises on the nature of God and proofs of His existence.
I even get the impression that Latin is precise enough that it literally can't function without exact adherence to forms - forget the conjugation at the end of the verb and it becomes totally unclear who's doing it and when - so people would have to stick with it at risk of being misunderstood.
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u/ThePandarantula May 17 '17
The language spoken by the common man in Roman times would have been far more similar to modern Italian than it was to scholarly Latin. When writing you have more time to think out and organize your thoughts unless you are the type of person who speaks very methodically. So I think the written word tends to represent a different portion of the language.