According to recent hypothesis , Romanian might have come first . Modern-day Romania is where Ancient Roman rule lasted the shortest amount of time . “ Dacia Felix ”, as the province was known , lasted from the year 106 CE to around 275 . That ’ s around 170 years . So , the question is , how did it manage to keep the purity of the language and how come Latin was spoken in regions of Dacia that were never conquered by the Romans ? When we say “ Latin ” today , we ’ re actually referring to two different languages , “ Classical ” Latin and “ Vulgar ” Latin . Classical Latin was used for statues , inscriptions , imperial decrees , and laws . Vulgar Language , on the other hand , is thought of as the “ people ’ s ” language . When Ancient Rome existed , these two forms of Latin existed side by side . Modern Romanian languages are indisputably descended from Classical Latin . But all the Western Romance languages ( Spanish , Italian , French ) are descended from Vulgar Latin . Some linguists say that Dacian ( the language spoken before Dacia was conquered ) was a dialect or sub-language group of Thracian . But Thracian has no written record , and we know almost nothing about it . If Romanian came first , it also explains why it preserved the “ more difficult ” parts of Latin grammar , like the noun cases , the definite article that is appended to the end of the word instead of being used in front of the word as a stand-alone word , like in Spanish , Italian , Portuguese , French . So if Romanian were the original version of Classical Latin , it makes a lot more sense how illiterate peasants managed to preserve it for 1,800 years . If you want to see some examples of the differences between Romanian and other Romance languages , check out this video :