We all know that the five romance languages all trace their roots back to Latin, but where does Latin come from? The truth is that Latin has influences from a large number of places. Most importantly, Latin is an Indo-European language meaning that it descends from a Proto-Indo-European language which was first spoken more than 6,000 years ago. Latin is a member of the Italic branch of this family and traces its roots back to the language spoken by the Latini, a tribe that settled in Latium, the region of Italy later containing Rome. But this archaic form of the language was nothing like the classical Latin written later. First, this language was written either right to left or Boustrophedon (meaning alternating the writing direction of each line). Secondly, many of the endings and words were different in this language. Take the word honor, for example. In classical Latin it might be written as “honor, honoris,” however in Old Latin this word would be written, “honos, honosis.” Latin also became the language it is today by borrowing from other languages, most significantly from Etruscan (spoken in Etruria to the north) and Greek (spoken in Magna Graecia to the south of Rome). Latin continued to evolve through its existence beyond classical Latin to Late Latin, spoken in the declining western Roman empire and the states that succeeded it. Even after this language fell out of use, the dialects of vulgar Latin formed the Romance languages now spoken across Europe today.