Fundamental concept of Latin language Latin language, language of ancient Rome and Latium territories. Thanks to the expansion of the Roman people latin came to all the then known world and became predominant language of Western Europe. Latin has been used in higher education and in diplomatic relations until the 18th century and remains the universal language of the Catholic Church.It was not native language of Italy, but in prehistoric times latin was brought to the Italian peninsula by a few peoples who came from the North. Latin belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is a member of the italic subfamily; on the other hand it is the immediate antecedent of the current Romance languages. In the Indo-European languages, that were not italicized, set was related to Sanskrit and Greek, and with the Celtic and Germanic subfamilies. The dialect of the region of Rome was introduced in Italy once. The Italic languages are constituted by the latino group to which belonged the faliscan, Latin dialects and some dialects, and on the other hand the osco and the umbro less documented. The earliest inscriptions in latin are from the 6th century BC, while the first written texts are slightly earlier than the 3rd century BC suffered the influence of the dialects of Celtic in the North of Italy, of the Etruscan language, which was not Indo-European, and spoke in the central region of the Italian peninsula, and from the Greek that was spoken in the South before the 8th century BC under the influence of language and literature Greek, which was translated into latin already in the second half of the 3rd century BC, it became a language of culture with own literature.. .