Italic

Also known as Latino-Sabine, Latino-Sabellic, Italo-Venetic, Italic-Venetic, Italic–Venetic

subfamily of the Indo-European language family spoken by Italic peoples

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Italic is a subfamily of languages within the larger Indo-European family that was spoken by ancient peoples in the Italian peninsula and surrounding regions. It matters historically because it includes Latin, which became the foundation for Romance languages like Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese that are still spoken by hundreds of millions of people today.

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The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin (perhaps influenced by substrata from the other Italic languages) diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived.

Besides Latin, the known ancient Italic languages are Faliscan (the closest to Latin), Umbrian and Oscan (or Osco-Umbrian), and South Picene. Other Indo-European languages once spoken in the peninsula whose inclusion in the Italic branch is disputed are Venetic and Siculian. These long-extinct languages are known only from inscriptions in archaeological finds.