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| | Latin |
 | | Latin forms like asinus, "donkey," and caseus, "cheese," seem to be Oscan or Umbrian rather than Latin in origin, for Latin would have turned s between vowels into r (ausis, the word for "ear," for instance, turned into auris). |
 | | The progression of the expansion of Latin was as follows: "It first displaced the local dialects of the rest of Latium and those of the neighboring Sabines, Aequians, Marsians, Volscians, etc., later the Umbrian, Etruscan, Venetic, Celtic, etc., later still the Oscan, and last of all the Greek in the south. |
 | | Approaching the disintegration of Latin as the unified spoken language among the masses, “it can be supposed that by 760-770 at the latest, the population at large was already unable to understand, without special help and explanation, a Latin text as simple as the Lord’s Prayer” (Herman 372). |
| linguistics.byu.edu /classes/ling450ch/reports/latin.html (2478 words) |
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