British Latin

While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite and in the urban areas of the more romanised south and east of the island.

In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages.

After the end of Roman rule, Latin was displaced as a spoken language by Old English in most of what became England during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the fifth and sixth centuries.

At the inception of Roman rule in AD 43, Great Britain was inhabited by the indigenous Britons, who spoke the Celtic language known as Brittonic.

[7] Throughout much of western Europe, from Late Antiquity, the Vulgar Latin of everyday speech developed into locally distinctive varieties which ultimately became the Romance languages.

[8] However, after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century, Vulgar Latin died out as an everyday spoken language.

An inherent difficulty in evidencing Vulgar Latin is that as an extinct spoken language form, no source provides a direct account of it.

[21] However, if it did exist as a distinct dialect group, it has not survived extensively enough for diagnostic features to be detected, despite much new subliterary Latin being discovered in England in the 20th century.

[30] On the other hand, Richard Coates believes that the linguistic evidence points to the now little supported traditional view that there was a mass replacement of the population of southern and eastern England with Anglo-Saxon settlers.

The evidence relied on is the use of a word with a possible preserved British vulgar Latin spelling (Garmani for Germani) as well as onomastic references.

[7] However, the speakers of Vulgar Latin were significantly but temporarily boosted in the 5th century by the influx of Romano-Britons from the lowland zone who were fleeing the Anglo-Saxons.