Have you ever looked at a map of Europe's language families and thought, wait a minute
why is there this big leap between Italy and Romania in the Romance languages? Like
you've got Portuguese and Spanish on the Iberian Peninsula, French and Italian
holding it down a little to the east, and then boom, way over on the other side of the Balkans
there's Romania speaking a Latin-based language while being surrounded by Slavic language countries
We all know why Romanian is a Romance language. It has to do precisely with the invasion and occupation of the Roman Empire
which destroyed the local Dacian culture and replaced it with their own
But the Romans also controlled most of the Balkans, which are now Slavic
So what happened to everything in between? Why is there this big Romance no-man's land from Slovenia to Serbia to Bulgaria
Well, as it turns out, that region wasn't always a linguistic void for these descendants of Latin
There used to be languages that acted as a sort of bridge, namely Dalmatian
which surprisingly was not spoken by the breed of dogs. So let's find out what this was and why it disappeared
Before we dive into these long-lost languages, let's zoom out for a second and get a grip on what Romance languages even are and how they got to where they are today
The name might sound steamy, but it has nothing to do with romantic love and everything to do with Rome
They're called Romance because they descend from Vulgar Latin, the everyday spoken language of the Roman Empire
When Rome was at its height, it wasn't just building aqueducts and arenas, it was spreading its language of Latin
From Portugal to Syria, if Rome ruled it, likely it was Latin that echoed through the streets
Often mixed with local languages, but it was there. Now, we've got to make an important distinction here
There is classical Latin, the fancy stuff you see in Roman literature and inscriptions
And then there's vulgar Latin, the spoken, much messier version that regular people used when talking to each other
Think of it as the difference between Shakespearean English and modern, slangy TikTok English
Shakespeare wasn't writing stuff like Sigma, you know? Although he did also invent a bunch of new words at the time, like bedazzled
so maybe your local weird TikToker will be viewed as Shakespeare in 400 years too
Anyway, Vulgar Latin evolved differently depending on where you were in the empire, mixing with
local languages, picking up regional accents and generally being kind of chaotic
Fast forward a few centuries and voila we get the Roman languages, Portuguese, Spanish
French, Italian and Romanian, plus a couple other ones. Because after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Latin didn't just vanish
It held on, morphing into new forms as local kingdoms and cultures rose from its ashes
In some areas, these new languages thrived and eventually became national tongues
In other places they faded away overtaken by political upheaval migration or conquest That is the case with Dalmatian our unsung hero or rather ghost of romance language history Now Dalmatian died out in about 1898 so there no way that you can learn
it today but thankfully you can still learn all the other romance languages which and I may be
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And now, let's get back to the video. So now that we understand a quick background context on Latin and Romance languages
let's learn about the one that disappeared. Dalmatian was spoken along the adequately named Dalmatian coast
in what's now Croatia and Montenegro, plus a little bit of Bosnia
It came from vulgar Latin, surviving after the fall of the empire
and mixing with local Illidian and later Slavic influences. The Dalmatian coast had a bunch of independent city-states during the Middle Ages like
Ragusa, which is modern-day Dubrovnik, Zara, which is now Zadar, and Spalato, which we now
call Split. Each of these cities had its own version of the Dalmatian language. Though the
differences weren't huge, in fact these dialects were often mutually intelligible, maybe like
Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan are today. Dalmatian evolved in isolation but was still
recognizably a Romance language, like Italy's distant, weird cousin. For centuries it held its
own, especially in maritime trade and city administration, but the linguistic tide was
rising and it spoke Slavic. Starting in the 7th century, waves of Slavic migrations brought new
settlers into the Balkans and with them came Slavic languages Croatian became the dominant cultural force especially in inland regions and eventually on the coast too At the same time parts of the Dalmatian coast fell under Venetian control especially
from the 15th century onward. And this meant that Dalmatian was being squeezed from two sides
Croatian on the landward side and Italian, or rather Venetian, from the sea. Eventually
it stopped being the language of government, trade, or even the home. Bit by bit
parents stopped passing it on to their kids. That's how languages usually die, not with a bang
but in a whisper. The final nail in the coffin came with the death of the last speaker of Dalmatian
in 1898. Interestingly, Dalmatian isn't the only Romance language that disappeared, and in the old Iberian Peninsula, despite there being many Romance languages left today
and in this case not a gap in the territory, there was an old one that became extinct too
Mozarabic. If the name sounds vaguely Arabic to you, you're on the right track. Mozarabic was
spoken here mostly by Christians living under Muslim rule in what is now Spain and Portugal
between the 8th and 14th centuries. When Muslim armies crossed from North Africa in 711 and quickly
took over most of the peninsula, they didn't immediately force everyone to speak Arabic or
convert to Islam. A significant Christian population remained, and they kept using their
Latin-derived dialects, which were already evolving away from classical Latin, thanks to
centuries of local development. These Christians under Muslim rule came to be called Mozarabs
from the Arabic term Moustarab, meaning Arabized, and their language was thus called Mouzarabic
While the language wasn't standardized, it survived in spoken form for centuries
and we can detect its fingerprints in a few surprising places. For example, some Arabic words that later became common in Spanish or Portuguese
like aceituna, olive, and alcazar, which in Spanish means fortress. These were likely filtered through the Mozarabic dialect before becoming fully adopted
It was essentially a dialect that mixed a local version of Latin with the newly arrived Arabic people
It also had some quirks that made it stand out. Apparently, it held on to some Latin features that Spanish would eventually lose
like often retaining full vowel endings where Spanish simplified or just dropped them
Linguists love this kind of stuff because it gives us clues about how languages evolve
and how contact with other cultures, in this case Arabic, can stretch and twist a language in new directions
Now, Mozarabic wasn't one standardized language either. It was more of a group of closely related dialects, a little similar to how Dalmatian varied from city to city
It didn't have a written literary tradition the way Latin or Arabic did
Maybe that's why it died out in part. And most of what we know today about it comes from Arabic script texts
These little linguistic Easter eggs are like whispers of a lost time
hinting at a world when Latin and Arabic coexisted in the same street markets, churches and taverns
So what happened to it? Why did Mozarabic disappear? Well, it was a mix of things
as Christian kingdoms like Portugal, Castile, and León pushed south in the Reconquista
Mozarabic speakers were often absorbed into the growing influence of standardizing medieval Spanish Many Mozarabic communities fled or were relocated and in their new homes they gradually switched
to early forms of Castilian and Portuguese. Over time Mozarabic just sort of faded away, its speakers assimilated, unique dialects
were lost, and the last solid evidence we have of it dates to around the 13th or 14th
century, and by then it was on linguistic life support. So what do we make of this
Two Romance languages, Mozarabic in the west, Dalmatian in the east that once filled in
the geographic blanks but vanished under pressure from stronger languages and shifting empires
Both were relics of Latin's wide-reaching legacy, surviving for centuries after Rome's
fall, only to eventually fade away into the background and now living on mostly in academic
papers. Romania's survival, especially when you think about what it was up against, is actually
pretty impressive. After the fall of Roman Dacia in the 3rd century, the region was overrun repeatedly
by invading powers, the Goths, Huns, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars, you name it. And despite that chaotic
mix, the Latin language held on, especially in the more isolated Carpathian mountain areas
Romanian slowly evolved, absorbing some loanwords from its neighbors like Hungarian, the Slavs
and even some Turkish ones, and even a sprinkle of Greek, but yet its core remained Latin-based
It's not surprising that Dalmatian disappeared, what is surprising is that Romanian survived
When a Romanian national identity began to crystallize in the 19th century
the language was actually re-standardized, with a heavy nod back towards Latin roots
an intentional revival of sorts that reinforced its place in the Roman's family
arguably to differentiate themselves from their neighbors and assert their difference and unique identity
And zooming out, the stories of Mozarabic and Dalmatian aren't unique. Languages die all the time, sometimes slowly, sometimes more violently
Often it's because of a more prestigious or useful language emerging. Sometimes there's just a standardization or national borders shift, colonization happens
or even just the allure of TV and internet content in bigger languages can quietly make local speech disappear
And when a language fades away, we lose more than just the words. We lose the idioms, the histories, the ways of thinking
Mozambique and Dalmatian may be gone, but their stories remind us of just how fragile and valuable our linguistic diversity really is
because who knows if in a thousand years we'll just have a single European language
and we'll be watching a video called the 24 Lost Languages of Europe
So next time you look at a map and think it's weird how Romania is just there, all Latin speaking, separated from its linguistic cousins
Remember, there used to be a fuller story. Dalmatian was there as a connective tissue
It may be gone, but their ghostly line is still marking the historical record
And hey, at least now you've got a cool conversation started for your next family dinner
Did you know that there used to be a romance language spoken in Croatia or one in Muslim Spain
Maybe you're going to spark someone's linguistic curiosity, or maybe they'll just think you're weird
Either way, thank you so much for watching this video. I will see you next time for more general knowledge