page_title: African Romance
section_title: Extinction as a vernacular
hierarchical_section_title: African Romance / Extinction as a vernacular
caption_attribution_description: English: The Western and Eastern Romance linguistic areas.
context_page_description: African Romance or African Latin is an extinct Romance language that was spoken in the Roman province of Africa by the Roman Africans during the later Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and several centuries after the annexation of the region by the Umayyad Caliphate in 696 AD. African Romance is poorly attested as it was mainly a spoken, vernacular language, a sermo rusticus. There is little doubt, however, that by the early 3rd century AD, some native provincial variety of Latin was fully established in Africa.
  This language, which developed under Byzantine rule, continued through to the 12th century in various places along the North African coast and the immediate littoral, with evidence that it may have persisted up to the 14th century, and possibly even the 15th century, or later in certain areas of the interior. It was, along with the region's other languages such as Berber, subsequently suppressed and supplanted by Arabic after the Arab conquest of the Maghreb.
context_section_description: Following the Arab conquest in 696–705 AD, it is difficult to trace the fate of African Romance, though it was soon replaced by Arabic as the primary administrative language. It is not known when African Latin ceased to be spoken in North Africa, but it is likely that it continued to be widely spoken in various parts of the littoral of Africa into the 12th century. 
  
  At the time of the conquest a Romance language was probably spoken in the cities and Berber languages were also spoken in the region. Loanwords from Northwest African Romance to Berber are attested and are usually in the accusative form: examples include atmun ("plough-beam") from temonem. It is unclear for how long Romance continued to be spoken, but its influence on Northwest African Arabic (particularly in the language of northwestern Morocco) indicates it must have had a significant presence in the early years after the Arab conquest.
  Spoken Latin or Romance is attested in Gabès by Ibn Khordadbeh, in Béja, Biskra, Tlemcen and Niffis by al-Bakri and in Gafsa and Monastir by al-Idrisi. The latter describes how the people in Gafsa «are Berberised, and most of them speak the African Latin tongue.»
  In their pursuit of acquiring their African kingdom in the 12th century, the Normans received help from the remaining Christian population of Tunisia, and some linguists such as Vermondo Brugnatelli argue that those Christians had been speaking a Romance language for centuries. The language existed until the arrival of the Banu Hilal Arabs in the 11th century and probably until the beginning of the fourteenth century.
  Furthermore, modern scholars have identified that, amongst the Berbers of Afrikiya, the African Romance language was linked to Christianity, which survived in North Africa until the 14th century. According to the testimony of Mawlâ Aḥmad, a Romance dialect probably survived in Touzeur (south of Gafsa, Tunisia) until the early 18th century. Indeed in 1709, Ahmad wrote that "the inhabitants of Touzeur are a remnant of the Christians who were once in Afrikiya, before the Arab conquest".
caption: Map highlighting in black the "Romania submersa", being those Roman, or formerly Roman regions where forms of neo-Latin disappeared after some centuries, including Northern Africa.
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