page_title: African Romance
section_title: Origins and development
hierarchical_section_title: African Romance / Origins and development
caption_attribution_description: English: Inscription, forum in Leptis Magna, 5nd A.D. (Libya) Español: Inscripción honoraria romana del siglo V procedente del foro de Leptis Magna (Al-Khums, Libia), correspondiente con IRT 478: Toto orbe/ pacifico/ consuli/ d(omino) n(ostro) Flavio/ Arcadio/ Pio Felici/ victori ac/ triumfato/ri semper/ Augusto/ Lepcitani devoti num(ini)/ maiestatiq(ue) eius Français&#160;: Inscription honoraire romaine du Ve s. en provenance du forum de Leptis Magna (Lybie) - IRT 478 Русский: Надпись, форум в Лептис Магна, 5й век Н.Э. (Ливия)
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: Like all Romance languages, African Romance descended from Vulgar Latin, the non-standard (in contrast to Classical Latin) form of the Latin language, which was spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With the expansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories in North Africa. Latin and its descendants were spoken in the Province of Africa following the Punic Wars, when the Romans conquered the territory. Spoken Latin, and Latin inscriptions developed while Punic was still being used. Bilingual inscriptions were engraved, some of which reflect the introduction of Roman institutions into Africa, using new Punic expressions.
  Latin, and then some Romance variant of it, was spoken by generations of speakers, for about fifteen centuries. This was demonstrated by African-born speakers of African Romance who continued to create Latin inscriptions until the first half of the 11th century. Evidence for a spoken Romance variety which developed locally out of Latin persisted in rural areas of Tunisia - possibly as late as the last two decades of the 15th century in some sources.
  
  By the late 19th century and early 20th century, the possible existence of African Latin was controversial, with debates on the existence of Africitas as a putative African dialect of Latin. In 1882, the German scholar Karl Sittl used unconvincing material to adduce features particular to Latin in Africa. This unconvincing evidence was attacked by Wilhelm Kroll in 1897, and again by Madeline D. Brock in 1911. Brock went so far as to assert that "African Latin was free from provincialism" ", and that African Latin was "the Latin of an epoch rather than that of a country". This view shifted in recent decades, with modern philologists going so far as to say that African Latin "was not free from provincialism" and that, given the remoteness of parts of Africa, there were "probably a plurality of varieties of Latin, rather than a single African Latin". Other researchers believe that features peculiar to African Latin existed, but are "not to be found where Sittl looked for it".
   While as a language African Romance is extinct, there is some evidence of regional varieties in African Latin that helps reconstruct some of its features. Some historical evidence on the phonetic and lexical features of the Afri were already observed in ancient times. Pliny observes how walls in Africa and Spain are called formacei, or "framed walls, because they are made by packing in a frame enclosed between two boards, one on each side". Nonius Marcellus, a Roman grammarian, provides further, if uncertain, evidence regarding vocabulary and possible "Africanisms". In the Historia Augusta, the North African Roman Emperor Septimius Severus is said to have retained an African accent until old age. More recent analysis focuses on a body of literary texts, being literary pieces written by African and non-African writers. These show the existence of an African pronunciation of Latin, then moving on to a further study of lexical material drawn from sub-literary sources, such as practical texts and ostraca, from multiple African communities, that is military writers, landholders and doctors.
  Adams lists a number of possible Africanisms found in this wider Latin literary corpus. Only two refer to constructions found in Sittl, with the other examples deriving from medical texts, various ostraca and other non-traditional sources. Two sorts of regional features can be observed. The first are loanwords from a substrate language, such is the case with Britain. In African Latin, this substrate was Punic. African Romance included words such as ginga for "henbane", boba for "mallow," girba for "mortar" and gelela for the inner flesh of a gourd. The second refers to use of Latin words with particular meanings not found elsewhere, or in limited contexts. Of particular note is the African Romance use of the word rostrum for "mouth" instead of the original meaning in Latin, which is "beak", and baiae for "baths" being a 
caption: Fifth century AD inscription at the Leptis Magna forum, Libya.
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