Timeline

Something I planned to discuss in my paper was the development of Romance languages, and how the spread of Latin across Europe due to Roman conquest led to their creation. I didn't end up including it, so for my final product, I made a timeline showing the reach of the Roman Empire and the development of three Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, over time. In 44 BC, Rome had just conquered France (then Gaul), and was near the end of a centuries-long campaign on the Iberian Peninsula. By 9 CE, that campaign had ended, with the northern region of Spain being the last to be conquered. The local Iberian and Celt languages were replaced with Latin, as happened with France and Portugal. Much later, in the 9th century, after the Western Roman Empire fell, leaving the Byzantine Empire in the east, some linguistic change occurred. In the same northern part of Spain, the Castilian dialect of Latin developed. This would later evolve into Spanish. Around the same time, we see evidence of the first texts written in French. Finally, in 1192, the first recorded text was written in full Gallego-Portuguese, which would later split into Galician and Portuguese.