After the break-up of the
Roman Empire, the vulgar
Latin (meaning the Latin spoken by the common people) began to evolve differently in different areas. The
Romance languages are the results of this process, and form a subfamily of the
Italic languages.
Italian group
Ibero-Romance group
Gallo-Romance group
Eastern group
And, of course, the classical Latin language that was spoken conservatively as a lingua franca throughout the Middle Ages is still learned by some.