Ben G. answered • 06/14/19
M.Ed. in Spanish language/culture
This is a big question! All languages change over time. You'll notice this if you look at Shakespeare's English and today's English (both considered Modern English). The same thing happened with Latin. The Romans spread out and brought their language, but the Iberian Peninsula was farther away from the center of Rome than, say, Italy. There were also other languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula (Celtic, Iberian, Basque...) that had contact with Latin. Between the natural change and the language contact, Latin, over time, turned into a separate language with its own rules and peculiarities, no longer mutually intelligible with Latin. The Latin spoken in what is today Italy developed differently from being near the educated epicenter.
