Latin retained their integrity. In the post-Roman period additions to the
vocabulary are more significant. It is said that about three hundred
Germanic words have found their way into all the Romance languages.[11]
The language of the province of Gaul was most affected since some four
hundred and fifty Gothic, Lombardic, and Burgundian words are found in
French alone, such words as boulevard, homard, and blesser. Each of the
provinces of course, when the Empire broke up, was subjected to
influences peculiar to itself. The residence of the Moors in Spain, for
seven hundred years, for instance, has left a deep impress on the Spanish
vocabulary, while the geographic position of Roumanian has exposed it to
the influence of Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Magyar, and Turkish.[12] A
sketch of the history of Latin after the breaking up of the Empire carries
us beyond the limits of the question which we set ourselves at the
beginning and out of the domain of the Latinist, but it may not be out of
place to gather together here a few of the facts which the Romance
philologist has contributed to its later history, because the life of
Latin has been continuous from the foundation of the city of Rome to the
present day.

In this later period the question of paramount interest is, why did Latin
in one part of the world develop into French, in another part into
Italian, in another into Spanish? One answer to this question has been
based on chronological grounds.[13] The Roman soldiers and traders who
went out to garrison and to settle in a newly acquired territory,
introduced that form of Latin which was in use in Italy at the time of
their departure from the peninsula. The form of speech thus planted there
developed along lines peculiar to itself, became the dialect of that
province, and ultimately the (Romance) language spoken in that part of
Europe. Sardinia was conquered in 241 B.C., and Sardinian therefore is a
development of the Latin spoken in Italy in the middle of the third