[Cronos]

Actually Keaerney, there is denying that statement the Roman Empire fell when too many people inside it weren’t “Roman” in any sense of the word - regardless of “citizenship”.

Rome fell, or rather the Western Roman Empire fell due to:

• A failing economic system - Principate Rome was based on a slave economy and to do that you had to keep on conquering peoples
• An ossified elite who didn't get involved in the fighting but only the taking
• Thanks to the Gracchian reforms in the late republic, the people of the city became just welfare cases, easy to riot and not eager to fight
• The 50 years of chaos from the fall of the Severan dynasty tothe rise of DOmitian
• Debasing of the currency
• Barracks emperors
• No proper succession line
• Not hitting the barbarians when they were at the borders

Extension of citizenship was continuously done throughout Roman history -- from Alba Longa to the Social Wars (extending citizenship to all of Italy), then to Hispania and Cisalpine Gaul, then under Caracalla to all of the Empire (expanding the tax base)

English might be at its base a Germanic languages, but 70% of its words are French/ Latin/Italian/Spanish in origin. And English grammar follows the French fashion of dropping of cases -- if it was really a Germanic language it would have 5 cases instead of 1 today (Nominative, Genitive, Locative,Dativa,Vocative)

So English IS descended from Latin to a large extent as well as from proto-German (I call it a bastard language :)

[kearnyirish2]

It is a Germanic language from the Anglo-Saxons, with some Latin grammar infused in it. While it is a “bastard language” (which makes it very difficult to learn), it is very different from a Romance language.