Common Romanian (), also known as Ancient Romanian (), or Proto-Romanian (), is a comparatively reconstructed Romance language evolved from Vulgar Latin and considered to have been spoken by the ancestors of today's Romanians, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Istro-Romanians and related Balkan Latin peoples (Vlachs) between the 6th or 7th century AD and the 10th or 11th centuries AD. The evidence for this can be found in the fact that Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian share with each other their main language innovations comparative to Vulgar Latin on one hand, and distinctive from the other Romance languages on the other, according to Romanian linguist Marius Sala. History and development The Roman occupation led to a Roman-Thracian syncretism, and similar to the case of other conquered civilisations (see, for example, how Gallo-Roman culture developed in Roman Gaul) led to the Latinization of many Thracian tribes which were on the edge of the sphere of Latin influence, eventually resulting in the possible extinction of the Daco-Thracian language, but traces of it are still preserved in the Eastern Romance substratum. From the 2nd century AD, the Latin spoken in the Danubian provinces starts to display its own distinctive features, separate from the rest of the Romance languages, including those of western Balkans (Dalmatian). The Thraco-Roman period of the Romanian language is usually delimited between the 2nd century (or earlier via cultural influence and economic ties) and the 6th or the 7th century. It is divided, in turn, into two periods, with the division falling roughly in the 3rd to 4th century. The Romanian Academy considers the 5th century as the latest time that the differences between Balkan Latin and western Latin could have appeared, and that between the 5th and 8th centuries, the new language, Romanian, switched from Latin speech, to a vernacular Romance idiom, called . In the 9th century, Proto-Romanian already had a structure very distinct from the other Romance languages, with major differences in grammar, morphology and phonology and already was a member of the Balkan language area. It already contained around a hundred loans from Slavic languages, including words such as (body, flesh), as well as some Greek language loans via Vulgar Latin, but no Hungarian and Turkish words as these peoples had yet to arrive in the region. In the tenth century or some time earlier Common Romanian split into two geographically separated groups. One was in the northern part