 However, within two hundred years Latin became a dead language since "the Romanized people of Europe could no longer understand texts that were read aloud or recited to them," i.e.Latin had ceased to be a first language and became a foreign language that had to be learned, if the label Latin is constrained to refer to a state of the language frozen in past time and restricted to linguistic features for the most part typical of higher registers.With the rise of the Roman Empire, Vulgar Latin spread first throughout Italy and then through southern, western, central, and southeast Europe, and northern Africa along parts of western Asia.