Here's why:
* Historical roots: Italian evolved from Vulgar Latin, the language spoken by ordinary people in the Roman Empire, as opposed to the formal, literary Latin used by educated elites.
* Linguistic similarities: Italian shares a significant amount of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax with Latin. Many Italian words are directly derived from Latin, and the structure of Italian sentences often resembles that of Latin.
* Shared ancestry: All Romance languages, including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and others, have a common ancestor in Latin. They diverged from Latin over time due to geographical and cultural factors.
So, while Italian has developed its own unique features, it undeniably traces its linguistic lineage back to Latin.