Latin is based on which language?

Latin is based on Proto-Italic, which is a reconstructed ancestor language of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.

Think of it like this:

* Indo-European is a huge family of languages, like a giant tree.

* Italic is a branch of that tree, containing languages like Latin, Oscan, and Umbrian.

* Proto-Italic is the "root" of the Italic branch, the language from which all the other Italic languages evolved.

So, while we can't directly trace Latin back to Proto-Italic (since it's a reconstructed language), it's the closest we can get to its ancestor.