Romance languages

Romance
Geographic distribution:	Originally Southern Europe and parts of Northern Africa; now also most of America. Official languages of half the countries in Africa and parts of Oceania.
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Italic Romance
Proto-language:	Vulgar Latin
Subdivisions:	Western Romance (or Italo-Western) Eastern Romance Sardinian
Countries where Romance languages are official (dark orange) or national/secondary (light orange)
Romance languages in the world: Blue – French Green – Spanish Orange – Portuguese Yellow – Italian Red – Romanian Lighter colors mean that the language is not official, but important

The Romance languages are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin. The biggest Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Name "Romance" for the languages means they originate from a language speaken by Romans.

The area where the Romance languages are spoken in Europe, corresponds well with the extent of the Western Roman Empire. Greek language superseded Latin in Eastern Roman Empire, but Latin survived in Rumania, whose language, Romanian is a Romance language.

All speakers of Romance languages can understand each other to some extent.

Demographics

Percentage of speakers of each Romance language, out of the total speakers of all the Romance languages

The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total there is almost a billion first and second language speakers .

Spanish is the biggest Romance language, then Portuguese, and then French.

Spanish is mainly spoken in Spain and Latin America. Portuguese is mostly in Brazil,Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and a lot of Africa.

List of Romance languages

Eastern Romance

• Romanian
• Moldovan

Italo-Western Romance

Italo-Dalmatian

• Italian

Western Romance languages

Gallo-Iberian languages

• Catalan
• Occitan

Gallo-Romance languages

• French
• Gallo
• Norman
  • Auregnais
  • Jèrriais
  • Sercquiais
• Romansh
• Venetian
• Walloon

Iberian Romance languages

• Galician
• Leonese
• Portuguese
• Spanish

Pyrenean-Mozarabic languages

• Aragonese

Other

• Ladino

Family tree of Romance languages

Latin

Classical Latin

Vulgar Latin

Continental Romance

Sardinian dialects

Italo-Western Romance

Eastern Romance

Western Romance

Italo-Dalmatian

Balkan Romance

Ibero-Romance

Gallo-Romance

Sicilian

Italian

Neapolitan

Proto-Romanian

Albanian words

Portuguese

Spanish

French

Occitano Romance

Romanian

Aromanian

Occitan

Catalan

Other websites

• Comparative Grammar of the Romance Languages