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Romance languages
Romance | |
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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
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Proto-language: | Vulgar Latin |
Subdivisions: | |
![]() Countries where Romance languages are official (dark orange) or national/secondary (light orange) | |
![]() Romance languages in the world: Blue – French |
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 Greek language superseded Latin in Eastern Roman Empire, but Latin survived in Rumania, whose language, Romanian is a Romance language.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.
Contents
Demographics

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
Italo-Western Romance
Italo-Dalmatian
Western Romance languages
Gallo-Iberian languages
Gallo-Romance languages
Iberian Romance languages
Pyrenean-Mozarabic languages
Other
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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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