Romance languages
The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (in Latin, "vulgar" is the word for "common" and so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.
| 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
|
| Proto-language: | Vulgar Latin |
| Subdivisions: | |
They are called "Romance languages" because they originate from Latin, the language spoken by the Western Roman Empire. Their grammatical inflection system has been simplified and lost most of the complex case structure of classical Latin.
The area that the Romance languages are spoken in Europe is mostly extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire. Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language. In Moldova it is sometimes called Moldovan.
Demographics
The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total, there are almost a billion first and second language speakers.
Spanish is the most widely used Romance language, with Portuguese as the second and then French coming in at third.
Spanish is spoken in Spain, United States, Latin America and some places of Africa. Portuguese is mostly used/spoken in Brazil, Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and in some areas of Africa. Italian is spoken in Italy, San Marino, Malta and Vatican City. Romanian is spoken in Romania and Moldova.
List of Romance languages
Eastern Romance languages
Italo-Western Romance
Italo-Dalmatian
Western Romance languages
Gallo-Iberian languages
Gallo-Romance languages
Iberian Romance 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Romance Languages Media
European extent of Romance languages in the 20th century
Number of total speakers of each Romance language, as fractions of the total (2024)
Length of the Roman rule and the Romance Languages
Romance languages in Europe
Romance – Germanic language border: • Early Middle Ages • Early Twentieth Century
Romance languages and dialects
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