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 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

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 the 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 The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire.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

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 are almost a billion first and second language speakers.

Spanish is the most widely used Romance language, followed by Portuguese and then French.

Spanish is spoken mainly in Spain and Latin America. 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. Romanian is spoken in Romania and Moldova.

List of Romance Languages

Eastern Romance

• Romanian
• Moldovan
• Istro-romanian
• Megleno-romanian
• Aromanian

Italo-Western Romance

• Sardinian

Italo-Dalmatian

• Italian
• Neapolitan
• Sicilian

Western Romance languages

Gallo-Iberian languages

• Catalan
• Occitan

Gallo-Romance languages

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

Iberian Romance languages

• Asturian
• Galician
• Leonese
• Portuguese
• Spanish

• Aragonese

Other

• Ladino
• Esperanto

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
• Romance languages -Citizendium