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Romance languages - Wikipedia

The Romance languages are derived from Vulgar Latin and include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian, which are widely spoken across Europe and the Americas. There are over 900 million native speakers globally, and these languages serve as official languages in numerous countries and the European Union. The term 'Romance' originates from the Latin word for 'in Roman', reflecting the vernacular use of Latin in contrast to formal Latin.

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29 views

Romance languages - Wikipedia

The Romance languages are derived from Vulgar Latin and include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian, which are widely spoken across Europe and the Americas. There are over 900 million native speakers globally, and these languages serve as official languages in numerous countries and the European Union. The term 'Romance' originates from the Latin word for 'in Roman', reflecting the vernacular use of Latin in contrast to formal Latin.

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Romance languages

The Romance languages, also known as the Latin[2] or Neo-Latin[3] languages, are the
languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin.[4] They are the only extant subgroup of the Romance
Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. Latin/Neo-Latin
Geographic Originated in Old Latium on the
The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are: distribution Italian peninsula, now spoken
in Latin Europe (parts of
Spanish (489 million): official language in Spain, Mexico, Equatorial Guinea, the SADR, Cuba,
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and most of Central and South America Eastern Europe, Southern
Europe, and Western Europe)
Portuguese (240 million):[5] official in Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese-speaking Africa, Timor-Leste and
Macau and Latin America (a majority of
the countries of Central
French (74 million): official in 26 countries
America and South America),
Italian (67 million): official in Italy, Vatican City, San Marino, Switzerland; minority language in
Croatia; regional in Slovenia (Istria) and Brazil (Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo and Encantado, Rio as well as parts of Africa (Latin
Grande do Sul)[6][7] Africa), parts of the United
Romanian (25 million): official in Romania, Moldova[8] and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina States of America, Asia, and
in Serbia; minority language in Hungary, the rest of Serbia and Ukraine. Oceania.

The Romance languages spread throughout the world owing to the period of European colonialism Native c. 900 million[1]
speakers
beginning in the 15th century; there are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages
found worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. Portuguese, French and Spanish Linguistic Indo-European
also have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas.[1] There are also classification
Italic
numerous regional Romance languages and dialects. All of the five most widely spoken Romance
Latino-Faliscan
languages are also official languages of the European Union (with France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and
Latinic
Spain being part of it).
Romance

Early forms Old Latin


Name and languages Vulgar Latin
The term Romance derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, "in Roman", derived from Proto- Proto-Romance
romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, "to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin language
vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version Subdivisions Italo-Western
of the language used in writing and formal contexts or as a lingua franca), and with barbarice loqui, "to Eastern Romance
speak in Barbarian" (the non-Latin languages of the peoples living outside the Roman Empire).[9]
Southern Romance
From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice,
Pannonian †
or "in the Roman vernacular".[10]
British †
Most of the Romance-speaking area in Europe has traditionally been a dialect continuum, where the
Language codes
speech variety of a location differs only slightly from that of a neighboring location, but over a longer
ISO 639-2 / 5 roa
distance these differences can accumulate to the point where two remote locations speak what may be
unambiguously characterized as separate languages. This makes drawing language boundaries Linguasphere 51- (phylozone)
difficult, and thus there is no unambiguous way to divide the Romance varieties into individual Glottolog roma1334 (https://glottol
languages. Even the criterion of mutual intelligibility can become ambiguous when it comes to og.org/resource/languoid/
determining whether two language varieties belong to the same language or not.[11] id/roma1334)

The following is a list of groupings of Romance languages, with some languages chosen to exemplify
each grouping. Not all languages are listed, and the groupings should not be interpreted as well-
separated genetic clades in a tree model.

Ibero-Romance: Portuguese, Galician, Asturleonese/Mirandese, Spanish, Aragonese, Ladino;


Occitano-Romance: Catalan/Valencian, Occitan
Gallo-Romance: French/Oïl languages, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan);
Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian; Romance languages globally
Gallo-Italic: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol; Majority native language
Venetian (classification disputed); Co-official and majority native language
Italo-Dalmatian: Italian (Tuscan, Corsican, Sassarese, Central Italian), Sicilian/Extreme Southern Official but minority native language
Italian, Neapolitan/Southern Italian, Dalmatian (extinct in 1898), Istriot; Cultural or secondary language
Eastern Romance: Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian;
Sardinian: Campidanese, Logudorese

Modern status
The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian, which together cover a
vast territory in Europe and beyond, and work as official and national languages in dozens of countries.[12] In Europe, at least one Romance language
is official in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg,[14] Romania, Moldova, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino and Vatican
City. In these countries, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Romansh and Catalan have constitutional official status.

French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union.[15] Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian,
Romanian, and Catalan were the official languages of the defunct Latin Union;[16] and French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the
United Nations.[17] Outside Europe, French, Portuguese and Spanish are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that emerged from the

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