Romance languages
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This article does not have any sources. (June 2013) |
| 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)
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 Romance languages in the world:
Blue – French |
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The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (In the Latin Language, "vulgar" is the word for "common," so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The biggest Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan. They are called "romance languages" because they originate from a language spoken by Romans.
The area where the Romance languages are spoken in Europe, corresponds well with 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 The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire.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 the Moldovan language.
Contents
Demographics[change | change source]
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 widest used Romance language, then comes Portuguese, and then French.
Spanish is mainly spoken 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 Republic of Moldova.
List of Romance languages[change | change source]
Eastern Romance[change | change source]
Italo-Western Romance[change | change source]
Italo-Dalmatian[change | change source]
Western Romance languages[change | change source]
Gallo-Iberian languages[change | change source]
Gallo-Romance languages[change | change source]
Iberian Romance languages[change | change source]
Pyrenean-Mozarabic languages[change | change source]
Other[change | change source]
Family tree of Romance languages[change | change source]
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Classical Latin |
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Vulgar Latin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Continental Romance |
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Sardinian dialects | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Italo-Western Romance |
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Eastern Romance | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Western Romance |
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Italo-Dalmatian |
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Balkan Romance | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ibero-Romance |
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Gallo-Romance |
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Sicilian |
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Italian |
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Neapolitan |
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Proto-Romanian |
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Albanian words | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Portuguese |
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Spanish |
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French |
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Occitano Romance |
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Romanian |
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Aromanian | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Occitan |
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Catalan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
