Romance languages

group of Indo-European languages, direct descendants of Vulgar Latin

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 The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire.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

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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, 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

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Eastern Romance languages

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Italo-Western Romance

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Italo-Dalmatian

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Western Romance languages

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Gallo-Iberian languages

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Gallo-Romance languages

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Iberian Romance languages

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Family tree of Romance languages

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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

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References

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