The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages) are all the related languages derived from Vulgar Latin and forming a subgroup of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family.
The Romance languages developed from Latin in the sixth to ninth centuries. Today, there are more than 800 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe and the Americas and many smaller regions scattered throughout the world, as well as large numbers of non-native speakers, and widespread use as lingua franca. Because of the extreme difficulty and varying methodology of distinguishing among language, variety, and dialect, it is impossible to count the number of Romance languages now in existence, but the standard count places the number of living Romance languages at almost 25. In fact, the number may be slightly larger, and many more existed previously (SIL Ethnologue lists 47 Romance languages).
In 2007 the five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers were Spanish (385 million), Portuguese (205 million), French (75 million), Italian (60 million), and Romanian (25 million). Many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa.
Other Romance languages include Aragonese, Aromanian, Arpitan, Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Friulan, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Lombard, Mirandese, Neapolitan, Occitan, Piedmontese, Romansh, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian and Walloon.
Read more about Romance Languages: Origins, Name, Samples, Modern Status, Classification and Related Languages, Writing Systems, Vocabulary Comparison
Famous quotes containing the words romance and/or languages:
“I do like a little romance ... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys.... Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven’t got that.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)