Western Romance Languages

The Western Romance languages are one of the primary subdivisions of the Romance languages. They include at least the following:

  • The Gallo-Romance group includes:
    • The Gallo-Italian languages:
      • Gallo-Italian proper, including Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo
      • Venetian
    • The Rhaeto-Romance languages include Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of Dolomites area, Friulian of Friuli.
    • The Oïl languages (including French).
    • Arpitan, also known as Franco-Provençal. Formerly thought of as a dialect of either Oïl or Occitan, it is linguistically a language on its own, or rather a separate group of languages, as many of its dialects have little mutual comprehensibility.
    • The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and neighbouring areas include Occitan and Catalan.
  • The Iberian-Romance group includes:
    • West Iberian languages: Galician-Portuguese (Portuguese, Galician, Fala, Vernacular Brazilian post-creole and Uruguayan Portuñol), Leonese (from east to west Cantabrian, central-eastern Asturian and Leonese proper, and from north to south Leonese proper, Mirandese, Extremaduran and Barranquenho), and Spanish (Judaeo-Spanish, Spanish proper).
    • Eastern Iberian, or Catalan (usually classified as Occitano-Romance, see above).
    • Pyrenean–Mozarabic (Aragonese, extinct Mozarabic).

Some classifications include central and southern Italian; the resulting clade is generally called Italo-Western Romance. Other classifications place an Italo-Dalmatian clade in with Eastern Romance. Sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance, and may have split off before either.

Today the four most-widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish (c. 330 million native), Portuguese (c. 215 million native, another 45 million or so second-language speakers, mainly in Lusophone Africa), French (c. 70 million native speakers, another 70 million or so second-language speakers, mostly in Francophone Africa), and Catalan (c. 12 million native). Many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa as a lingua franca.

Famous quotes containing the words western, romance and/or languages:

    “There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
    —Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    “Children are incurable romantics. Brimful of romance and tragedy, we whirl through childhood hopelessly in love with our parents. In our epic imagination, we love and are loved with a passion so natural and innocent we may never know its like as adults.”
    —Roger Gould (20th century)

    “I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.”
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)