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:

    “Westron wind, when will thou blow?
    The small rain down can rain.
    Christ, that my love were in my arms,
    And I in my bed again.”
    —Unknown. Western Wind (l. 1–4)

    “A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply.”
    —Paul Fussell (b. 1924)

    “People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can’t pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as “exotic” but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.”
    —Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)