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The Romance languages, also known as the Latin [2] or Neo-Latin [3] languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin. [4] They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are:
Judaeo-Spanish (or Ladino) is also spoken in the Balkan Peninsula, but it is rarely listed among the other Romance languages of the region because it is rather an Iberian Romance language that developed as a Jewish dialect of Old Spanish in the far west of Europe, and it began to be spoken widely in the Balkans only after the influx of Ladino ...
The Romance languages evolved from varieties of Vulgar Latin spoken in the various parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Latin was itself part of the (otherwise extinct) Italic branch of Indo-European. [citation needed] Romance languages are divided phylogenetically into Italo-Western, Eastern Romance (including Romanian) and Sardinian.
Neolatino Romance (or simply 'Neolatino') [37] [38] is a naturalistic pan-Romance zonal auxiliary language, proposed as a standard language for Romance as a whole, to ease communication amongst or with speakers of Romance languages, complementing (not substituting) the standards that exist locally (Portuguese, Spanish, etc.).
European extent of Romance languages in the 20th century Eastern and Western Romance areas split by the La Spezia–Rimini Line; Southern Romance is represented by Sardinian as an outlier. Romance languages in the World. Countries and sub-national entities where one or more Romance languages are spoken.
The Southern Romance languages are a primary branch of the Romance languages. According to the classification of linguists such as Leonard (1980) and Agard (1984), the Southern Romance family is composed of Sardinian , Corsican , and the southern Lucanian dialects.
The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative (least conservative) among the Romance languages. Northern France, the medieval area of the langue d'oïl from which modern French developed, was the epicentre. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed the earliest, appear in their most extreme ...
Today the four most widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish (c. 486 million native speakers, around 125 million second-language speakers), Portuguese (c. 220 million native, another 45 million or so second-language speakers, mainly in Lusophone Africa), French (c. 80 million native speakers, another 70 million or so ...