Romance Languages Are Derived From

What are the Romance languages?

How did the Romance languages go their name?

Why are the Romance languages gendered?

How many Romance languages are there?

Summary

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Romance languages, group of related languages all derived from Vulgar Latin within historical times and forming a subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The major languages of the family include French, Italian, Castilian, Portuguese, and Romanian, all national languages. Catalan also has taken on a political and cultural significance; among the Romance languages that at present take less political or literary significance or both are the Occitan and Rhaetian dialects, Sardinian, and Dalmatian (extinct), among others. Of all the and then-called families of languages, the Romance grouping is mayhap the simplest to place and the easiest to account for historically. Not but practise Romance languages share a good proportion of basic vocabulary—notwithstanding recognizably the same in spite of some phonological changes—and a number of similar grammatical forms, simply they can be traced back, with but few breaks in continuity, to the language of the Roman Empire. So close is the similarity of each of the Romance languages to Latin equally currently known from a rich literature and continuous religious and scholarly tradition that no one doubts the relationship. For the nonspecialist, the testimony of history is even more than convincing than the linguistic evidence: Roman occupation of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Balkans accounts for the "Roman" character of the major Romance languages. Later European colonial and commercial contacts with parts of the Americas, of Africa, and of Asia readily explicate the French, Castilian, and Portuguese spoken in those regions.

Full general considerations

Origins and distribution

The proper name Romance indeed suggests the ultimate connection of these languages with Rome: the English discussion is derived from an Old French form of Latin Romanicus, used in the Middle Ages to designate a vernacular type of Latin speech (equally distinct from the more learned form used by clerics) also as literature written in the colloquial. The fact that the Romance languages share features non found in contemporary Latin textbooks suggests, all the same, that the version of Latin they continue is not identical with that of Classical Latin every bit known from literature. Nonetheless, although it is sometimes claimed that the other Italic languages (the Indo-European linguistic communication grouping to which Latin belonged, spoken in Italy) did contribute features to Romance, it is fairly certain that information technology is specifically Latin itself, possibly in a popular form, that is the precursor of the Romance languages.

By the beginning of the 21st century, some 920 million people claimed a Romance language as their mother tongue, 300 million people as a second language. To that number may be added the not-inconsiderable number of Romance creole speakers (a creole is a simplified or pidgin form of a language that has get the native linguistic communication of a community) scattered around the globe. French creoles are spoken by millions of people in the West Indies, North America, and islands of the Indian Ocean (e.g., Republic of mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues Island, the Seychelles); Portuguese creoles are spoken in Cabo Verde, Republic of guinea-bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, Bharat (especially the country of Goa and the union territory of Daman and Diu), and Malaysia; and Spanish creoles (including Palenquero and Chavacano, as well equally Papiamentu [based on Portuguese but heavily influenced by Spanish]) are spoken in the Due west Indies and the Philippines. Many speakers apply creole for informal purposes and the standard linguistic communication for formal occasions. Romance languages are also used formally in some countries where i or more not-Romance languages are used past most speakers for everyday purposes. French, for example, is used alongside Standard arabic in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, and it is an (or the) official linguistic communication of 18 countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Republic of burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Congo-brazzaville, Côte d'Ivoire, the Autonomous Republic of the congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabonese republic, Guinea, Republic of mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, and Togo—on the continent of Africa and of Madagascar and several other islands off the coast of Africa. Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe.

Although its influence has waned before the growing popularity of English language equally an international linguistic communication, French is still widely used today every bit a second linguistic communication in many parts of the world. The wealth of French literary tradition, its precisely formulated grammar bequeathed past 17th- and 18th-century grammarians, and the pride of the French in their linguistic communication may ensure it a lasting importance among languages of the globe. By virtue of the vast territories in which Castilian and Portuguese concur sway, those languages volition proceed to be of prime importance. Even though territorially it has comparatively little extension, the Italian linguistic communication, associated with Italy's corking cultural heritage, is all the same popular with students.

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