Romance languages

Romance languages in the world:
Blue – French
Green – Spanish
Orange – Portuguese
Yellow – Italian
Red – Romanian
Lighter colors mean that the language is not official, but important

The Romance languages are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin. The biggest Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan. They are called "romance languages" because they originate from a language spoken by Romans.

The area where the Romance languages are spoken in Europe, corresponds well with the extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire, but Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language.

Demographics

Percentage of speakers of each Romance language, out of the total speakers of all the Romance languages

The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total there is almost a billion first and second language speakers .

Spanish is the widest used Romance language, then comes Portuguese, and then French.

Spanish is mainly spoken in Spain and Latin America. Portuguese is mostly used/spoken in Brazil, Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and in some areas of Africa.

List of Romance languages

Eastern Romance

• Romanian

Italo-Western Romance

Italo-Dalmatian

• Italian

Western Romance languages

Gallo-Iberian languages

• Catalan
• Occitan

Gallo-Romance languages

• French
• Gallo
• Norman
  • Auregnais
  • Jèrriais
  • Sercquiais
• Romansh
• Venetian
• Walloon

Iberian Romance languages

• Galician
• Leonese
• Portuguese
• Spanish

Pyrenean-Mozarabic languages

• Aragonese

Other

• Ladino

Family tree of Romance languages

Other websites

• Comparative Grammar of the Romance Languages