Romance languages
Direct descendants of Vulgar Latin / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Romance languages, also known as the Latin[1] or Neo-Latin[2] languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin.[3] They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.
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| Romance | |
|---|---|
| Latin/Neo-Latin | |
| Geographic distribution | Originated in Old Latium on the Apennine Peninsula, now also spoken in Latin Europe (parts of Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Western Europe) and Latin America (a majority of the countries of Central America and South America), as well as parts of Africa (Latin Africa), Asia, and Oceania. |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
Early forms | |
| Proto-language | Proto-Romance |
| Subdivisions | |
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | roa |
| Linguasphere | 51- (phylozone) |
| Glottolog | roma1334 |
 Romance languages in Europe | |
 Romance languages across the world Majority native language
Co-official and majority native language
Official but minority native language
Cultural or secondary language | |
The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (489 million), Portuguese (240 million),[4] French (80 million), Italian (67 million) and Romanian (24 million), which are all national languages of their respective countries of origin. There are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages found worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. Portuguese, French and Spanish also have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as linguae francae.[5] There are also numerous regional Romance languages and dialects.