Romance languages

The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan Europa latina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa latină) as Vulgar Latin later evolved in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire.

Status

The most spoken Romance language is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan.

Related Topics:
Spanish - Portuguese - French - Italian - Romanian - Catalan

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Generally, the Romance languages have simplified the complex morphology and grammar of Latin. Italian and Sardinian retain more original features than the rest.

Related Topics:
Latin - Italian - Sardinian

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The Romance variants form a dialect continuum, and nearby languages usually have some mutual intelligibility. Portuguese, French, and Romanian are perhaps the most innovative of the languages, each in different ways. Sardinian is the most isolated and conservative variant. Languedocian Occitan is considered by some the most "average" western Romance language.

Related Topics:
Dialect continuum - Sardinian - Languedocian Occitan

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In the history of the Romance languages, the first split was between Sardinian and the rest. Then of the rest, the next split was between Romanian in the east, and the others in the west. The third major split was between Italian and the Gallo-Iberian group. This latter then split into a Gallo-Romance group, which became the Oïl languages (including French), Occitan, Francoprovençal and Romansh, and an Iberian Romance group which became Spanish and Portuguese. Catalan is considered by many specialists as a transition language between the Gallic group and the Iberian group, since it shares characteristics from both groups; for example, 'fear' is 'medo' in Portuguese, 'miedo' in Spanish, but 'por' in Catalan — compare with 'peur' in French.

Related Topics:
Sardinian - Romanian - Italian - Gallo-Romance - Oïl languages - Francoprovençal - Romansh - Iberian Romance

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There is much dialect diversity, and there is no clear differentiation between a "language" and a "dialect". Some varieties are privileged in that they are the main language of media and education in their countries (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and, recently, Catalan, although it is not as spread on the media as the other cited languages are, particularly in Valencia and the Balearic Islands, where its presence on local newspapers and radio stations is almost minoritary. It is also much neglected in the area of the French state where it is spoken). Others are used as the language of instruction in schools and have some official status, such as Sardinian and Romansh. Many have suffered long periods of official neglect, such as Occitan (or Provençal), the Oïl languages other than French, and Venetian. Some of these possess several competing standards. And some minor variants which might have developed into distinct languages have been reduced to residual areas and restricted usage, like Astur-Leonese, Aragonese or Mirandese.

Related Topics:
Valencia - Balearic Islands - Sardinian - Romansh - Occitan - Oïl languages - Venetian - Astur-Leonese - Aragonese - Mirandese

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Typical characteristics

Characteristics typical of Romance languages include:

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• General:
• Romance languages are "verb-framed" rather than "satellite-framed". This means that phrases indicating motion will tend to encode the motion's direction within the verb (e.g. "enter", "insert"), rather than in an external particle (e.g. "go in", "put in"). This is a feature of word formation.
• Romance languages frequently have two copula verbs (see Romance copula), from the Latin infinitives ESSE and STARE: one for essence and the other for status.
• Romance languages conjugate verbs in first, second, and third person forms, both singular and plural. The third person forms may also be inflected for gender, but the first- and second-person forms are not (compare with Hebrew, which inflects all three persons for gender and number.)
• Politeness forms include some form of the T-V distinction in all Romance languages.
• Romance languages have 2 or 3 genders for all nouns, but usually do not inflect nouns for case, though their parent Latin did.
• Romance languages include a default stress on the second-last syllable, and have euphony rules that avoid glottal stops, and multiple stop consonants in a row. (The second-last syllable becomes the last in languages like French that habitually drop the final Latin vowel.) The combination of these rules gives spoken Romance languages their characteristic high speed and flow. Compare Polish second-to-last stress.
• Written form only:
• The letters "W" and "K" are rarely used (except in names or borrowings, for example Kappa, or w in standard Walloon orthography).
• The letters "C" and "G" are usually "soft" postalveolar consonants before a front vowel, but "hard" velar consonants by default, or before a back vowel.
• In most Romance languages, proper adjectives (including nationalities, such as American and British), names of days of the week and months of the year are not capitalized. For example, nationalities are capitalized in French only when used as nouns.