Romance Languages, group of modern languages derived from the ancient Latin language and spoken by about 700 million people. These languages form a major group in the Indo-European languages, belonging to that family's subfamily of Italic languages. They developed from the colloquial Latin of late Roman times, their separation from Latin becoming evident in the 5th to 9th centuries.
Linguists subdivide the group in various ways, using geographic as much as linguistic criteria. One common classification is the following: (1) Insular: Sardinian (spoken on the island of Sardinia and isolated from other Romance speech at an early date). (2) Continental: Balkan—Romanian and the extinct Dalmatian language. Western European—Italian, Spanish (including Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish), Portuguese, French, Provençal or Occitan (in southern France), Catalan (in Catalonia and Valencia in Spain; national language of Andorra), and the Rhaeto-Romanic group (Romansch, in Switzerland; Ladin and Friulian, in northern Italy).
See also Catalan Language; French Language; Italian Language; Language; Norman French Language and Literature; Portuguese Language; Provençal Language; Rhaeto-Romanic Languages; Romanian Language; Spanish Language.
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