The Romance languages (less commonly Latin languages, or Neo-Latin languages) are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the third and eighth centuries.[2] They are a subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish (480 million), Portuguese (270 million), French (77 million), Italian (65 million), and Romanian (24 million). Of the major Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin, followed by Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, and the most divergent being French. Taking into account all the Romance languages, including national and regional languages, it is seen that Sardinian and Italian are together the least differentiated from Latin and that Occitan is closer to Latin than French.[3][4][5] However, all Romance languages are closer to each other than to classical Latin.
The more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages are found worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa. The major Romance languages also have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as lingua franca.[6] This is especially true of French, which is in widespread use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Djibouti, Lebanon, and North Africa (excluding Egypt, where it is a minority language).
Because it is difficult to assign rigid categories to phenomena such as languages, which exist on a continuum, estimates of the number of modern Romance languages vary. For example, Dalby lists 23, based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility.[7] The following includes those and additional current, living languages, and one extinct language, Dalmatian:
- Ibero-Romance: Portuguese, Galician, Mirandese, Asturian, Leonese, Spanish, Aragonese, Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish)]];
- Occitano-Romance: Catalan/Valencian, Occitan (lenga d'oc), Gascon;
- Gallo-Romance: French/Oïl languages, Franco-Provençal (Arpitan);
- Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian;
- Gallo-Italic: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol;
- Italo-Dalmatian: Italian, Tuscan, Romanesco, Corsican, Sassarese, Sicilian, Neapolitan, Dalmatian (extinct in 1898), Venetian(classification disputed), Istriot;
- Sardinian;
- Eastern Romance: Romanian (standard known as Daco-Romanian), Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Aromanian.
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