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What are the 5 most widely spoken Romance languages?
What is a Romance language?
Where did Romance languages come from?
How many Romance languages are there?
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.
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- Modern Languages
The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (in Latin, "vulgar" is the word for "common" and so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian .
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
LanguageFamilyBranchFirst-language (l1) SpeakersEnglish (excl. creole languages )380 millionMandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, ...939 millionHindi (excl. Urdu )345 millionSpanish (excl. creole languages )485 million- Overview
- Origins and distribution
The Romance languages are a group of related languages all derived from Vulgar Latin within historical times and forming a subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The major languages of the family include French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.
How did the Romance languages get their name?
Contrary to a popular belief that the Romance languages are so named because they are the languages of love, the word Romance indicates the connection of these languages with Rome. The English word comes from an Old French form of Latin Romanicus, used to designate a vernacular type of Latin speech and literature.
Why are the Romance languages gendered?
Grammatical gender is used as a way to classify all nouns within a language. Latin originally had a five-case declensional system to classify nouns, but all modern Romance languages have replaced those endings with a two-gender system in which the masculine stems from Latin’s second (-us) declension endings and the feminine from first (-a) declension endings.
How many Romance languages are there?
The name Romance indeed suggests the ultimate connection of these languages with Rome: the English word is derived from an Old French form of Latin Romanicus, used in the Middle Ages to designate a vernacular type of Latin speech (as distinct from the more learned form used by clerics) as well as literature written in the vernacular. The fact that the Romance languages share features not found in contemporary Latin textbooks suggests, however, that the version of Latin they continue is not identical with that of Classical Latin as known from literature. Nonetheless, although it is sometimes claimed that the other Italic languages (the Indo-European language group to which Latin belonged, spoken in Italy) did contribute features to Romance, it is fairly certain that it is specifically Latin itself, perhaps in a popular form, that is the precursor of the Romance languages.
By the beginning of the 21st century, some 920 million people claimed a Romance language as their mother tongue, 300 million people as a second language. To that number may be added the not-inconsiderable number of Romance creole speakers (a creole is a simplified or pidgin form of a language that has become the native language of a community) scattered around the world. French creoles are spoken by millions of people in the West Indies, North America, and islands of the Indian Ocean (e.g., Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues Island, the Seychelles); Portuguese creoles are spoken in Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, India (especially the state of Goa and the union territory of Daman and Diu), and Malaysia; and Spanish creoles (including Palenquero and Chavacano, as well as Papiamentu [based on Portuguese but heavily influenced by Spanish]) are spoken in the West Indies and the Philippines. Many speakers use creole for informal purposes and the standard language for formal occasions. Romance languages are also used formally in some countries where one or more non-Romance languages are used by most speakers for everyday purposes. French, for example, is used alongside Arabic in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, and it is an (or the) official language of 18 countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, and Togo—on the continent of Africa and of Madagascar and several other islands off the coast of Africa. Portuguese is the official language of Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe.
Although its influence has waned before the growing popularity of English as an international language, French is still widely used today as a second language in many parts of the world. The wealth of French literary tradition, its precisely formulated grammar bequeathed by 17th- and 18th-century grammarians, and the pride of the French in their language may ensure it a lasting importance among languages of the world. By virtue of the vast territories in which Spanish and Portuguese hold sway, those languages will continue to be of prime importance. Even though territorially it has comparatively little extension, the Italian language, associated with Italy’s great cultural heritage, is still popular with students.
Britannica Quiz
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024. This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese.
LanguageNative Speakers (in Millions)Language FamilyBranch941486380345Aug 17, 2019 · By. N.S. Gill. Updated on August 17, 2019. The word romance connotes love and wooing, but when it has a capital R, as in Romance languages, it probably refers to a set of languages based on Latin, the language of the ancient Romans.
Feb 6, 2019 · February 6, 2019. The Romance languages, despite comprising only one branch in the Indo-European language family, include some of the most influential languages in the Western world. They’re spoken both in a large part of Europe and throughout North and South America. What are the Romance languages, though?
