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- French, by any standard, has diverged most—radical phonetic changes that transformed the outward appearance of the language must have preceded the earliest surviving (9th-century) texts. Such changes are usually ascribed to Celtic and Frankish influence.
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Which Romance language has changed the most?
How have Romance languages evolved from Latin to today?
What are Romance languages?
What makes a Romance language unique?
With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the declension system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions. By some measures, Sardinian and Italian are the least divergent languages from Latin, while French has changed the most.
- 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
In the European lands in which Romance languages are still spoken, it is of course certain that, at some point, Latin in some form was the normal language of most strata. Whether, however, the Romance languages continue rough peasant dialects of Latin or the usage of more cultured urban communities is open to question.
Key Takeaways. Romance languages have their origins in Vulgar Latin and represent an important aspect of European heritage and linguistic development. The evolution of Romance languages from Latin to the distinct languages known today is a historical journey that has resulted in a diverse range of languages.
MARTIN MAIDEN is Professor of the Romance Languages and Director of the Research Centre for Romance Linguistics at the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His recent publications include A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian (with Cecilia Robustelli, 2007).
French, by any standard, has diverged most—radical phonetic changes that transformed the outward appearance of the language must have preceded the earliest surviving (9th-century) texts. Such changes are usually ascribed to Celtic and Frankish influence.
This Cambridge History is the most comprehensive survey of the history of the Romance languages ever published in English. It engages with new and original topics that reflect wider-ranging comparative concerns, such as the relation between diachrony and synchrony, morphosyntactic typology, pragmatic change, the structure of written Romance ...
