Romance languages

a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European family and deriving from Latin. The Romance languages are spoken by more than 400 million people and are state languages in more than 50 countries.

The Romance languages are difficult to classify because of the diverse and gradual transitions between them. The following subgroups are usually distinguished: Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician), Gallo-Romance (French, Provençal), Italo-Romance (Italian, Sardinian), Rhaeto-Romance, Balkan-Romance (Rumanian, Moldavian, Aromanian, Megleno-Rumanian, Istro-Rumanian), and the Dalmatian language, which became extinct in the 19th century.

The common character of the Romance languages is traceable primarily to the common origin of the languages from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the regions conquered by Rome. This common character is manifested in the numerous words and grammatical forms traceable to Vulgar Latin. In the course of their development, the Romance languages were also heavily influenced by literary Latin, from which they borrowed words, derivational patterns, and syntactic models. This influence created a secondary Romance linguistic community and introduced changes in pronunciation patterns and the lexical system. Two strata were formed in the vocabulary: phonetically divergent words deriving from Vulgar Latin (French fait, Spanish hecho, Rumanian fapt— from Latin factum) and phonetically similar words borrowed from literary Latin (French facteur, Spanish factor, Rumanian factor— from Latin factor). The modern Romance languages have two genders for substantives and adjectives, no declensions (except in the Balkan-Romance group), articles, special adverbal pronouns, compound verb forms with past participles, futures and conditionals formed from the infinitive, and frequent prepositional constructions.

There were several stages in the development of the Romance languages. The first stage, extending from the third century B.C. to the fifth century A.D., was the period of Romanization, in which local languages were replaced by Vulgar Latin. The divergences of the future Romance dialects were determined in part by the different times at which various regions were conquered by the Romans: Italy fell in the third century B.C.; Spain, in the third century B.C.; Gaul, in the first century B.C.; Rhaetia, in the first century A.D.; and Dacia, in the second century A.D. Other determining factors were the social conditions and pace of Romanization, dialect differences of Latin itself, the extent of communications between the provinces and Rome, administrative partitioning of the empire, and the substratum influence of the languages of the local population (Iberians, Gauls, Rhaetians, Dacians).

In the second stage, extending from the fifth to ninth centuries A.D., the Romance languages first came into being, at a time when the Roman Empire was disintegrating and the barbarian states were forming. Romance speech was influenced by the superstratum languages of the conquerors, who included Germanic tribes (Visigoths in Spain, Franks and Burgundians in Gaul, Lombards in Italy), Arabs in Spain, and Slavs in the Balkans. The limits of Romance language distribution in Europe were established by the tenth century, when Romance languages came to be recognized as languages separate from Latin and from each other.

The third stage, extending from the tenth to 16th centuries, witnessed the development of literature in the Romance languages and the expansion of the social functions of the languages. The first texts in French date to the ninth century; those in Italian, Spanish, Sardinian, and Provençal, to the tenth century; those in Rhaeto-Romance, Catalan, and Portuguese, to the 12th century; and those in Rumanian, to the 16th century. Literary languages developed that were not differentiated by dialect. French and other Romance languages underwent significant changes in structure.

In the fourth stage, extending from the 16th to 19th centuries, the Romance languages became national languages, were standardized, and were further enriched. The development of the languages was uneven. French and Spanish became national languages in the 16th and 17th centuries and subsequently functioned also as international languages. Italian and Rumanian became national languages only in the 19th century. Provençal and, to a lesser extent, Galician lost their earlier social functions. The 20th century has seen a further development of the Romance literary languages. In a number of countries, movements are under way to strengthen and expand the social functions of certain Romance languages; this is the case with Catalan in Spain, Provençal in France, and French in Canada.

In the 16th century, colonial expansion brought the Romance languages beyond the bounds of Europe. The modern Romance language area encompasses Central and South America and parts of North America, Africa, and other continents. Local variants of the Romance languages have emerged and include Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Latin-American Spanish. Creole languages based on French and Portuguese have also developed.