Romance Languages

Encyclopedia : R : RO : ROM : Romance Languages

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The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. The Romance languages have more than 600 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa; as well as in many smaller regions scattered through the world.

All Romance languages (sometimes refferd to as Romanic) descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of soldiers, settlers, and slaves of the Roman Empire, which was substantially different from the Classical Latin of the Roman literati. Between 200 BC and 100 AD, the expansion of the Empire, coupled with administrative and educational policies of Rome, made Vulgar Latin the dominant native language over a wide area spanning from the Iberian Peninsula to the Western coast of the Black Sea. During the Empire's decline and after its collapse and fragmentation in 5th century, Vulgar Latin began to evolve independently within each local area, and eventually diverged into dozens of distinct languages. The oversea empires established by Spain, Portugal and France after the 15th century then spread Romance to the other continents — to such an extent that about 2/3 of all Romance speakers are now outside Europe.

In spite of multiple influences from pre-Roman languages and from later invasions, the phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax of all Romance languages are predominantly derived from Vulgar Latin. As a result, the group shares a number of linguistic features that set it apart from other Indo-European branches. In particular, with only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the declension system of Classical Latin, and as a result have a relatively rigid SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions.

History

Vulgar Latin

There is very little documentary evidence about the nature of Vulgar Latin, and that little is often hard to interpret or generalize. In any case, many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, and forced resettlers — that is, more likely to be natives of the conquered lands than natives of Rome. It is believed that Vulgar Latin already had most of the features that are shared by all Romance languages and distinguish them from Classical Latin — such as the almost complete loss of the declension system and its replacement by prepositions, the loss of the neuter gender, of comparative inflections, and of many verbal tenses, the use of articles, and the change in pronunciation of /k/ and /ɡ/.

Fall of the Empire

The political decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the large-scale migrations of the period, notably the Germanic incursions, led to a fragmentation of the Latin-speaking world into several independent states. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by Germanic and Slavic tribes, Huns, and Turks, isolating Romania from the rest of Latin Europe. Latin also disappeared from England, which had been for a time part of the Empire. On the other hand, the Germanic tribes that had entered Italy, France, and the Iberian Peninsula eventually adopted Latin and the remains of Roman culture, and so Latin continued to be the dominant language in those areas.

Latent incubation

Between the 5th and 10th century, spoken Vulgar Latin underwent divergent evolution in various parts of its domain, leading to dozens of distinct languages. This evolution is poorly documented, since the written language for all purposes continued to be a Latin close to the Classical variant.

Recognition of the vernaculars

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local vernaculars came to be written, and began to supplant Latin in many of its roles. In some countries, such as Portugal, this transition was speeded up by force of law, whereas in other countries, such as Italy, the rise of the vernacular was the result of many prominent poets and writers adopting it as their medium.

Uniformization and standardization

The invention of the press apparently slowed down the evolution of Romance language from the 16th century on, and brought instead a tendency towards greater uniformity of language within political boundaries. In France, for instance, the "Francien" spoken in the region of Paris gradually spread over the whole country, while the Langue d'Oc and Franco-Provençal of the south lost much ground.

History of the name

The term "Romance" comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, derived from romanicus, in the expression romanice loqui (which designated the vulgar languages of Latin origin, and which contrasted to barbarice loqui, the non-Latin "barbarian" languages of the invaders, and latine loqui, used for the Latin taught in schools). From this adverb originated the noun romance, which applied initially to anything written in a romanice loqui. (Note: should not be confused with another word romance, meaning "to do with love")

Status

The most spoken Romance language is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan. The first five languages are all main and official national languages in more than one country each. A few other languages have official status on a regional or otherwise limited level, for instance Sardinian and Valdôtain in Italy, Romansh in Switzerland, Galician, Catalan and Aranese in Spain. Also, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian are official and working languages of the European Union (Romanian will also become an official and working language of the EU on January 1st, 2007).

The remaining Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. National governments have historically viewed linguistic diversity as an economic, administrative, or military liability, and a potential source of separatist movements; therefore they have generally fought to eliminate it — by massively promoting the use of the official language, by restricting the use of the "other" languages in the media, by characterizing them as mere "dialects" — or worse.

In the last decades of the 20th century, however, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities have allowed those languages to recover some of their prestige and of their lost rights. However, it is not clear whether those political changes will be enough to reverse the decline of the non-official languages.

Linguistic features

Features inherited from Indo-European

As members of the Indo-European (IE) family, Romance languages have a number of features that are shared by other IE subfamilies (such as the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and Indo-Persian languages, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Lithuanian, etc.), and in particular with English; but which set them apart from non-IE languages like Arabic, Basque, Hungarian, Tamil, and many more. These features include:

• Almost all their words are classified into four major classes — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — each with a specific set of possible syntactic roles.
• They have a complex system of word inflections to indicate syntactic relationships between words and to create derivative words in the same or in other classes.
• Inflection almost always consists in replacing a suffix of the word, and each word has relatively small set of "suffix slots".
• They are verb-centered; meaning that the basic clause structure consists of a verb, expressing an action involving one or more nouns — the arguments of the verb — that play specific semantic roles in the action and specific syntactic roles in the clause.
• The verb is inflected to indicate various aspects of the action, such as time, completeness or continuation; and also according to the grammatical person and grammatical number of one of the arguments, the subject.
• The verb can be further modified by adverbs, or by additional nouns preceded by prepositions that indicate their semantic roles.
• Nouns are classified into several grammatical genders and grammatical numbers.
• Adjectives are noun modifiers; each adjective is normally inflected so as to echo the gender and number of the noun it is attached to.
• Verbs are not inflected according to the gender of the subject (unlike Arabic and Hebrew, for example).
• Tone (voice pitch) is used only at the sentence level, e.g. to indicate surprise or interrogation (unlike Chinese and Yorùbá, for example, where pitch changes the meaning of words).

Features inherited from Latin

The Romance languages share a number of features that were inherited from Classical Latin, and collectively set them apart from most other Indo-European languages.

• They have lost the dual number, retaining only singular and plural, except for the word "ambos" which means "both", in Portuguese and Spanish ("ambii" in Romanian).
• They all have retained at least three of Latin's verbal tenses: present, e.g. DĪCIT "he says", past perfect DĪXIT "he said", past imperfect DICĒBAT "he was saying". (French il dit, il dit, il disait, Spanish dice, dijo, decía, Italian dice, disse, diceva, etc.)
• For each tense, there are usually six distinct verbal inflections, encoding each of the three persons (I, you, he/she/it) and two numbers (singular and plural) of the subject.
• They all had originally two copula verbs, derived from the Latin STARE (mostly used for "temporary state") and ESSE (mostly used for "essential attributes"). However, the distinction was eventually lost in some languages, notably French, which now have only the first copula. In French, stare and esse had become ester and estre by the late middle ages. Due to phonological development, there were the forms êter and être, which eventually merged to être.
• All those languages are written with the "core" Latin alphabet of 22 letters — A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Y, Z — subsequently modified and augmented in various ways.
• In particular, the letters K and W are rarely used in Romance languages — mostly for unassimilated foreign names and words, as they were in late Latin.
• In the case of standard Italian, the Latin stressed pronunciation of double consonants is preserved.

Features inherited from Vulgar Latin

Romance languages also have a number of features that are not shared with Classical Latin. Most of these features are thought to be inherited from Vulgar Latin. Even though the Romance languages are all derived from Latin, they are arguably much closer to each other than to their common ancestor. The main difference is the loss of the case system of Classical Latin, an essential feature which allowed great freedom of word order, and has no counterpart in any Romance language (except to some extent in Romanian, which preserved three of Latin's seven noun cases). In this regard, the distance between any modern Romance language and Latin is comparable to that between Modern English and Old English. While speakers of French, Spanish or Italian, for example, can quickly learn to see through the spelling changes and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences.

• There are no declensions, that is, nouns are no longer altered to indicate their grammatical roles. (An exception is Romanian, which retains a combined genitive/dative case. Also, Old French and Old Occitan retained an oblique case.)
• There are only two grammatical genders, having lost the neuter gender of Classical Latin. (An exception is Romanian, which retains neuter gender; Spanish, which has the neuter third person pronoun ello, the neuter demonstratives eso, esto, aquello, and the neuter article lo, all used for objects or some abstract notions.); and Italian, which while not keeping the neuter gender intact, has residual traces of it represented by some words that switch gender between singular and plural, such as il dito (the finger), plural le dita, inherited from Latin digitum, plural digita.
• The normal clause structure is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin.
• Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.
• Many Latin constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) were dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clauses in all Romance languages except italian.

Examples:

• Latin *Italian
• Tempore permittente, *Tempo Permettendo
• Hoc facto, *Fatto Ciò
• There are definite and indefinite grammatical articles, derived from Latin demonstratives and the numeral UNUS ("one").
• The Latin future tense was replaced by new synthetic future and conditional tenses, based on infinitive + present or imperfect tense of HABERE ("to have"), fused to form new inflections.
• Most Latin synthetic perfect tenses were lost, generally replaced by new compound forms with "to be" or "to have" + past participle.
• There is an elaborate system of pronouns which partially retain the distinction between Latin cases, some of them being clitic.
• The distinction between long and short vowels, believed to have been present in Classical Latin, was lost and replaced by a system of lexical stress, where one vowel of each word is pronounced slightly louder than the rest.
• Many Latin combining prefixes were incorporated in the lexicon as new roots and verb stems, e.g. Italian estrarre ("to extract") from Latin EX- ("out") and TRAHERE ("to drag").
• The Latin letters C and G — which usually sound like [k] and [g] — have other sounds when they come before E and I. (See below.)

Other shared features

The Romance languages also share a number of features that were not the result of common inheritance, but rather of various cultural diffusion processes in the Middle Ages — such as literary diffusion, commercial and military interactions, political domination, influence of the Catholic Church, and (especially in later times) conscious attempts to "purify" the languages by reference to Classical Latin. Some of those features have in fact spread to other non-Romance (and even non-Indo-European) languages, chiefly in Europe. Here are some of these "late origin" shared features:

• Most Romance languages have polite forms of address that change the person and/or number of 2nd person subjects (T-V distinction), such as the tu/vous contrast in French, the tú/usted in Spanish, the tu/você in Portuguese or the tu/Lei contrast in Italian.
• They all have a large collection of prefixes, stems, and suffixes retained or reintroduced from Greek and Latin, used to coin new words. Most of those have cognates in English, e.g. "tele-", "poly-", "meta-", "pseudo-", "dis-", "ex-", "post-", "-scope", "-logy", "-tion".
• They all replaced the Latin letter V by a new letter U when it had a vowel sound.
• Many of them introduced the new letter J (originally the Semitic version of I, which in time acquired various sounds in different languages).
• They are all presently written in a mixture of two distinct but phonetically identical variants or "cases" of the alphabet, "uppercase" (majuscule) and "lowercase" (minuscule), with similar rules for their usage.
• They also use very similar sets of punctuation characters.

Divergent features

In spite of their common origin, the descendants of Vulgar Latin have many differences. These occur at all levels, including the sound systems, the orthography, the nominal, verbal, and adjectival inflections, the auxiliary verbs and the semantics of verbal tenses, the function words, the rules for subordinate clauses, and, especially, in their vocabularies. While most of those differences are clearly due to independent development after the breakup of the Roman Empire (including invasions and cultural exchanges), one must also consider the influence of prior languages in territories of Latin Europe that fell under Roman rule, and possible inhomogenities in Vulgar Latin itself.

It is often said that Portuguese and French are the most innovative of the Romance languages, each in different ways, that Sardinian and Romanian are the most isolated and conservative variants, and that the languages of Italy other than Sardinian (including Italian) occupy a middle ground. Some even claim that Languedocian Occitan is the "most average" western Romance language. However, these evaluations are largely subjective, as they depend on how much weight one assigns to specific features. In fact all Romance languages, including Sardinian and Romanian, are all vastly different from their common ancestor.

Romanian (together with other related minor languages, like Aromanian) in fact has a number of grammatical features which are unique within Romance, but are shared with other non-Romance languages of the Balkans, such as Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Serbian. These features include, for example, the structure of the vestigial case system, the placement of articles as suffixes of the nouns (cer = "sky", cerul= "the sky"), and several more. This phenomenon, called the Balkan linguistic union, may be due to contacts between those languages in post-Roman times.

Sound changes

The vocabularies of Romance languages have undergone massive change since their birth, by various phonological processes that were characteristic of each language. Those changes applied more or less systematically to all words, but were often conditioned by the sound context or morphological structure.

Some languages have dropped letters from the original Latin words. French, in particular, has dropped all final vowels, and sometimes also the preceding consonant: thus Latin LUPUS and LUNA became Italian lupo and luna but French loup [lu] and lune [lyn]. Catalan, Occitan, and Romanian (Daco-Romanian) lost the final vowels in most masculine nouns and adjectives, but retained them in the feminine. Other languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Franco-Provençal, and the Southern dialects of Romanian have retained those vowels.

Some languages, like Portuguese, Spanish, and Venetian, have lost the final vowel -E from verbal infinitives, e.g. DĪCERE → Portuguese dizer ("to say"). Other common cases of final truncation are the verbal endings, eg. Latin AMĀT → Italian ama ("he loves"), AMĀBAM → amavo ("I loved"), AMĀBAT → amava ("he loved"), AMĀBATIS → amavate ("You pl. loved"), etc..

Sounds have often been dropped in the middle of the word, too; e.g. Latin LUNA → Galician and Portuguese lua, CRĒDERE → Spanish creer ("to believe").

On the other hand, some languages have inserted many epenthetic vowels in certain contexts. For instance Spanish and Portuguese have generally inserted an e in front of Latin words that began with S + consonant, such as SPERŌ → espero ("I hope"). French has gone the same way, but then dropped the s: SPATULA → épaule ("shoulder"). In the case of Italian, a unique article, lo for the definite and uno for the indefinite, is used for masculine S + consonant words (sbaglio, "mistake"), as well as all masculine words beginning with Z (zaino, "backpack").

Lexical stress

The position of the stressed syllable in a word generally varies from word to word in each Romance language, and often moves as the word is inflected. Sometimes the stress is lexically significant, e.g. Italian Papa [ˈpapa] ("Pope") and papà [paˈpa] ("daddy"), or Spanish imperfect subjunctive cantara ("he would sing") and future cantará ("he will sing"). However, the main function of Romance stress in appears to be a clue for speech segmentation — namely to help the listener identify the word boundaries in normal speech, where inter-word spaces are usually absent.

In Romance languages, the stress is usually confined to one of the last three syllables of the word. That limit may be occasionally exceeded by some verbs with attached clitics, e.g. Italian mettiamocene [me.ˈtːja.mo.tʃe.ne]or Metintilu in Friulian ("let's put some of it in there") or Spanish entregándomelo [en.tre.ˈɰan.do.me.lo] ("delivering it to me"). Originally the stress was predominatly in the next-to-last syllable, but that pattern has changed considerably in some languages. In French, for instance, the loss of final vowels has left the stress almost exclusively on the last syllable.

Formation of plurals

Some Romance languages form plurals by adding /s/ (derived from the plural of the Latin accusative case), while others form the plural by changing the final vowel (by influence of the Latin nominative ending /i/). See La Spezia-Rimini Line for more information.

• Plural in /s/: Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, Friulian.
• Vowel change: Italian, Romanian.
• No marking: French (formerly marked with /s/, but this has been lost in the spoken language; plural marking is now indicated on the associated determiner rather than the noun itself, though still distinguished in writing)

Borrowed words

Derivations

Words for \"more\"

Some Romance languages use a version of Latin plus, others a version of magis.

• Plus-derived: French plus /ply/, Italian più /pju/,Friulian plui dialectal Catalan pus /pus/ (this word is exclusively used on negative statements in Mallorcan Catalan), Romansh
• Magis-derived: Galician and Portuguese (mais, mediaeval Galician-Portugueses retained both versions: mais and chus), Spanish (más), Catalan (més), Occitan (mai), Romanian (mai), Italian (mai, used only in the construction non... mai, meaning "never")

Words for \"nothing\"

The common word for "nothing" is nada in Spanish and Portuguese, nada and ren in Galician, rien in French, res in Catalan, ren in Occitan, nimic in Romanian, and niente and nulla in Italian, nue and nuie in Friulian. It is said that all three roots derive from different parts of a Latin phrase NULLAM REM NATAM ("no thing born"), an emphatic idiom for "nothing".

The number 16

Romanian constructs the names of the numbers 11–19 by a regular pattern which could be translated as "one-over-ten", "two-over-ten", etc.. All the other Romance languages use a pattern like "one-ten", "two-ten", etc. for 11–15, and the pattern "ten-and-seven, "ten-and-eight", "ten-and-nine" for 17–19. For 16, however, they split into two groups: some use "six-ten", some use "ten-and-six":

• "Sixteen": Catalan setze, French seize, Italian sedici, Friulian sedis, Lombard sedas / sedes, Franco-Provençal sèze, Occitan setze, Sardinian sédichi.
• "Ten and six": Portuguese dezasseis or dezesseis, Galician dezaseis, Spanish dieciséis.
• "Six over ten": Romanian şaisprezece (where spre derives from Latin super).

Classical Latin uses the "one-and-ten" pattern for 11–17 (ūndecim, duodecim, ..., septendecim), but then switches to "two-off-twenty" (duodēvigintī) and "one-off-twenty" (ūndēvigintī). For the sake of comparison, note that English and German use two special words derived from "one left over" and "two left over" for 11 and 12, then the pattern "three-ten", "four-ten", ..., "nine-ten" for 13–19.

To have and to hold

The verbs derived from Latin HABĒRE, TENĒRE, and ESSE are used differently for the concepts of "to have" (something), "to have" (auxiliary verb for complex tenses), and "there is" (existence statements). If we use T for TENĒRE, H for HABĒRE, and E for ESSE, the various languages classify as follows:

• TTH: Portuguese.
• THH: Spanish, Catalan.
• HHH: Occitan, French.
• HHE: Romanian, Italian

For example:

English: I have, I have done, there is

Portuguese: (eu) tenho, (eu) tenho feito, há (TTH)

Spanish: (yo) tengo, (yo) he hecho, hay (THH)

Catalan: (jo) tinc, (jo) he fet, hi ha (THH)

French: j'ai, j'ai fait, il y a (HHH)

Italian: (io) ho, (io) ho fatto, c'è (HHE)

Romanian: (eu) am, (eu) am făcut, este (HHE)

Friulian: (jo) o ai, (jo) o ai fat, a 'nd è, al è

Most of these languages also use the TENĒRE verb for the sense of "to hold", e.g. Italian tieni il libro, French tu tiens le livre, Catalan tens el llibre, Spanish tienes el libro, Romanian ţine cartea, Galician Té-lo libro, Friulian Tu tu tegnis il libri ("you hold the book"). However, Portuguese normally uses a different verb for that sense, usually segurar (from the Vulgar Latin ASSECURARE, "to make secure"). On the other hand, Brazilian Portuguese informally uses the T verb in the existential sense, e.g. tem água no copo instead of há água no copo ("there is water in the glass").

To have or to be

Some languages use their equivalent of "have" as an auxiliary verb to form the perfect forms (e. g. French passé composé) of all verbs; others use "be" for some verbs and "have" for others.

• "Have" only: Standard Catalan, Spanish, Romanian, Sicilian.
• "Have" and "be": Occitan, French, Italian, some dialects of Catalan (although such usage is recessing in those).

In the latter, the verbs which use "be" as an auxiliary are unaccusative verbs, that is, intransitive verbs that show motion not directly initiated by the subject or changes of state, such as "fall", "come", "become". All other verbs (intransitive unergative verbs and all transitive verbs) use "have". For example, in French, J'ai vu "I have seen" vs. Je suis tombé "I am fallen" ("I have fallen").

Portuguese is unique in that its equivalent of the passé composé — usually made with ter (Spanish tener) but occasionally with haver — is uncommon and does not have the same meaning as for other Romance languages. The phrase eu tenho feito means I have been doing rather than I have done, which would be rendered with the simple past (eu fiz).

Galician is also unique in that it does not use auxiliary verbs, with the exception of juridic language.

I did or I have done

Some languages (e.g. Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and written French and Italian) make a distinction between a preterite and a perfect tense (cf. English I did vs. I have done). Others (Galician, spoken French and Italian) contain only one tense, which renders both meanings. French and Italian use the compound past for this, while Sicilian uses the simple past.

Writing systems

Letter values

While most of the 22 basic Latin Letters have similar sound values in all Romance languages, the values of some letters have diverged considerably; and the new letters added since the Middle Ages have been put to different uses in different scripts. Some letters, notably H and Q, have been variously combined in digraphs or trigraphs (see below) to represent phonetic phenomena not recorded in Latin, or to get around previously established spelling conventions.

A characteristic feature of the writing systems of all Romance languages is that the Latin letters C and G — which originally always represented /k/ and /g/ respectively — represent other sounds when they come before E and I. This is due to a general palatalization of /k/ and /g/ before front vowels like /i/ and /e/. This is believed to have occurred in the transition from Classical to Vulgar Latin. Since the written form of all the affected words was tied to the classical language, the shift was accommodated by a change in the pronunciation rules. However, the new sounds of C and G in those contexts differ from language to language.

The spelling rules of most Romance languages are fairly complex, and subject to considerable regional variation. To a first approximation, the phonetic representation of non-combined letters can be summarized as follows:

C: generally [k], but "softened" before E or I in most Romance languages — to [s] in French, Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, and American Spanish; to [tʃ] in Italian and Romanian; and to [θ] in Peninsular Spanish.

G: generally [g] or [ɣ], but "softened" before E or I in most languages — to [ʒ] in French, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan; to [dʒ] in Italian and Romanian; and to [x] in Spanish.

J: represents [ʒ] in most languages; [x] in Spanish; [j] in several of Italy's languages, but normally replaced with I in native Italian words.

S': normally represents [s] (either laminal or apical) at syllable onset, but usually [z] between vowels in Italian, French, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan. In the syllable coda, {{IPA|/s/ may have special allophones.

W: used only in Walloon. Represents /v/ in French, with the exception of words borrowed from English.

X: at the beginning of words, represents [ks] (in some words [gz]) in French, [s] in Spanish, and [ʃ] in Portuguese, Catalan, Galician). In intervocalic position, represents [ks] in French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian; [gz] in Catalan, French, and Romanian; [gs] in Galician and Spanish); [ʃ] in Catalan, Galician and Portuguese; [z] in French and Portuguese; or [s] in French and Portuguese. Not used in Italian.

Y: used in French and Spanish for the vowel /i/, and in Spanish also as a consonant [ʝ], [ʒ] or [dʒ].

Z: either [dz] or [ts] in Italian; [θ] or [s] in Galician and Spanish; and [z] in most of the other languages.

H: silent in most languages, but represents [h] in Romanian and Gascon Occitan. Used in various digraphs (see below).

Otherwise, letters that are not combined in digraphs generally have the same sounds as in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), whose design was in fact greatly influenced by the Romance spelling systems.

Digraphs and trigraphs

Since most Romance languages have more sounds than can be accommodated in the Roman Latin alphabet they all resort to the use of digraphs and trigraphs — combinations of two or three letters with a single sound value. The concept (but not the actual combinations) derives from Classical Latin; which used, for example, TH, PH, and CH when transliterating the Greek letters "θ", "φ", and "χ" (These were once aspirated sounds in Greek before changing to corresponding fricatives and the represented what sounded to the Romans like an /h/ following /t/, /p/, and /k/ respectively. Some of the digraphs used in modern scripts are:

CI': used in Italian and Romanian to represent /tʃ/ before A, O, or U.

CH: used in Italian and Romanian to represent /k/ before E or I; /tʃ/ in Spanish and Galician; and /ʃ/ in most other languages.

ÇH': used in Poitevin-Saintongeais for voiceless palatal fricative /ç/

DD: used in Sicilian to represent the {{IPA|voiced retroflex plosive /ɖ/.

DJ: used in Walloon for /dʒ/.

GI: used in Italian and Romanian to represent /dʒ/ before A, O, or U.

GH: used in Italian and Romanian to represent /g/ before E or I, and in Galician for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/.

GLI: used in Italian for /ʎ/.

GN: used in French and Italian for /ɲ/, as in champignon or gnocchi.

GU: used before E or I to represent /g/ or /ɣ/ in all Romance languages except Italian and Romanian.

LH: used in Portuguese and Occitan for /ʎ/.

LL: used in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Norman and Dgèrnésiais, originally for /ʎ/ which has merged with /j/. Represents /l/ in French unless it follows I when it represents /j (or /ʎ/ in some dialects).

L•L: used in Catalan for a long /lː/.

NH: used in Portuguese and Occitan for /ɲ/, used in Galician for /ŋ/.

NY: used in Catalan for /ɲ/.

QU: used before E or I to represent /k/, in all Romance languages except Italian and Romanian.

RR: used between vowels in several languages to denote a trilled /r/ or a guttural R, instead of the flap /ɾ/.

SC: used before E or I in Italian for /ʃ/, and in French and Spanish as as /s/ in words of certain etymology.

SCI: used in Italian to represent /ʃ/ before A, O, or U.

SH: used in Aranese Catalan for /ʃ/.

SS: used in Italian, French, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan for /s/ between vowels.

TH: used in Jèrriais for /θ/ (as in English "thick"); used in Aranese for either /t/ or /tʃ/

While the digraphs CH, PH, RH and TH were at one time used in many words of Greek origin, most languages have now replaced them with C/QU, F, R and T. Only French has kept these etymological spellings, which now represent /k/ or /ʃ/, /f/, /ʀ/ and /t/, respectively.

Gemination

For most languages in this family, consonant length is no longer phonemically distinctive or present. The double consonants in French spelling are due to etymology. However, Italian and Sicilian do have long consonants like BB, CC, DD, etc., where the doubling indicates a short hold before the consonant is released, which often has lexical value: e.g. note /'nɔte/ ("notes") vs notte /'nɔtːe/ ("night"). They may even occur at the beginning of words in Neapolitan and Sicilian, and are occasionally written, e.g. Sicilian cchiù (more), and ddà (there). In general, the letters B, R and Z are long at the start of a word. In Jèrriais, long consonants are marked with an apostrophe: S'S is a long /z/, SS'S is a long /s/, and T'T is a long /t/. In Catalan, there exists a geminate /lː/ sound written l·l, but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech.

Diacritics and special characters

Diacritics common across Romance languages are the acute accent (á), the grave accent (à), the circumflex accent (â), the diaeresis mark (ü), the cedilla (ç), and the tilde (ñ). French spelling includes the etymological ligatures œ and (more rarely) æ. Romanian has a few diacritics of its own.

An accent mark placed over a vowel generally denotes stress, height, or both. In Spanish, only stress is indicated, with an acute accent. Italian marks stress with a grave accent, except on high e and o, which are sometimes marked with an acute accent. Catalan regularly marks stress with an acute accent on high vowels, and with a grave accent on low vowels. Similarly, French é is a low vowel and French è is a high vowel, but in French diacritics do not indicate stress. Portuguese marks stressed vowels with the acute accent, except for high a, e, o, which take a circumflex accent. Romanian â, î, ă are central vowels; stress is not marked in this language.

Homophones may be differentiated by a grave accent in Italian and French, and by an acute accent in Spanish.

Upper and lower case

Most languages are written with a mixture of two distinct but phonetically identical variants or "cases" of the alphabet: majuscule ("uppercase" or "capital letters"), derived from Roman stone-carved letter shapes, and minuscule ("lowercase"), derived from Carolingian writing and Medieval quill pen handwriting which were later adapted by printers in the 15th and 16th centuries.

In particular, all Romance languages presently capitalize (use uppercase for the first letter of) the following words: the first word of each complete sentence, most words in names of people, places, and organizations, and most words in titles of books. Text in all upper case is used for emphasis and is generally interpreted as shouting. The Romance languages do not follow the German practice of capitalizing all nouns including common ones. Unlike English, the names of months, days of the weeks, and derivatives of proper nouns are not capitalized: thus, in Italian one capitalizes Francia ("France") and Francesco ("Francis"), but not francese ("French") or francescano ("Franciscan"). However, each language has some exceptions to this general rule.

List of languages

The following is a listing of the Romance languages and some of their dialects. The classification of Romance languages is inherently difficult, since most of the linguistic area is a continuum. Top level groups are listed roughly West to East.

• Western Romance
• *Iberian Romance
• **Galician-Portuguese
• ***Galician: 3 million in Galicia.
• ***Fala: 10,000 Spain.
• ***Portuguese: 230 million Portugal, Brazil; a few thousand Asia; 26 million Africa.
• ****Dialects in Brazil:
• *****Caipira
• *****Cearense
• *****Bahiano
• *****Fluminense
• *****Gaúcho
• *****Mineiro
• *****Nordestino
• *****Nortista
• *****Paulistano
• *****Sertanejo
• *****Sulista
• ****Dialects in Africa:
• *****Dialects in Angola
• ******Benguelense
• ******Luandense
• ******Sulista
• *****Capeverdean Portuguese
• *****Guinean Portuguese
• *****Mozambican Portuguese
• *****São Tomean Portuguese
• ****Dialects in Portugal:
• *****Açoriano
• *****Alentejano
• *****Algarvio
• *****Alto-Minhoto
• *****Baixo-Beirão e Alto-Alentejano
• *****Beirão
• *****Estremenho
• *****Madeirense
• *****Nortenho
• *****Transmontano
• ***Judaeo-Portuguese: extinct.
• **Aragonese: 10,000 in Aragon.
• **Astur-Leonese
• ***Asturian language
• ***Leonese
• ***Extremaduran
• ***Mirandese: 5,000 Portugal.
• **Spanish (Castilian): 360 million Spain, Americas.
• ***Dialects in Spain:
• ****Andalusian Spanish
• ****Canarian Spanish
• ****Churro Spanish
• ****Murcian Spanish
• ****Northern Spanish
• ***Other dialects:
• ****Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish)
• ***Dialects in Americas:
• ****Amazonian Spanish
• ****Andean Spanish
• ****Antioqueño Spanish
• ****Camba Spanish
• ****Caribbean Spanish
• *****Cuban Spanish
• *****Dominican Spanish
• *****Panamanian Spanish
• *****Puerto Rican Spanish
• *****Venezuelan Spanish
• *****Maracucho Spanish
• ****Central American Spanish
• ****Chilean Spanish
• *****Chilote Spanish
• ****Cundiboyacense Spanish
• ****Ecuatorial Spanish
• ****Mexican Spanish (Central Mexico)
• ****North Mexican Spanish
• ****South Mexican Spanish
• ****New Mexican Spanish
• ****Paraguayan Spanish
• ****Peruvian Coast Spanish
• ****Rioplatense Spanish
• ****Santandereano-Tachirense Spanish
• ****Yucateco Spanish
• **Riverense Portuñol: about 100,000 in Uruguay and Southern Brazil.
• *Gallo Romance
• **Occitan-Catalan
• ***Catalan: 6.5 million Spain, France, Andorra, Italy.
• ****Eastern Catalan
• *****Northern Catalan (Roussillonese)
• *****Central Catalan
• *****Balearic
• *****Alguerese: The town of Alguer in Sardinia
• ****Occidental Catalan
• *****Ribagorçan
• *****Southern Catalan (Valencian)
• ***Occitan language: 2 million France:
• ****Gascon: Bordeaux (Bordèu) country
• *****Aranese: One county in Catalonia
• ****Lengadocian: Toulouse (Tolosa) country
• ****Provençal: Marseilles (Marselha) country
• *****Niçard: Nice was historically Languedocien, but became Provençal after immigration in the 19th century
• ****Aupenc
• *****Occitan de las Valadas: Piedmont western valleys
• ****Lemosin: Limoges (Lemòtges) country
• ****Auvernhat
• **Franco-Provençal: Lyons country (extinct in Switzerland), Val d'Aosta (Piedmont)
• **Rhaetian languages
• ***Friulian: 2 million Friuli, Argentina, Canada, Australia, etc.
• ***Ladin: Dolomites
• ***Romansh: 66,000 Switzerland.
• **Oïl languages:
• ***Poitevin-Saintongeais
• ***Bourguignon-Morvandiau
• ***Champenois
• ***Franc-Comtois
• ***Lorrain:
• ***French: 70 million Europe; 12 million Americas.
• ****Acadian French (Canada)
• ****Quebec French (Canada)
• ****Newfoundland French (Canada)
• ****Cajun French (United States)
• ***Gallo:
• ***Norman:
• ****Anglo-Norman language: extinct.
• ****Dgèrnésiais
• ****Jèrriais
• ***Picard
• ***Walloon
• **Cisalpino-Romance (Gallo-Romance) languages:
• ***Ligurian (Genoese)
• ***Monegasque
• ***Piemontese
• ***Lombard
• ***Emilio-Romagnolo
• ***Venetian: 2 million Veneto
• Dalmatian: Croatia (extinct)
• Eastern Romance:
• *Italian dialects:
• **Italian: 60 million Italy.
• ***Corsican:
• ****Gallurese
• ****Sassarese
• **Neapolitan: 8 million Italy.
• **Sicilian: 10 million Sicily, Italy.
• **Romanesco
• **Istriot
• **Judeo-Italian: 4,000 Italy.
• *Romanian language
• **Romanian: 22.5 million Romania.
• **Moldovan (identical to Romanian): 4.5 million Moldova.
• **Aromanian: 300,000 Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and Bulgaria.
• **Meglenitic
• **Istro-Romanian
• Southern Romance
• *African Romance: Morocco and Algeria (extinct)
• *Mozarabic: Southern Spain and Portugal (extinct)
• *Sardinian: 300,000 Sardinia.
• **Campidanese
• **Logudorese

Mixed languages

There are some languages that developed from a mixture of two established Romance languages. It is not always clear whether they should be classified as pidgins, creole languages, or mixed languages.

• Riverense Portuñol

Proposed subfamilies

Here are some of the subfamiles that have been proposed within the various classification schemes for Romance languages:

• Iberian Romance languages
• Portuguese-Galician
• Occitan-Catalan

Pidgins and creoles

The global spread of colonial Romance languages has given rise to numerous creole languages and pidgins. Some of the lesser-spoken languages have also had influences on varieties spoken far from their traditional regions. The following is a partial list of creole languages and pidgins, grouped by their main source language.

• Lingua Franca, influenced by the Romance languages of the Western Mediterranean and Arabic.
• French-based creole languages:
• * Haitian Creole is a national language of Haiti
• * Antillean Creole spoken primarily in Dominica and St. Lucia.
• * Kreyol Lwiziyen Louisiana creole
• * Mauritian Creole is the lingua franca in Mauritius
• * Seychellois Creole Also known as Seselwa, Seychellois Creole is an official language, along with English and French, as well as the lingua franca of the Seychelles.
• * Tay Boi an extinct French pigdin spoken in Vietnam.
• * Lanc-Patuá Spoken in Brazil, mostly in Amapá state. It has been influenced by Portuguese. It was developed by immigrants from neighbouring French Guiana and French territories of the Caribbean Sea.
• Portuguese-based creole languages
• * Angolar Spoken in coastal areas of São Tomé Island, São Tomé and Príncipe.
• * Annobonese Spoken in the island of Annobón, Equatorial Guinea.
• * Capeverdean Crioulo (Criol, Kriolu) A dialect continuum spoken in Cape Verde.
• * Daman Indo-Portuguese Spoken in Daman, India. Decreolization process occurred.
• * Diu Indo-Portuguese Spoken in Diu, India. Almost extinct.
• * Forro Spoken in São Tomé Island, São Tomé and Príncipe.
• * Kristang Spoken in Malaysia.
• * Kristi Spoken in the village of Korlay, India.
• * Principense (Lunguyê) Spoken in Príncipe Island, São Tomé and Príncipe. Almost extinct.
• * Macanese Spoken in Macau and Hong Kong. Decreolization process occurred.
• * Papiamento Spoken in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Spanish influenced.
• * Riverense Portuñol Spoken in Rivera (Northern Uruguay) and region. Spanish influenced.
• * Saramaccan Portuguese/English Creole. Spoken in Surinam.
• * Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese Spoken in Coastal cities of Sri Lanka.
• * Upper Guinea Creole (Kriol) lingua franca and "national language" of Guinea-Bissau, also spoken in Casamance, Senegal.
• Spanish-based creole languages
• * Chavacano -Spoken in Zamboanga and Cavite , Philippines.
• * Palenquero
• * Papiamento. It is often hard to tell Portuguese influences from Spanish ones.
• * Spanglish, spoken in northern Mexico and southern United States.
• * Yanito

While not being pidgins nor creoles, English (see Middle English creole hypothesis), Basque and Albanian have a substantial Romance influence in their vocabularies.

Constructed languages

Latin and the Romance languages also give rise to numerous constructed languages, both international auxiliary languages (such as Interlingua, Latino sine flexione, Occidental, Lingua Franca Nova, and Esperanto (which derives the majority of its word roots from Latin and the other Romance languages)) and languages created for artistic purposes only (such as Brithenig and Wenedyk).

Vocabulary comparison

The table below provides a vocabulary comparison that illustrates a number of examples of sound shifts that have occurred between latin and the main romance languages, along with a selection of minority languages.

English	Latin	French	Italian	Jèrriais	Portuguese	Provençal	Romanian	Sicilian	Spanish
Apple	Malum/pomum	Pomme	Mela	Poumme	Maça		Măr	Pumu	Manzana
Arm	Bracchium	Bras	Braccio	Bras	Braço		Braţ	Vrazzu	Brazo
Arrow	Sagitta	Flèche	Freccia	Èrchelle	Seta		Săgeată	Fileccia	Flecha
Bed	Lectus	Lit	Letto	Liet	Cama/Leito		Pat (from Greek)	Lettu	Cama/Lecho
Black	Nigrum	Noir	Nero	Nièr	Preto		Negru	Niuru	Negro
Book	Liber	Livre	Libro	Livre	Livro		Carte	Libbru	Libro
Breast	Pectus	Poitrine	Petto	Estonma	Peito		Piept	Pettu	Pecho
Cat	Feles	Chat	Gatto	Cat	Gato		Pisică (onomatopoeic)	Jattu	Gato
Chair	Sella	Chaise	Sedia	Tchaîse	Cadeira		Scaun	Seggia	Silla
Cold	Frigus	Froid	Freddo	Fraid	Frio		Frig	Friddu	Frío
Cow	Vacca	Vache	Mucca	Vaque	Vaca		Vacă	Vacca	Vaca
Day	Dies	Jour	Giorno	Jour	Dia		Zi	Jornu	Dia
Dead	Mortuus	Mort	Morte	Mort	Morto		Mort	Mortu	Muerto
Die	Morior	Mourir	Morire	Mouothi	Morrer		(A) Muri	Muriri	Morir
Family	Familia	Famille	Famiglia	Famil'ye	Família		Familie	Famigghia	Familia
Finger	Digitus	Doigt	Dito	Dé	Dedo		Deget	Jitu	Dedo
Flower	Flos	Fleur	Fiore	Flieur	Flor		Floare	Ciuri	Flor
Give	Dono	Donner	Dare	Donner / Bailli	Dar		(A) Da	Dari	Dar
Go	Eo	Aller	Andare	Aller	Ir		(A) Merge	Jiri	Ir
Gold	Aurum	Or	Oro	Or	Ouro		Aur	Oru	Oro
Hand	Manus	Main	Mano	Main	Mao		Mână	Manu	Mano
High	Altus	Haut	Alto	Haut	Alto		Înalt	Autu	Alto
House	Domus	Maison	Casa	Maîson	Casa		Casă	Casa	Casa
Ink	Atramentum	Encre	Inchiostro	Encre	Tinta		Cerneală (from Slavic)	Inga	Tinta
January	Januarius	Janvier	Gennaio	Janvyi	Janeiro		Ianuarie	Jinnaru	Enero
Juice	Sucus	Jus	Succo	Jus	Suco		Suc	Sucu	Jugo
Key	Clavis	Clé	Chiave	Clié	Chave		Cheie	Chiavi	Llave
Man	Homo	Homme	Uomo	Houmme	Homem		Om	Omu	Hombre
Moon	Luna	Lune	Luna	Leune	Lua		Lună	Luna	Luna
Night	Nox	Nuit	Notte	Niet	Noite		Noapte	Notti	Noche
Old	Vetus	Vieux	Vecchio	Vyi	Velho		Vechi (objects, temporal)/Bătrân (people - from Lat. veteranus'')	Vecchiu	Viejo
One	Unus	Une	Uno	Ieune	Um		Unu	Unu	Uno
Pear	Pirum	Poire	Pera	Paithe	Pêra		Pară	Piru	Pera
Play	Ludo	Jouer	Giocare	Jouer	Jogar		(A se) Juca	Jucari	Jugar
Ring	Anulus	Anneau	Annello	Anné / Bague	Anel		Inel	Anneddu	Anillo
River	Flumen	Fleuve	Fiume	Riviéthe	Rio		Râu	Ciumi	Rio
Sew	Consuo	Coudre	Cucire	Couôtre			(A) Coase	Cùsiri	Coser
Snow	Nix	Neige	Neve	Né	Neve		Nea (from Latin)/Zăpadă (from Slavic)	Nivi	Nieve
Take	Capio	Prendre	Prendere	Prendre			(A) Lua (from Lat. levare)	Pigghiari	Tomar
That	Ille	Quel	Quello	Chu	Aquele		Acel/Acela	Chiddu	Ese/Aquello
The		le/la	il/la	lé/la	o/a		-ul/-a	lu/la (u/a)	el/la
Throw	Jacio	Jeter	Gettare	Pitchi			(A) Arunca (from Lat. eruncare)	Jittari	Lanzar
Thursday	dies Jovis	Jeudi	Giovedì	Jeudi			Joi	Jovidìa	Jeuves
Tree	Arbor	Arbre	Albero	Bouais	Árvore		Arbore/Copac (from substratum)	Àrvuru	Árbol
Two	Duo	Deux	Due	Deux	Dois		Doi	Dui	Dos
Urn	Urna	Urne	Urna		Urna		Urnă	Urna	Urna
Voice	Vox	Voix	Voce	Vouaix	Voz		Voce	Vuci	Voz
Where	Ubi	Où	Dove	Ioù/ Où'est	Onde		Unde	Unni	Donde
White	Albus	Blanc	Bianco	Blianc	Branco		Alb (From Lat. albus)	Vrancu/jancu	Blanco
Who	Quis/Quæ	Qui	Chi	Tchi	Quem		Cine	Cu	Quien
World	Mundus	Monde	Mondo	Monde	Mundo		Lume (from Lat. lumen)	Munnu	Mundo
Yellow	Flavus	Jaune	Giallo	Jaune	Amarelo		Galben	Giarnu	Amarillo

See also

• Vulgar Latin
• Iberian Romance Languages
• Latin Union
• Latin Europe
• Latin America
• Esperanto
• Romance copula
• Linguistic history of Spanish

External links

• [Orbis Latinus, site on Romance languages]

Romance languages

Aragonese | Aranese | Aromanian | Arpitan | Astur Leonese | Burgundian | Catalan | Corsican | Champenois | Dalmatian | Dgèrnésiais | Franc-Comtois | French | Friulian | Galician | Gallo | Istriot | Istro Romanian | Italian | Jèrriais | Ladin | Ladino | Ligurian | Lorrain | Megleno Romanian | Mirandese | Neapolitan | Norman | Occitan | Picard | Piedmontese | Poitevin-Saintongeais | Portuguese | Romanian | Romansh | Sardian | Sicilian | Spanish | Venetian | Walloon

 

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