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The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European Language Family , comprising all the languages that descend from Latin , the language of the Roman Empire . They have more than 700 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 descend from Vulgar Latin , the language of soldiers, settlers and merchants of the Empire, which was significantly different from the Classical Latin of Roman literati. Between 200 BC and AD 150, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin the dominant native language over an area spanning from the Iberian Peninsula to the Western coast of the Black Sea , and from the Maghreb to Britannia . During the Empire's decline and after its fragmentation and collapse in the 5th Century , evolution of Latin within each local area accelerated; eventually the dialects diverged into myriad distinct varieties; some of which survived in modern forms. The overseas empires established by Spain , Portugal and France from the 15th Century onward then spread their languages to the other continents—to such an extent that about 70% of all Romance speakers today live outside Europe. Despite multiple influences from pre-Roman languages and from later invasions, the Phonology , Morphology , Lexicon , and Syntax of all Romance languages are predominantly evolutions of Latin. As a result, the group shares several 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 SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of Prepositions . NAME The term "Romance" comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb ''romanice'', derived from ''romanicus'', as used in the expression ''romanice loqui'' "to speak Roman" (that is, the Latin Vernacular ), contrasted with ''latine loqui'', "to speak Latin" (the Conservative Version which was taught in schools), and with ''barbarice loqui'', "to speak Barbarian " (the non-Latin languages of the peoples who conquered the Roman Empire ).1 From this adverb originated the noun ''romance'', which applied initially to anything written ''romanice'', "in the Roman vernacular". The word ''romance'' with the sense of " Romance Novel " or "love affair" has the same origin. In the Medieval Literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular and came to be called "romances". HISTORY Vulgar Latin See Also: Vulgar Latin There is very little documentary evidence about the nature of Vulgar Latin, and it is often hard to interpret or generalise based upon what does exist. 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, which distinguish them from Classical Latin—such as the almost complete loss of the Latin Declension system and its replacement by Preposition s, the loss of the Neuter gender, of Comparative Inflections , and of many verbal tenses, the innovative use of Articles , and the initial stages of change in pronunciation of ''c'' and ''g'' before the front vowels ''e'' and ''i''. There are some modern languages such as Finnish which have similar, quite sharp, differences between their printed and spoken form, which suggests that perhaps the Vulgar Latin which became the Romance languages was always there, spoken alongside the written Classical Latin reserved for official and formal occasions. Fall of the Empire The political Decline Of The Roman Empire in the Fifth 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 southern Britain , which had been for a time part of the Empire. But the Germanic tribes that had entered Italy , France , and the Iberian Peninsula eventually adopted Latin and the remnants of Roman Culture , and so Latin continued to be the dominant language there. Latent incubation See Also: Medieval Latin Between the fifth and Tenth centuries, spoken Vulgar Latin underwent divergent evolution in the various parts of its domain, leading to innumerable distinct languages. This evolution is poorly documented, for the written language continued to be a Latin close to the Classical variant. Recognition of the vernaculars Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local Vernacular s developed a written form and began to supplant Latin in many of its roles. In some countries, such as Portugal , this transition was expedited 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 written medium. Uniformization and standardization The invention of the press apparently slowed down the evolution of Romance languages from the 16th Century on, and brought instead a tendency towards greater uniformity of Standard Language s within political boundaries, at the expense of other Romance languages or Dialect s less favored politically. In France, for instance, the ''Francien'' spoken in the region of Paris gradually spread to the entire country, while the Langue D'oc and Franco-Provençal of the south lost ground. CURRENT STATUS The most widely spoken Romance language by Native Speaker today is Spanish , followed by Portuguese , French , Italian and Romanian , all of which are main and official National Language s in more than one country. A few other languages have official status on a regional or otherwise limited level, for instance Friulian , Sardinian and Valdôtain in Italy; Romansh in Switzerland; Galician , Occitan Aranese and Catalan in Spain (the last of which is also the only official language in the small sovereign state of Andorra ). French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union . Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan are the official languages of the Latin Union ; French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the United Nations . Outside Europe, who moved to Israel after World War II . Reports of about 300,000 Jews who left the country after WW2 The total native speakers of Romance languages is divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):
:Source: MSN Encarta - Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People (number of Romance speakers estimated at 690 million speakers, number of Catalan language speakers estimated at 8 million) 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, as well a potential source of Separatist movements; therefore, they have generally fought to eliminate it—by extensively 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 late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities have allowed some of these languages to recover some of their prestige and lost rights. Yet, it is unclear whether these political changes will be enough to reverse the minority languages' decline. 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 with other members of this family, and in particular with English ; but which set them apart from languages of other families, such as Arabic , Basque , Hungarian , or Georgian . These include:
Features inherited from Classical 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.
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, due to a core of common developments. 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 Romanian. 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, Italian or Spanish, for example, can quickly learn to see through the phonological changes reflected in spelling differences, and thus recognize many Latin words, they will often fail to understand the meaning of Latin sentences.
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:
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 Inhomogeneities in Vulgar Latin itself. It is often said that French and Portuguese 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 , Serbian and Turkish . These 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 considerable 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 lost sounds 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'' and ''lune'' . Catalan, Occitan, many Northern Italian dialects, and Romanian ( Daco-Romanian ) lost the final vowels in most masculine nouns and adjectives, but retained them in the feminine. Other languages, including Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and the Southern dialects of Romanian have retained those vowels. Some languages 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, e.g. Latin ''amāt'' → Italian ''ama'' ("he loves"), ''amābam'' → ''amavo'' ("I loved"), ''amābat'' → ''amava'' ("he loved"), ''amābatis'' → ''amavate'' ("you ''(pl.)'' loved"), etc. Sounds have often been lost in the middle of words, 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, Galician and Portuguese have generally inserted an ''e'' at the start of Latin words that began with ''s'' + consonant, such as ''sperō'' → ''espero'' ("I hope"). French originally did the same, but then dropped the ''s'': ''spatula'' → arch. ''espaule'' → ''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"). For more detailed descriptions, see the articles History Of French , From Latin To Portuguese , Latin To Romanian Sound Changes , and Linguistic History Of Spanish . 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'' ("Pope") and ''papà'' ("daddy"), or Spanish imperfect subjunctive ''cantara'' (" he sang") 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'' or ''Metintilu'' in Friulian ("let's put some of it in there"), Spanish ''entregándomelo'' ("delivering it to me") or Portuguese ''dávamo-vo-lo'' ("we were giving it to you"). Originally the stress was predominantly in the Penultimate 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 See Also: Romance plurals La Spezia-Rimini Line Some Romance languages form plurals by adding (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 ).
Borrowed words
Derivations Words for "more" Some Romance languages use a version of Latin ''plus'', others a version of ''magis''.
Words for "nothing" Although the Latin word for "nothing" is nihil, the common word for "nothing" became ''nudha'' in Sardinian, ''nada'' in Spanish and Portuguese, ''nada'' and ''ren'' in Galician, ''rien'' in French, ''res'' in Catalan, ''cosa'' and ''res'' in Aragonese, ''ren'' in Occitan, ''nimic'' in Romanian, and ''niente'' and ''nulla'' in Italian, ''gnente'' in Venetian, and ''nue'' and ''nuie'' in Friulian. Some argue that all three roots derive from different parts of a Latin phrase ''nullam rem natam'' ("no thing born"), an emphatic idiom for "nothing". Meanwhile, Italian and Venetian ''niente'' and ''gnente'' would seem to be more logically derived from Latin ''ne(c) entem'' ("no being"). 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":
Classical Latin uses the "one-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'' "to have", ''tenēre'' "to hold", and ''esse'' "to be" are used differently in the various Romance languages, to express possession, to construct perfect tenses, and to make existential statements ("there is"). If we use T for ''tenēre'', '''H''' for ''habēre'', and '''E''' for ''esse'', we have the following distribution:
For example: :English: I have, I have done, there is :Friulian: ''(jo) o ai'', ''(jo) o ai fat'', ''a 'nd è, al è'' (HHE) :Venetian: ''(mi) go'', ''(mi) go fat'', ''ghe xe, ghi n'é'' (HHE) :Lombard (Western): ''(mi) a gh-u'', ''(mi) a u fai'', ''al gh'è, a gh'è'' (HHE) :Romansh: ''(jau) hai'', ''(jau) hai fatg'', ''igl ha'' (HHH) :Romanian: ''(eu) am'', ''(eu) am făcut'', ''este'' (or ''e'') (HHE) :Italian: ''(io) ho'', ''(io) ho fatto'', ''c'è'' (HHE) :French: ''j'ai'', ''j'ai fait'', ''il y a'' (HHH) :Catalan: ''(jo) tinc'', ''(jo) he fet'', ''hi ha'' (THH) :Aragonese: ''(yo) tiengo'' (but ''(yo) he'' dialectally), ''(yo) he feito'', ''bi ha'' (THH) :Spanish: ''(yo) tengo'', ''(yo) he hecho'', ''hay'' (THH) :Galician: ''(eu) teño'', - , ''hai'' (T-H; Galician does not have a present perfect) :Portuguese: ''(eu) tenho'', ''(eu) tenho feito'', ''há'' in Portugal (TTH) / ''tem'' in Brazil ('''TTT''') Ancient Galician-Portuguese used to employ the auxiliary H for permanent states, such as ''Eu hei um nome'' "I have a name" (i.e. for all my life), and '''T''' for non-permanent states ''Eu tenho um livro'' "I have a book" (i.e. perhaps not so tomorrow), but this construction is no longer used in modern Galician and Portuguese. Informal Brazilian Portuguese uses the '''T''' verb even in the existential sense, e.g. ''Tem água no copo'' "There is water in the glass". In most languages, the descendant of ''tenēre'' still has the sense of "to hold", as well, e.g. Italian ''tieni il libro'', French ''tu tiens le livre'', Catalan ''tens el llibre'', Romanian ''ine cartea'', Friulian ''Tu tu tegnis il libri'' "You're holding the book". In others, like Portuguese, this sense has been mostly lost, and a different verb is currently used for "to hold". Romansh uses, besides ''igl ha'', the form ''i dat'' (literally: it gives), borrowed from German ''es gibt''. 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.
In the latter, the verbs which use "be" as an auxiliary are Unaccusative Verb s, 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 Verb s 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"). A similar dichotomy exists in the Germanic languages, which share the same '' Sprachbund ''; German and the Scandinavian languages use "have" and "be", while modern English uses "have" only. I did or I have done Some languages (e.g. Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, Portuguese and written French and Italian) make a distinction between a Preterite and a Present Perfect Tense (cf. English ''I did'' vs. ''I have done''). Others (spoken French, Italian and Galician) contain only one tense, which renders both meanings. French, Italian, and European Spanish use the compound past for this, while Sicilian and Latin American Spanish use the simple past. WRITING SYSTEMS See Also: Latin Alphabet The Romance languages have kept the writing system of Latin, adapting it to their evolution. One exception was Romanian before the 19th century, where, after the Roman retreat, literacy was reintroduced through the Romanian Cyrillic Alphabet due to Slavic influences. Also the non-Christian populations of Spain used the systems of their culture languages ( Arabic and Hebrew ) to write '' Aljamiado '' versions of Castilian ( Ladino among Sephardic Jews ). Letter values All Romance 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 most Romance languages — mostly for unassimilated foreign names and words, as they were in late Latin. While most of the 22 basic Latin letters have maintained their phonetic value, for some of them it has 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 Digraph s or Trigraph s (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 almost all Romance languages is that the Latin letters ''C'' and ''G'' — which originally always represented and respectively — represent other sounds when they come before ''E'', ''I'', and in some cases ''Y'' and ''Œ''. This is due to a general Palatalization of and before front vowels like and . 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 , but "softened" before ''E'', ''I'', or ''Y'' in most Romance languages — to in French, Portuguese, Occitan, Catalan, and American Spanish; to in Peninsular Spanish and Galician; to in Romansh; and to in Italian and Romanian. :G: generally or , but "softened" before ''E'', ''I'', or ''Y'' in most languages — to in French, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan; to or in Spanish (according to dialect); to in Romansh; and to in Italian and Romanian. :H: silent in most languages, but represents in Romanian and Gascon Occitan. Used in various digraphs (see below). :J: represents in most languages; or in Spanish; in Romansh and in several of Italy's languages, though it is normally replaced with ''I'' in native Italian words. :S: normally represents (either ''s'' is, however, pronounced in Spanish, Romanian, Galician and several varieties of Italian. In the Syllable Coda , it may have special Allophonic pronunciations. :W: used only in Walloon . Represents in French, with the exception of words borrowed from English. :X: at the beginning of words, represents ) in French, or in Spanish, and in Portuguese, Catalan, and Galician. In position, represents in French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian; in Catalan, French, and Romanian; in Galician and Spanish; in Catalan, Galician and Portuguese; in Venetian, French and Portuguese; or in French and Portuguese. Not used in Italian (except in borrowings), where it is replaced by ''s''. :Y: used in French and Spanish for the vowel , and also as a consonant, (esp. in French), , or . :Z: in most languages; either or in Galician and Spanish; either or in Italian. Otherwise, letters that are not combined as 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" (later "φ"), and "χ" (These were once Aspirated sounds in Greek before changing to corresponding fricatives and the :CI: used in Italian and Romanian to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U''. :CH: used in Italian, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent before ''E'' or ''I''; in Spanish and Galician; in Romansh before ''A'', ''O'' or ''U''; and in most other languages. :ÇH: used in Poitevin-Saintongeais for Voiceless Palatal Fricative :DD: used in Sicilian and Sardinian to represent the Voiced Retroflex Plosive . In recent history more accurately transcribed as ''DDH''. :DJ: used in Walloon for . :GI: used in Italian and Romanian to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U''. :GH: used in Italian, Romanian, Romansh and Sardinian to represent before ''E'' or ''I'', and in Galician for the Voiceless Pharyngeal Fricative (not standard sound). :GL: used in Romansh before consonants and at the end of words for . :GLI: used in Italian and Romansh for . :GN: used in French, Italian and Romansh for , as in ''champignon'' or ''gnocchi''. :GU: used before ''E'' or ''I'' to represent or in all Romance languages except Italian and Romanian. :LH: used in Portuguese and Occitan . :LL: used in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Norman and Dgèrnésiais, originally for which has merged in some cases with . Represents in French unless it follows ''I'' (''i'') when it represents (or in some dialects). It's used in Occitan for a Long :ĿL: used in Catalan for a geminate consonant . :NH: used in Portuguese and Occitan for , used in official Galician for . :NY: used in Catalan for . :QU: represents in Italian; in French and Spanish; (before ''e'' or ''i'') or (normally before ''a'' or ''o'') in Portuguese and Catalan. :RR: used between vowels in several languages to denote a Trilled or a Guttural R , instead of the Flap . :SC: used before ''E'' or ''I'' in Italian for , and in French and Spanish as as in words of certain etymology. :SCH: used in Romansh for or . :SCI: used in Italian to represent before ''A'', ''O'', or ''U''. :SH: used in Aranese Occitan for . :SS: used in French, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan for between vowels. :TG: used in Romansh for . :TH: used in Jèrriais for (as in English "thick"); used in Aranese for either or :TSCH: used in Romansh for . 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 or , , and , respectively. Gemination For most languages in this family, , Neapolitan and Sicilian, and are occasionally written, e.g. Sicilian ''cchiù'' (more), and ''ccà'' (here). 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 , ''SS'S'' is a long , and ''T'T'' is a long . In Catalan and Occitan exists a geminate sound written ''ŀl'' (Catalan) or ''ll'' (Occitan), but it is usually pronounced as a simple sound in colloquial (and even some formal) speech in both languages. 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''), and the Tilde (''ã''). 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. Romanian '' â ''/'' î '' and '' ă '' are Central Vowel s; stress is not marked in this language. Catalan and Occitan regularly mark stress with an acute accent on High Vowel s, and with a grave accent on Low Vowel s in a similar but not identical way. Similarly, French ''é'' is a high-mid vowel and French ''è'' is a low-mid vowel, although in French stress is not indicated with diacritics. Italian marks stress with the grave accent, except on high ''e'' and ''o'', which are sometimes marked with an acute accent. Galician marks both stress and height with an acute accent, due to the fact that only stressed vowels can be pronounced low. Portuguese marks stress with the acute accent, except for high ''a'', ''e'', ''o'', which take a circumflex accent. The Cedilla (''ç''), and the Diacritical Comma ( and , in Romanian) are used to mark sound changes due to Historical Palatalization s. Homophone s may be differentiated by a grave accent in Italian and French, by an acute accent in Spanish or even both cases may ocur in Portuguese. Upper and lower case Most languages are written with a mixture of two distinct but phonetically identical variants or " ("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. The Romance languages do not follow the German practice of capitalizing all nouns including common ones. Unlike English, the names of months (except in European Portuguese), days of the weeks, and derivatives of proper nouns are usually 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. 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. CLASSIFICATION AND RELATED LANGUAGES See Also: Classification of Romance languages List of Romance languages The classification of Romance languages is inherently difficult, since most of the linguistic area is a continuum. The Romance languages include 47 ( SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken in Europe ; this language group is a part of the Italic Language family. Proposed subfamilies Here are the main subfamiles that have been proposed within the various classification schemes for Romance languages:
Pidgins, creoles, and 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 Pidgin s, Creole Language s, or Mixed Language s. See the main article, for full lists. Auxiliary and constructed languages See Also: Constructed language International auxiliary language Latin and the Romance languages also give rise to numerous auxiliary and constructed languages, such as , Occidental , Lingua Franca Nova , and Esperanto ), as well as languages created for artistic purposes only, such as Brithenig and Wenedyk . REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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