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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 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 decadence and after its collapse and fragmentation in 5th century, Vulgar Latin began to evolve independently within each local area, and eventualy 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.

Contents

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History

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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, morelikely to be natives of the conquered lands than natives of Rome. It is likely that most of the shared features that distinguish Romance languages from Classical Latin — such as the almost complete loss of the declension system and its replacement by prepositions, the loss of the neuter gender, the use of articles, the change in pronunciation of "c" and "g" before "i" and "e" — were already features of Vulgar Latin.

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Fall of the Empire

The political decadence 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.

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Latent incubation

Between the 5th and 10th century, spoken Vulgar Latin suffered 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.

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Recognition of the vernaculars

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local vernaculars came to be written, and began to suplant 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.

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Uniformization and standardization

The invention of the press apparently slowed down the the evolution of Romance language from the 16th century on, and brought instead a tendency to uniformization 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.

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History of the name

The term "Romance" comes from the Old French romance or romanz, from Latin romanice, the adverbial form of romanicus, in expressions like parabolare romanice ("to speak in Roman"). Initially the "Roman language" would only refer to Langue d'oïl, but it was eventually generalized by scholars to describe all languages derived from Latin.

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Status

The most spoken Romance language is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan.

There is much dialect diversity, and there is no clear differentiation between a "language" and a "dialect". Some varieties are privileged in that they are the main language of media and education in their countries (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and, recently, Catalan, although it is not as spread on the media as the other cited languages are, particularly in Valencia and the Balearic Islands, where its presence on local newspapers and radio stations is almost minoritary; it is also much neglected in the area of the French state where it is spoken). Others are used as the language of instruction in schools and have some official status, such as Sardinian and Romansh. Many have suffered long periods of official neglect, such as Occitan (or Provençal), the Oïl languages other than French, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Venetian and the other dialects of Italy. Some of these possess several competing standards. And some minor variants which might have developed into distinct languages have been reduced to residual areas and restricted usage, like Astur-Leonese, Aragonese or Mirandese.

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Linguistic features

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Inherited features

Like most of the members of the Indo-European family, Romance languages classify all their words into four major classes — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — each with its specific syntactic role. An extensive system of word inflections, almost always by replacement of a suffix of the word, is used to indicate syntactic relatonships between words and to create derivative words in the same or in other classes.

Portuguese and French are perhaps the most innovative of the languages, each in different ways. Sardinian is perhaps the most isolated and conservative variant. Languedocian Occitan is considered by some the most "average" western Romance language.

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Common differences from Classical Latin

Generally, the Romance languages have simplified the complex morphology and grammar of Latin. Italian, Sardinian and Romanian retain more original features than the rest.

The modern Romance languages differ from Classical Latin in a number of fundamental respects:

  • No declensions, that is, they generally no longer alter a noun to indicate its grammatical role, though there may be a few exceptions such as in pronouns. An exception is Romanian, which has separate forms for a combined genitive/dative case.
  • Word order is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin. (Old French represents a transitional stage.)
  • Many constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) have been dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clauses.
  • Only two grammatical genders, rather than the three of Classical Latin (except Romanian and Italian to a small extent, and except several gender-neutral pronouns in Spanish, Italian, Catalan etc.).
  • Introduction of grammatical articles, based on Latin demonstratives.
  • Latin future tense scrapped, and new future and conditional tenses introduced, based on infinitive + present or imperfect tense of habere (to have), fused to form new inflections.
  • Latin synthetic perfect tenses have generally been replaced by new compound forms with be or have + past participle. (Portuguese preserves a synthetic pluperfect tense, used mostly in literature, along with the normal compound pluperfect. Romanian also has a synthetic pluperfect tense, derived from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive.)
  • An elaborate system of clitic pronouns was developed. Most languages (but not Catalan) have simplified this system to some extent, but almost all still maintain a distinction between stressed and clitic pronouns.
  • Palatalization has produced a quite different repertoire of consonants from Classical Latin.
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Typical characteristics

Characteristics typical of Romance languages include:

  • General:
    • Romance languages are "verb-framed" rather than "satellite-framed". This means that phrases indicating motion will tend to encode the motion's direction within the verb (e.g. "enter", "insert"), rather than in an external particle (e.g. "go in", "put in"). This is a feature of word formation.
    • Romance languages frequently have two copula verbs (see Romance copula), from the Latin infinitives ESSE and STARE: one for essence and the other for status.
    • Romance languages conjugate verbs in first, second, and third person forms, both singular and plural. The third person forms may also be inflected for gender, but the first- and second-person forms are not (compare with Hebrew, which inflects all three persons for gender and number.)
    • Politeness forms include some form of the T-V distinction in all Romance languages.
    • Romance languages have 2 or 3 genders for all nouns, but usually do not inflect nouns for case, though their parent Latin did.
    • Romance languages include a default stress on the second-last syllable (which becomes the last in languages like French that habitually drop the final Latin vowel), and their phonotactic rules are such that both hiatus and clusters of stop consonants are rare. Combined, these rules give spoken Romance languages their characteristic high speed and flow. Compare Polish second-to-last stress.
  • Written form only:
    • The letters "W" and "K" are rarely used (except in names or borrowings, for example Kappa, or w in standard Walloon orthography).
    • The letters "C" and "G" are usually "soft" postalveolar consonants before a front vowel, but "hard" velar consonants by default, or before a back vowel.
    • In most Romance languages, proper adjectives (including nationalities, such as American and British), names of days of the week and months of the year are not capitalized. For example, nationalities are capitalized in French only when used as nouns.
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Distinguishing features

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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, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, Friulian.
  • Vowel change: Italian, Romanian.
  • No marking: French (formerly marked with /s/, but this has been lost; plural marking is now indicated on the associated determiner rather than the noun itself)
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Omission of final Latin vowels

Some Romance languages have lost the final unstressed vowels from the Latin roots. For example: Latin lupus, luna become Italian lupo, luna but French loup /lu/), lune (/lyn/).

  • Final vowels retained: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian (Southern dialects and old Romanian).
  • Final vowels retained in feminine gender only: Catalan, Occitan, Romanian (Daco-Romanian).
  • Final vowels dropped: French.

Romance languages dropping the final vowel have one less syllable: the usual "penultimate syllable" accent is on the last syllable in these languages.

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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/, dialectal Catalan pus /pus/ (this word is exclusively used on negative statements in Mallorcan Catalan), Romansh
  • Magis-derived: Portuguese (mais), Spanish (más), Catalan (més), Occitan (mai), Romanian (mai), Italian (mai, used only in the construction non...mai, meaning "never")
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The number 16

In some Romance languages the word for the number 16 is irregular after the fashion of English "sixteen", as are most Romance numerals from 11 to 15. In other Romance languages, 16 is literally "ten and six", like the numbers from 17 to 19. In Romanian, a member of the Balkan linguistic union, 16 is literally "six over ten," just like the numbers 11 to 19. In Latin 16 is sedecim.

  • "Sixteen": Catalan, French (seize), Italian (sedici), Occitan.
  • "Ten and six": Portuguese (dezasseis, dezesseis), Spanish (dieciséis).
  • "Six over ten": Romanian (şaisprezece, where spre derives from Latin super).
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To have and to hold

The verbs derived from Latin habere and tenere are used differently for the concepts of "to hold", "to have", "to have" (auxiliary for complex tenses), and existence statements ("there is").

For instance, in French, je tiens, j'ai, j'ai fait, il y a: these are respectively derived from tenere, habere, habere and habere. If we use T for tenere and H for habere, in these four meanings, we can encode the difference as follows:

  • TTTT: Some varieties of Brazilian Portuguese.
  • TTTH: Portuguese/Galician.
  • TTHH: Spanish, Catalan.
  • THHH: Occitan, French.

There is also essere in Italian and este in Romanian, used for "there is":

  • THHE: Romanian, Italian
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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: Catalan, Spanish, Romanian.
  • "Have" and "be": Occitan, French, Italian.

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).

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I did or I have done

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

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Language lists

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By linguistic classification

Based chiefly on linguistic analysis, some linguists believe that the earliest split in the Romance family tree was between Sardinian and the remaining group, called Continental Romance. Among the many peculiar Sardinian distinguishing features are its articles (derived from Latin ESSE instead of ILLE) and retention of the "hard" sounds of "c" and "g" before "e" and "i".

According to this view, the next split was between Romanian in the east, and the other languages (Italo-Western branch) in the west. One of the characteristic features of Rumanian is its retention of three of Latin's seven noun cases. The third major split was more evenly divided, between the and Italian branch, which comprises many languages spoken in the Italian peninsula, and the Gallo-Iberian branch.

However, this is not the only view. Another common classification begins by splitting the Romance languages into two main branches, East and West. The East group includes Rumanian, the languages of Corsica and Sardinia, and all languages of Italy South of a line through the cities of Rimini and La Spezia. Languages in this group are said to be more conservative, i.e. they retained more features of the original Latin.

Other linguists claim that the various regional languages did not evolve in isolation from their neighbors; on the contrary, they see many changes propagating from the more central regions (Italy and France) towards the periphery (Iberian Peninsula and Romania)


According to the results of the study of Mario Pei in 1949, which compares the evolution degree of the languages with respect of their inheritance language (in the case of Romance languages the Latin language), here are the evolution degrees:

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By geographic region

The Romance languages include:

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By number of speakers

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Alphabetical list

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Leftover text

Adjectives generally follow the modified noun. There are many similarities in the grammars of adjectives, articles and demonstratives, which must inflected according to the gender and number of the nouns they modify; and of the verbs, which are inflected according to the person and number of the subject, the time of the action, completeness, and a few other aspects. About 40% of the vocabulary of each language consists of words that have cognates in all other Romance languages.

Specifically, Romance languages are descended from regional dialects of which diverged after the breakup of the Roman Empire. Vulgar Latin was spoken by the common people and evolved into the Romance languages.

The daughter languages of Latin differ for several reasons: historical isolation, influence of prior languages in territories of Latin Europe that fell under Roman rule, invasions and instability after the fall of Rome, and contact with other cultures in the Renaissance, among others.

Many of the differences from the Romance languages in relation to Latin are analytical: articles and prepositions instead of declension, use of auxiliary verbs for the composite verbs, etc.

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Listing

Here is a more detailed listing of languages and dialects (roughly ordered from west to east): (most of South and Central America, Mexico, Québec, New Brunswick, Louisiana)(Andorra, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Rumania, San Marino, the Vatican, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco)(Angola, Mozambique, Senegal, Congo, Cabo Verde,...)

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Ethnologue classification

This latter then split into a Gallo-Romance group, which became the Oïl languages (including French), Occitan, Francoprovençal and Romansh, and an Iberian Romance group which became Spanish and Portuguese. Catalan is considered by many specialists as a transition language between the Gallic group and the Iberian group, since it shares characteristics from both groups; for example, 'fear' is 'medo' in Portuguese, 'miedo' in Spanish, but 'por' in Catalan — compare with 'peur' in French.

The classification below is largely based on the analysis provided at ethnologue.com. The ISO-639-2 code roa is applied by the ISO for any Romance language that does not have its own code. The Ethnologue classification (produced by the SIL International) is at one extreme of linguists, who divide into 'splitters' and 'lumpers'. Ethnologue produce a very detailed classification, which is more precise than many other linguists would accept, but it is valuable as a description of varieties.

The Southern group

  • Sardinian Four versions recognized; all are included in ISO 639-1 code, sc; ISO 639-2 code, srd)
  • Corsican - (SIL Code, COI; ISO 639-1 code, co; ISO 639-2 code, cos)

The Italo-Western group
The Western sub-group
. .Gallo-Iberian division
. . .Ibero-Romance sub-division
. . . .West Iberian section

  • Asturo-Leonese
    • Asturian - (SIL Code, AUB; ISO 639-2 code, ast)
    • Mirandese - (SIL Code, MWL; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
  • Castilian
    • Spanish - (SIL Code, SPN; ISO 639-1 code, es; ISO 639-2 code, spa)
    • Spanish, Loreto-Ucayali - (SIL Code, SPQ; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Ladino (Judæo-Spanish) - (SIL Code, SPJ; ISO 639-2 code, lad)
    • Extremaduran - (SIL Code, EXT; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Caló - (SIL Code, RMR; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
  • Portuguese-Galician
    • Portuguese - (SIL Code, POR; ISO 639-1 code, pt; ISO 639-2 code, por)
    • Galician - (SIL Code, GLN; ISO 639-1 code, gl; ISO 639-2 code, glg)
    • Fala - (SIL Code, FAX; ISO 639-2 code, roa)

. . . .East Iberian section

. . . .Oc section

  • Occitan (langue d'oc) - Six versions recognized; all are included in ISO 639-1 code, oc; ISO 639-2 code, oci) - all are from France

. . .Gallo-Romance sub-division
. . . .Gallo-Rhaetian section

  • Rhaetian
    • Friulian - (SIL Code, FRL; ISO 639-2 code, fur)
    • Ladin - (SIL Code, LLD; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Romansh - (SIL Code, RHE; ISO 639-1 code, rm; ISO 639-2 code, roh)
  • Langues d'Oïl
    • French (langue d'oïl)
      • Standard French - (SIL Code, FRN; ISO 639-1 code, fr; ISO 639-2(B) code, fre; ISO 639-2(T) code, fra)
      • Cajun French - (SIL Code, FRC; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
      • Picard - (SIL Code, PCD; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
      • Zarphatic - (SIL Code, ZRP; ISO 639-2 code, roa) - extinct
    • Franco-Provençal - (SIL Code, FRA; ISO 639-2 code, roa)

. . . .Gallo-Italian section

    • Emilio-Romagnolo - (SIL Code, EML; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Ligurian - (SIL Code, LIJ; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Lombard - (SIL Code, LMO; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Piemontese - (SIL Code, PMS; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Venetian - (SIL Code, VEC; ISO 639-2 code, roa)

. .Pyrenean-Mozarabic division

  • Pyrenean
    • Aragonese - (SIL Code, AXX; ISO 639-1 code, an;ISO 639-2 code, arg)
  • Mozarabic
    • Mozarabic - (SIL Code, MXI; ISO 639-2 code, roa) - Extinct for common speech

The Italo-Dalmatian sub-group

    • Italian - (SIL Code, ITN; ISO 639-1 code, it; ISO 639-2 code, ita)
    • Napoletano-Calabrese - (SIL Code, NPL; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Sicilian - (SIL Code, SCN; ISO 639-2 code, scn)
    • Judeo-Italian - (SIL Code, ITK; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
    • Dalmatian - (SIL Code, DLM; ISO 639-2 code, roa) - extinct in 19th century.
    • Istriot - (SIL Code, IST; ISO 639-2 code, roa)

The Eastern group

  • Romanian - (SIL Code, RUM; ISO 639-1 code, ro; ISO 639-2(B) code, rum; ISO 639-2(T) code, ron) - Includes Daco-Romanian.
    Also as Moldovan - (ISO 639-1 code, mo; ISO 639-2 code, mol)
  • Macedo Romanian - (SIL Code, RUP; ISO 639-2 code, rup) - known by native speakers as Aromanian
  • Megleno Romanian - (SIL Code, RUQ; ISO 639-2 code, roa) - also known as Moglenitic or Meglenitic
  • Istro Romanian - (SIL Code, RUO; ISO 639-2 code, roa)
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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.

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

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Constructed languages

Latin and the Romance languages also give rise to numerous constructed languages, both international auxiliary languages (well-known examples of which are Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua) and languages created for artistic purposes only (such as Brithenig and Wenedyk).

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See also

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External links

als:Romanische Sprachen ang:Rōmānisc sprǣc ar:لغة رومانسية az:Roman qrupu zh-min-nan:Romance gí-giân bg:Романски езици ca:Llengües romàniques cs:Románské jazyky da:Romanske sprog de:Romanische Sprachen et:Romaani keeled el:Λατινογενείς γλώσσες es:Lenguas romances eo:Latinida lingvo fr:Langue romane he:שפות רומאניות io:Latinida linguo it:Lingue romanze kw:Romanek la:Linguae Romanae lt:Romanų kalbos li:Roemaanse taole nl:Italische en Romaanse talen ja:ロマンス語 no:Romanske språk pl:Języki romańskie pt:Línguas românicas ro:Limbile romanice rm:Linguas romanas ru:Романские языки se:Románalaš gielat sc:Limbas Romanzas simple:Romance languages sk:Románske jazyky sl:Romanski jeziki fi:Romaaniset kielet sv:Romanska språk uk:Романські мови vi:Nhóm ngôn ngữ Rôman wa:Lingaedjes romans zh:罗曼语族

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