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The five major Romance languages are Spanish (538 million speakers), French (277 million), Portuguese (252 million), Italian (68 million), and Romanian (25 million).

What Are the Romance Languages? (And Are They Actually “Romantic”?) History, Latin, Linguistics / by Jonathan Roberts The Romance languages: We love to learn them. Even as other languages rise in global significance, French, Spanish, and Italian remain among the most popular foreign tongues for English speakers to acquire. For many of us, the Romance languages conjure up the best of Europe. We think of Venetian canals and the Eiffel Tower, idyllic wine country and the sunbaked Mediterranean coast, tapas in Cordoba and olive groves in Tuscany. We smell espresso and baguettes, fragrant herbs and rich tomato sauce. We imagine strolling past street musicians and sidewalk cafés.But even this diversity is only a small part of the story. The Romance languages span the globe, not just Continental Europe—and their history is as colorful, complex, and engrossing as the cultures they represent. What are the Romance languages? Due to definitional problems, the exact number is disputed. But the most widely spoken are the five major Romance languages of Spanish (538 million speakers globally), French (277 million), Portuguese (252 million), Italian (68 million), and Romanian (25 million), all of which have national language status. They are called Romance languages because they owe their existence to the Romans, who spoke Latin and spread it through most of Europe. All of the Romance languages derive from Vulgar Latin. There are also a number of regional or subnational Romance languages, including Catalan (9 million speakers), Occitan (perhaps 0.6–2.2 million), and Sardinian (perhaps 1 million). Some, like Catalan, are at the center of fierce nationalist or separatist struggles based on a sense that the speakers share an ethnic and cultural identity distinct from that of the rest of the country. There are many other Romance languages whose status is contested. This article covers everything you need to know about this diverse, lyrical family of languages—which ones belong in this category, where they are spoken, and how they are different and alike. We also explore the intriguing link between the big-R Romance of the language group and the little-r romance of flowers and mood lighting. There is, in fact, a historical connection! The Romance Languages TodayToday, the Romance languages represent more than one billion native speakers around the globe, plus millions of nonnative speakers and enthusiasts. Because Romance languages are spoken as a second language in many countries (e.g., French in Morocco or Algeria) or claim pockets of speakers across the world (e.g., Judeo-Spanish speakers in Israel, or Portuguese speakers on the west coast of India), exact figures are hard to come by. In addition to the eight Romance languages mentioned above, the following could also be added to the list (it all depends on how you define a language—a slippery question, for linguistic and political reasons):Sicilian Corsican Romansh, Friulian, and Ladin (known as the Rhaeto-Romance languages), spoken in parts of southeast Switzerland and northern Italy Franco-Provençal dialects, spoken in parts of France and ItalyWalloon, a French dialect spoken in BelgiumPiedmontese, spoken in northwest ItalyAsturian, spoken in northern SpainGalician, spoken in northwest SpainHaitian Creole and other creole languagesDalmatian, once spoken in Croatia but now extinct (the last known speaker, Tuone Udaina, died in 1898)Even this list is far from exhaustive. Since there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a language (versus a dialect, basilect, or other language variant) in the first place, and no precise threshold for how much Latin influence makes a language a Romance language, the boundaries of the group are somewhat hazy.Nevertheless, the center is firm. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, the most prevalent Romance languages, are identified by their heavily Latinate vocabulary and grammar, giving them a remarkable degree of mutual intelligibility. In terms of similarity or dissimilarity to the Vulgar Latin from which they sprang—what linguists call “differentiation”—Italian remains the least differentiated; it is also the closest cousin to the other modern Romance languages. French has traveled furthest from Vulgar Latin in terms of pronunciation, while Romanian has changed the most in terms of vocabulary. Interestingly, though, when we go back to the literary heyday of Rome, we find that Romanian has preserved Classical Latin grammar more faithfully than the other Romance languages. (Check out this video featuring Ancient Language Institute Professor Luke Ranieri, as he and other Latin speakers converse with a native Romanian speaker.) Why do people often find the Romance languages to be especially melodic and sweet? There are at least two features that might contribute to this perception.First, compared to the Germanic languages—English, German, and Dutch being the main ones—the Romance languages tend to use vowels ...

What Are The Romance Languages? | Ancient Language Institute