The Romance languages are
all the related languages derived from Vulgar Latin and form a subgroup
of the Indo-European language family.
The Romance languages include Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian
and many others.
The Romance languages developed
from Vulgar Latin in the 6th- 9th centuries. Today, they are
spoken by more than 800 million native speakers worldwide and a large number of
non native speakers.
Because of difficulty in distinguishing
variety, and dialect, it is impossible to count the number of Romance languages
now in existence; the number of living Romance languages is estimated at about
25.
The Romance languages most prominently
spoken today are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. Many of
these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; especially French
which is used throughout West Africa.
The Romance languages originate
from the popular Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers and merchants of
the Roman Empire, and are distinguished from the Classical form spoken by the
Roman upper classes, in which the
language was generally written. With the expansion of the Empire, Latin became
the dominant native language in Western Europe.
During the Empire's decline and
after its collapse in the 5th century the varieties of Latin began to diverge
within local areas and evolved into different languages. The empires which were
established in Portugal, Spain and France spread their languages
to the other continents.
In the medieval
literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while
popular works, often focusing on love, were composed in the colloquial speech
and came to be called romances.
British
Romance and African Romance, the forms of Vulgar Latin used
in southeastern Britain and the Roman province of Africa, where
it had been spoken by much of the urban population, disappeared in the Middle
Ages. But the Germanic tribes that had spread to Italy, Gaul, and Hispania eventually
adopted Latin and the traces of Roman culture, and so Latin remained the
dominant language there.
Between the centuries, some local dialects developed
a written form and began to replace Latin in many areas where it had been prominent.
The Romance language most
widely spoken native language is Spanish Portuguese, French, Italian and
Romanian, follow all of which are the official languages in at least one
country. French and Spanish are two of
the six official languages of the United Nations. French, Portuguese and Spanish are
spoken and have official status in various countries that emerged from their colonial
empires. French is one of the official languages of Canada, and in Africa,
and some islands and it are the official language of Quebec.
Spanish is an official language
of Mexico, much of South America, Central America, the islands of
in the Caribbean and it is the official language of Guinea in Africa
and is the most spoken Romance language in the world.
Portuguese is the official
language of Brazil it is the language in five African countries.
Although Italy also had
some colonial possessions, Italian was spoken only as a minority or
secondary language by immigrant communities especially the other Romance
countries most notably Italy and Spain, and elsewhere such as in Israel
where it is a native language and by many as a second language. The remaining
Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. As a
result, all of these languages are considered endangered. Romance languages
have a number of shared features across all languages:
The Romance languages for the
most part have kept the writing system of Latin. However, Romanian before the
19th century, literacy was reintroduced through the Romanian Cyrillic
alphabet, a Slavic influence. A Cyrillic alphabet was also used for Romanian in
the USSR. The non-Christian populations of Spain also used the scripts of
their religions Arabic and Hebrew to write Romance.
With the decline of the usage of
the languages Romance languages may in the future vanish although the number of
people in the world does not support this supposition. The romance of the Romance languages
continues in all parts of the world; to be enjoyed by many. The variations of these languages are passed
down from generation to generation developing into a more universal verbal
communication for a significant population of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment