What is a romance language?

Answer 1

The name Romance Language refers to languages spoken in the Romania, a historic cultural zone in Europe in which Latin and its dialects were spoken during the Roman Empire and afterwards. At the time of the empires after the sixteenth century, these languages went global: French is spoken in France, Canada, some Caribbean nations; Spanish is spoken in Spain, Latin America, Africa; the same happens with Portugese, spoken in Portugal, Angola, Brazil, and Mozambique. Irrespective of where these langauges are spoken today, all languages originating in Latin and its dialects are considered Romance Languages. As members of the same family these languages share common morphological and syntactic features. SOME of these languages are Romanian, Italian, Sicilian, Romanic or Rhetic, French, Catalan, Aranés, Occitan, Galego-Portuguese, Spanish, Astur-Leones. In some instances it is difficult to determine whether we are facing a different language or a dialect variation (i.e., Catalan, Valenciano, and Mallorquí are considered the same language by some, but different languages by others).

Answer 2

A romance language is a language that is descended from Latin. All romance languages share some common traits such as basic grammar and root vocabulary. In the glory days of the Roman Empire, most people in the western part spoke the official language, Latin (in the East people tended to use Greek, although the educated elite also would have known Latin). When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Latin speaking people fell out of communication with one another. For example, the Latin speakers of northern France no longer had communication with the Latin speakers of southern Italy. Over time, divergent forms of Latin developed because of changes in pronunciation and additions of new words by the disparate peoples. Eventually, the "Latin" speakers were no longer speaking Latin but in fact new languages that, 1000 years after the fall of Rome, were no longer mutually comprehensible between people from different regions. The most common of these languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan, but there are several dozen minor ones as well. Because these languages are based upon a single source, Latin, it is relatively easy for a speaker of one to learn another.

Answer 3

Because it originally came from Latin, the language spoken in ancient Rome.