Romance
Geographic distribution:	Originally Western Europe; now also Latin America, Quebec and much of Western Africa
Genetic classification:	Indo-European  Italic   Romance
Subdivisions:	Italo-Western Eastern Romance Southern Romance
ISO 639-2:	roa
Distribution of major Romance languages:     Spanish      French      Portuguese      Italian      Romanian A current understanding of Western Europe. ... Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... This article is about the Canadian province. ... West Africa is the region of western Africa generally considered to include these countries: Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Côte dIvoire (Ivory Coast) Equatorial Guinea Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Mali Niger Nigeria Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Chad, Mauritania, and... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... For other uses, see Indo-European. ... Hypothetical distribution of languages in Iron Age Italy during the sixth century BC. The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family. ... Italo-Western redirects here. ... Map of Balkans with regions inhabited by Romanians/Vlachs highlighted The Eastern Romance languages are a group of Romance languages that developed in Southeastern Europe from the local eastern variant of Vulgar Latin. ... Southern Romance languages are parte of Romance languages that includes the Sardinian language and Sicilian language. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1357x628, 42 KB) Summary Romance languages in the World Blue - French Green - Spanish Orange - Portuguese Yellow - Italian Red - Romanian Compilation of Image:Map_Italophone_World. ...

The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family that comprises 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 many smaller regions scattered throughout the world. The Proto-Indo-Europeans are the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, a prehistoric people of the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age. ... The Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) were a patrilineal society of the Bronze Age (roughly 5th to 4th millennium BC), probably semi-nomadic, relying on animal husbandry. ... The question of the homeland (Urheimat) of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the Proto-Indo-European language has been a recurring topic in Indo-European studies since the 19th century. ... Map of Indo European migrations from ca. ... Map showing the Neolithic expansion from the 7th to 5th millennia. ... The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) suggests that the Indo-European languages originated in Europe and have existed there since the Paleolithic. ... Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics, dealing with the Indo-European languages. ... For other uses, see Indo-European. ... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... World map showing the Americas CIA political map of the Americas The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World, consisting of the continents of North America[1] and South America with their associated islands and regions. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ...

All Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of soldiers, settlers and merchants of the Empire, as distinguished from the Classical Latin of the 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, Latin evolved within each local area at an accelerated rate; and eventually the dialects diverged into myriad distinct varieties; some of which survive in modern forms. The overseas empires established by Spain, Portugal and France from the 15th century onward spread their languages to the other continents, to such an extent that about 70% of all Romance speakers today live outside Europe. Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from the classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ... Classical Latin is the language used by the principal exponents of that language in what is usually regarded as classical Latin literature. ... The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. ... For other uses, see Black Sea (disambiguation). ... The Arab Maghreb Union This article is about the region. ... For other uses, see Britannia (disambiguation). ... Europe in 450 The 5th century is the period from 401 to 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ... (14th century - 15th century - 16th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500. ...

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. Consequently, 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. Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ... In grammar, an adposition is an element that, prototypically, combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context. ...

Name

The term "Romance" comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, derived from romanicus: used, for instance, 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 that conquered the Roman Empire).^[1] From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, or "in the Roman vernacular". Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. ... For other uses, see Barbarian (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ...

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". A romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. ... Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (encompassing the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca. ...

History

Vulgar Latin

Main article: Vulgar Latin

There is very little documentary evidence about Vulgar Latin, which is often hard to interpret or generalise upon. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples and forced resettlers, more likely to be natives of 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^{[citation needed]}, which distinguish them from Classical Latin, such as the almost complete loss of the Latin declension system and its replacement by prepositions; the loss of the neuter gender, comparative inflections, and many verbal tenses; the 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. This perhaps suggests that the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages was around during the time of the empire, and was spoken alongside the written Classical Latin, reserved for official and formal occasions. Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from the classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ... Latin is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... The word neuter can refer to: the property of being neither biologically male or female: being asexual the sterilization (castration, spaying, etc. ... Latin is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. ... An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ...

Fall of the Empire

During the political decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, when there were large-scale migrations, including notably Germanic incursions, the Latin-speaking world was fragmented into several independent states. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, and the Huns and Turks, which isolated Romania from the rest of Latin Europe. Latin 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, keeping Latin the dominant language there. This article is about the historiography of the decline of the Roman Empire. ... (4th century - 5th century - 6th century - other centuries) Events Rome sacked by Visigoths in 410. ... Human migration denotes any movement of groups of people from one locality to another, rather than of individual wanderers. ... Balkan redirects here. ... Distribution of Slavic people by language The Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. ... For other uses, see Hun (disambiguation). ... The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. ... This is a tentative list of topics regarding Roman culture. ...

The Romance language family (simplified) - click to enlarge

Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 424 pixelsFull resolution (1085 × 575 pixel, file size: 50 KB, MIME type: image/png) Adapted from the picture made by Sheitan (and Bogdan Giuşcă) which is under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 424 pixelsFull resolution (1085 × 575 pixel, file size: 50 KB, MIME type: image/png) Adapted from the picture made by Sheitan (and Bogdan Giuşcă) which is under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. ...

Latent incubation

See also: Medieval Latin

Between the fifth and tenth centuries, the dialects of spoken Vulgar Latin diverged in various parts of their domain, eventually becoming innumerable distinct languages. This evolution is poorly documented because the written language kept close to the older Classical Latin. Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 10th century was that century which lasted from 901 to 1000. ...

Recognition of the vernaculars

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, some local vernaculars 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 others, such as Italy, many prominent poets and writers used the vernacular of their own accord. (12th century - 13th century - 14th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Uniformization and standardization

The invention of the press apparently slowed down the evolution of Romance languages from the 16th century on, and brought a tendency towards greater uniformity of standard languages within political boundaries, at the expense of other Romance languages and dialects less favored politically. In France, for instance, the Francien spoken in the region of Paris gradually spread to the entire country, and the Langue d'oc and Franco-Provençal of the south lost ground. The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... OC redirects here. ... Franco-Provençal (Francoprovençal) or Arpitan (in vernacular: patouès) (in Italian: francoprovenzale, provenzale alpina, arpitano, patois; French: francoprovençal, arpitan, patois) is a Romance language with several dialects in a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue dOïl and Langue dOc. ...

Current status

The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish, followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian, all of which are main and official national languages 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. A national language is a language (or language variant, i. ... Friulian (friulano in Italian, Furlan in Friulian) is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaetian languages family, spoken in the north-east of Italy (Friuli-Venezia Giulia province) by about 600,000 people. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Franco-Provençal (Francoprovençal) or Arpitan (in vernacular: patouès) (in Italian: francoprovenzale, provenzale alpina, arpitano, patois; French: francoprovençal, arpitan, patois) is a Romance language with several dialects in a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue dOïl and Langue dOc. ... Romansh (also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. ... Galician (Galician: galego, IPA: ) is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community with the constitutional status of historic nationality, located in northwestern Spain and small bordering zones in neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castilla y León. ... Occitan (IPA AmE: ), known also as Lenga dòc or Langue doc (native name: occitan [1], lenga dòc [2]; native nickname: la lenga nòstra [3] i. ... Aranese (aranés in Occitan/Gascon/Aranese) is a variety of Pyrenean Gascon (a dialect of the Occitan language), spoken in Val dAran, in northwestern Catalonia (Spain), where it is one of the three official languages besides Catalan and Spanish. ... Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of Sardinia. ... Headquarters Paris, France Official languages Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian Membership 37 (plus 3 observers) Leaders  -  General Secretariat Bernardino Osio Establishment 15 May 1954 Website http://www. ... UN and U.N. redirect here. ...

Outside Europe, French, Spanish and Portuguese are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that made up their respective colonial empires. French is an official language of Canada, Haiti, many countries in Africa, and some in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as France's current overseas possession. Spanish is an official language of Mexico, much of South America, Central America and the Caribbean, and of Equatorial Guinea in Africa. Portuguese is the official language of Brazil (being the most spoken language in South America), six countries in Africa, East Timor and of Macau. Although Italy also had some colonial possessions, its language did not remain official after the end of the colonial domination, resulting in Italian being spoken only as a minority or secondary language by immigrant communities in North and South America and Australia or African countries like Libya, Eritrea and Somalia. Romanian is also the official language of Moldova (known by its local official name of Moldovan and in the Serbian province of Voivodina. Romania did not establish a colonial empire, but the language spread outside of Europe due to emigration, notably in Western Asia; Romanian flourished in Israel, where it is spoken by some 5% of the total population as mother tongue,^[2] and by many more as a secondary language, considering the large population of Romanian-born Jews who moved to Israel after World War II.^[3] It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Colony. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... For other uses, see Central America (disambiguation). ... West Indies redirects here. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... North America North America is a continent [1] in the Earths northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... Serbia and Montenegro  -Serbia    -Kosovo and Metohia    -Vojvodina  -Montenegro Official languages Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Rusyn 1 Capital Novi Sad Area  - Total  - % water 21,500 km² n/a Population  - Total (2002)  - Density 2,031,992 94. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Proportion of the 690 million native Romance language speakers contained by each language.

The total native speakers of Romance languages is divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):^[4] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

• Spanish 47% (2nd-3rd)
• Portuguese 26% (7th)
• French 11% (11th)
• Italian 9% (18th)
• Romanian 4% (34th)
• Catalan 1% (93rd)
• Others 2%

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. Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of Sardinia. ... “Separatists” redirects here. ...

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. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... 20XX redirects here. ...

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: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Arabic redirects here. ... Basque (native name: euskara) is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France. ...

• Almost all their words are classified into four major classes — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — each with a specific set of possible syntactic roles.
• Nouns, adjectives, determiners and some pronouns inflect according to grammatical number and grammatical gender.
• Inflection is normally marked with suffixes.
• A variety of grammatical distinctions are expressed on verbs, such as:
  • Person and number;
  • Tense, mood, and aspect.
  • Voice.
• They are verb-centered; meaning that the basic clause structure consists of a verb, expressing an action involving one or more nouns — the arguments of the verb — that play specific semantic roles in the action and specific syntactic roles in the clause.
• They are fusional, nominative-accusative languages.

In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... Adverbs redirects here. ... For the function in NP structure, see Determiner (function). ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ... In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ... Look up Suffix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A grammatical category is a general term. ... For other uses, see Point of view (literature). ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood (or mode), which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ... In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. ... A syntactic verb argument, in linguistics, is a phrase that appears in a relationship with the verb in a proposition. ... A fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to squish together many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment. ... In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. ...

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.

• They have two grammatical numbers, singular and plural (no dual).
• In most languages, personal pronouns have different forms according to their grammatical function in a sentence (a remnant of the Latin case system); there is usually a form for the subject (inherited from the Latin nominative) another for the object (from the accusative or the dative), and a third set of personal pronouns used after prepositions or in stressed positions (see Prepositional pronoun and Disjunctive pronoun, for further information). Third person pronouns often have different forms for the direct object (accusative), the indirect object (dative), and the reflexive.
• Most are null-subject languages. French is a notable exception.
• Verbs have many conjugations, including in most languages:
  • A present tense, a preterite, an imperfect, a pluperfect and a future tense in the indicative mood, for statements of fact.
  • Present and preterite subjunctive tenses, for hypothetical or uncertain conditions. Several languages (for example, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) have also imperfect and pluperfect subjunctives, while Portuguese has in addition future subjunctive.
  • An imperative mood, for direct commands.
  • Three non-finite forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle.
  • Distinct active and passive voices, as well as an impersonal passive voice.
• The main tense and mood distinctions that were made in classical Latin are generally still present in the modern Romance languages, though many are now expressed through compound rather than simple verbs. The passive voice, which was mostly made up of simple verbs in classical Latin, was completely replaced with compound forms. Because latin is the root of Spanish, French, etc., it also has past, present, present perfect, and future!
• Several tenses, especially of the indicative mood, have been preserved with little change in most languages, as shown in the following table for the Latin verb dico (to say), and its descendants.

¹Until the 18th century. Common Slavic had a complete singular-dual-plural number system, although the dual paradigms showed considerable syncretism. ... Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. ... The subjective pronouns are pronouns used as the subject of a sentence; in other words, the initiator or instigator of a verb. ... An objective pronoun in grammar functions as the target of a verb, as distinguished from a subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb. ... This article is about special pronominal forms used after prepositions. ... A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed form of a pronoun reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts. ... “Oneself” redirects here. ... In linguistic typology, a null subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... For referencing in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Citing sources. ... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with an imperfective aspect. ... The pluperfect tense exists in most Indo-European languages, including English. ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... A non-finite verb is not limited by the person, tense and number of the subject. ... The impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb (which has valency one) to zero. ... Periphrasis, like its Latin counterpart circumlocution, is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words. ...

For a more detailed illustration of how the verbs have changed with respect to classical Latin, see Romance copula: Morphological changes. The copula or copulae (the verb or verbs meaning to be) in all Romance languages derive from the Latin verbs SVM and STO. The former was the copular verb to be (ultimately from the Indo-European copula *h1es-), and the latter mainly meant to stand (ultimately from the Indo-European...

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. Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from the classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Old English: ) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ...

• The distinctions of vowel length present in Classical Latin were lost in most Romance languages (an exception is Friulian), and partly replaced with "qualitative" contrasts like monophthong versus diphthong (Italian, Spanish; French to a lesser extent), or with vowel height contrasts (as in Portuguese and Catalan).
• There are definite and indefinite articles, derived from Latin demonstratives and the numeral unus ("one").
• There are only two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. The neuter gender of Latin has been lost (mostly merging with the masculine). (Exceptions: Romanian, which retains neuter gender; Spanish, which has the neuter third person pronoun ello, the neuter demonstratives eso, esto, aquello, and the neuter article lo, all used for objects or some abstract notions; and Italian, which while not keeping the neuter gender intact, has residual traces of it represented by some words that switch gender between singular and plural, such as il dito (the finger), plural le dita, inherited from Latin digitum, plural digita).
• Apart from gender and number, nouns, adjectives and determiners are not inflected. Cases have generally been lost, though a trace of them survives in the personal pronouns. An exception is Romanian, which retains a combined genitive-dative case.
• Adjectives generally follow the noun they modify.
• Many Latin combining prefixes were incorporated in the lexicon as new roots and verb stems, e.g. Italian estrarre ("to extract") from Latin ex- ("out") and trahere ("to drag").
• Many Latin constructions involving nominalized verbal forms (e.g. the use of accusative plus infinitive in indirect discourse and the use of the ablative absolute) were dropped in favor of constructions with subordinate clauses in all Romance languages except Italian (for example, Latin tempore permittente > Italian tempo permettendo; L. hoc facto > I. fatto ciò).
• The normal clause structure is SVO, rather than SOV, and is much less flexible than in Latin.
• Due to sound changes which made it homophonous with the preterite, the Latin future indicative tense was dropped, and replaced with a periphrasis of the form infinitive + present tense of habēre ("to have"). Eventually, this structure was reanalysed as a new future tense.
• In a similar process, an entirely new conditional form was created.
• While the synthetic passive voice of classical Latin was abandoned in favour of periphrastic constructions, the active voice remained in use. However, several tenses have changed meaning, especially subjunctives. For example:
  • The Latin pluperfect indicative became a conditional in Catalan and Sicilian, and an imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.
  • The Latin pluperfect subjunctive developed into an imperfect subjunctive in all languages except Romansh, where it became a conditional, and Romanian, where it became a pluperfect indicative.
  • The Latin preterite subjunctive, together with the future perfect indicative, became a future subjunctive in Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician.
  • The Latin imperfect subjunctive became a personal infinitive in Portuguese and Galician.
• Many Romance languages have two copular verbs, derived from the Latin stare (mostly used for "temporary state") and esse (mostly used for "essential attributes"). However, the distinction was eventually lost in some languages, notably French, which now have only the first copula. In French, stare and esse had become ester and estre by the late Middle Ages. Due to phonological development, there were the forms êter and être, which eventually merged to être. In Italian, the two verbs share the same past participle, stato. See Romance copula, for further information.

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... A monophthong (in Greek μονόφθογγος = single note) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... In phonetics, vowel height refers to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ... // Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference) that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. ... In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... The word neuter can refer to: the property of being neither biologically male or female: being asexual the sterilization (castration, spaying, etc. ... Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. ... In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. ... Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... Dative has several meanings. ... Free indirect speech (or free indirect discourse or free indirect style) is a style of third person narration which has some of the characteristics of direct speech. ... Latin, like all other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflectional, and so has a very flexible word order. ... In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... For the specialised use of homonym in scientific nomenclature, see Homonym (botany) and Homonym (zoology). ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. ... Grammaticalisation, also referred to as Grammaticalization, Grammatisation or Grammatization is a theory describing the change of a content word (lexical morpheme) into a function word or grammatical affix. ... The conditional mood (or conditional tense) is the form of the verb used in conditional sentences to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event that is contingent on another set of circumstances. ... In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... Periphrasis, like its Latin counterpart circumlocution, is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words. ... The conditional mood (or conditional tense) is the form of the verb used in conditional sentences to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event that is contingent on another set of circumstances. ... In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. ... Not to be confused with Romand which is one of the names for the Franco-Provençal language. ... The pluperfect tense (from Latin: plus quam perfectum more than perfect) is a perfective tense that exists in most Indo-European languages, used to refer to an event that has completed before another past action. ... Galician (Galician: galego, IPA: ) is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community with the constitutional status of historic nationality, located in northwestern Spain and small bordering zones in neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castilla y León. ... In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. ... For other uses, see Copula (disambiguation). ... The copula or copulae (the verb or verbs meaning to be) in all Romance languages derive from the Latin verbs SVM and STO. The former was the copular verb to be (ultimately from the Indo-European copula *h1es-), and the latter mainly meant to stand (ultimately from the Indo-European...

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: The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

• Most Romance languages have polite forms of address that change the person and/or number of 2nd person subjects (T-V distinction), such as the tu/vous contrast in French, the tu/Lei contrast in Italian, the tu/dumneavoastră (from dominus + vostre, literally meaning "your Highness") in Romanian or the tú (or vos) /usted contrast in Spanish.
• They all have a large collection of learned Hellenisms and Latinisms, with prefixes, stems, and suffixes retained or reintroduced from Greek and Latin, and used to coin new words. Most of these are also used in English, e.g. tele-, poly-, meta-, pseudo-, dis-, ex-, post-, -scope, -logy, -tion. Some of these stems can have a local spelling, for example poly- becomes poli- in Romanian, Italian and Spanish.
• During the Renaissance, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and a few other Romance languages developed a new, progressive aspect that did not exist in Latin. In French, progressive constructions remain very limited, the imperfect aspect generally being preferred, as in Latin.
• Many Romance languages now have a verbal construction analogous to the present perfect of English. In some, it has taken the place of the old preterite (at least in the vernacular); in others, the two coexist with somewhat different meanings.

In sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a language has second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee. ... Hellenism, from Greek Έλληνισμός (Hellenismos), imitation of the Greeks; German Hellenizein, to speak Greek. ... A Latinism is a word borrowed from Latin into another language, such as English. ... This article is about the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. ... In English, and sometimes in other languages, the continuous or progressive aspect is an aspect that denotes an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ... The perfective aspect is a grammatical aspect. ... The present perfect tense denotes a present condition resulting from a previous action. ... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ...

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. Look up homogeneity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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.^{[citation needed]} This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

Some even claim that Languedocian Occitan and its "Spanish" counterpart Catalan are the "most average" western Romance language. This concept comes from the fact that language wide rule changes (G->C, E->IE, O->U, T->D, LH->LL, beginning S->ES, V->U, Portuguese pronunciation, spelling of "O" as "U", etc) in languages North and West of Rome (Gaul, Iberia and Northwest Italy) seem to follow an evolutionary pattern from "proto-parent" languages and passed on to down the line, rather than patterns borne by random evolution from Latin, with modern Occitan/Catalan retaining much of the proto-language parent's changes. Many language wide rule changes between Occitan/Catalan and Latin are found in some words in every Latin language West, North, and South of the region (e.g. modern day France, Spain, and Portugal), but never found in languages East or Southeast. It was assumed that the entire Roman empire spoke Latin as their mother tongue, but this assumption may be way wrong. Outlying areas may have spoken a variety of "inferior" languages, and people may have wanted to incorporate latin words for their own benefit, but learned Latin orally from their neighbors, instead of Classical Latin, thus handing changes down the line. Languedocien is a Romance language akin to Provençal spoken by some people in the part of southern France known as Languedoc. ... Catalan can refer to: Catalan people Catalan language An inhabitant of Catalonia A Catalan speaker, whether or not from Catalonia proper (see Catalan Countries). ...

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, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene 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. Aromanians (also called: Macedo-Romanians or Vlachs, in Aromanian they call themselves arumâni, armâni or aromâni) are a population living as a minority in Northern Greece, Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria; their number is estimated to about one or two million. ... Balkan redirects here. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The Balkan linguistic union or Balkansprachbund is the similarity in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology among languages of the Balkans, which belong to various Indo-European branches, such as Albanian, Greek, Romance and Slavic. ...

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 [lu] and lune [lyn]. 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. Daco-Romanian (Romanian: limba dacoromânǎ, Latin: lingua Daco-Romana) is the term used to identify the Romanian language in contexts where distinction needs to be made between the various Eastern Romance languages or dialects (Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian). ...

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"). In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (, from Greek epi on + en in + thesis putting) is the insertion of a consonant, a vowel, or a whole syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. ...

For more detailed descriptions, see the articles History of French, From Latin to Portuguese,