The Romance languages reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
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Romance languages

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The Romance languages are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken by the common people evolving in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire. Latin itself is treated as an Italic but not a Romance language.

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

Roughly, from west to east, the Romance variants, or dialects, form a continuum. Portuguese, French, and Romanian are the three extreme deviations, though this does not imply that they are totally distinct. Sardinian is the most isolated and conservative variant. Languedocian Occitan could be tagged as the central "Western Romance by default".

There are many local varieties spoken in the Romance-language countries, and there is no clear differentiation between a 'language' and a 'dialect'. Roughly speaking, those varieties that are definitely separate languages include the main national languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan), plus Occitan (or Provençal), Sardinian, and Rumansh.

After that it becomes questionable: is Galician, for example, yet another full language, or is it a variety of Portuguese with strong influence of Spanish? Or rather a language, with Portuguese as a dialect of it (as some argue it is?) Naturally, political and cultural and local pride issues play a role in these debates. Moreover, languages that lacked officialdom, a central standard model, or a literary tradition, such as Occitan, Sardinian or Rumansh, were further dialectalised. And some minor variants which might have developed in distict languages have been reduced to residual areas and restricted usage, like Astur-leonese or Aragonese.

Historically, the first split was between Sardinian and the rest. Then of the rest, the next split was between Romanian in the east, and the others in the west. The third major split was between Italian and the Gallo-Iberian group. This latter then split into a Gallic group, which became French, Occitan, and Rumansh, and an Iberian 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 (just for an example, among many others: 'fear' is 'medo' in Portuguese, 'miedo' in Spanish, but 'por' in Catalan - compare with 'peur' in French). See also Iberian Romance Languages.

The most spoken Romance language is the Spanish language (Castellano or Español), followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.

Latin and the Romance languages also give rise to numerous constructed languages, both International Auxiliary Languages (well-known examples of which are Interlingua and Latino sine flexione) and languages created for artistic purposes only (such as Brithenig and Wenedyk).

Listing

Here is a more detailed listing of languages and dialects:

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

The Italo-Western group
The Western sub-group
. .Gallo-Iberian division
. . .Ibero-Romance sub-division
. . . .West Iberian section . . . .East Iberian section
. . . .Oc section
. . .Gallo-Romance sub-division
. . . .Gallo-Rhaetian section . . . .Gallo-Italian section . .Pyrenean-Mozarabic division The Italo-Dalmatian sub-group The Eastern group Also as Moldovan - (ISO 639-1 code, mo; ISO 639-2 code, mol) Here are some criteria that distinguish subgroups of the Romance languages:

Formation of plurals
Some Romance languages form plurals by adding "s" (derived from Latin accusative case), while others form the plural by changing the final vowel - "o"/"e" to "i", or "a" to "e" (derived from Latin nominative case). See La Spezia-Rimini Line for more information.

Omission of final Latin vowels
Some Romance languages omit the final unstressed vowels from the Latin roots - for example: Latin LUPUS, LUNA become Italian LUPO, LUNA or Spanish LOBO, LUNA but French LOUP, LUNE. Word for "more"
Some languages use a version of PLUS, others a version of MAGIS. Sedecim vs. Decem-et-sex
In some languages the word for 16 is morphematim "sixteen", like 11-15; in others it is "ten-and-six", like 17-19. To have and to hold
The words "habere" and "tenere" are used differently for "to hold", "to have", "to have (done)", and "there is".

For instance, in French, je tiens, j'ai, j'ai fait, il y a: these are respectively derived from "tenere", "habere", "habere", "habere". Thus "THHH".

To have or to be
Some languages use "have" as an auxiliary verb to form the perfect forms (e.g. French: passé composé) of all verbs; others use "be" for some verbs, generally those of motion or becoming.