Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

based on the

La Spezia–Rimini Line In the linguistics of the Romance languages, the La Spezia–Rimini Line, also known as the Massa–Senigallia Line, is a line that demarcates a number of important isoglosses that distinguish Romance languages south and east of the line from R ...

. They include the

Ibero-Romance The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languages Iberian languages is also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-European Iberian language. are ...

and

Gallo-Romance Gallo-Romance can refer to: * Old Gallo-Romance, the Romance language spoken from around 600 to 900 AD. * Gallo-Romance languages, a branch of the Romance language family, which includes in the narrowest sense the ''langues d'oïl'' and Franco-Prov ...

. Gallo-Italic may also be included. The subdivision is based mainly on the use of the "s" for pluralization, the weakening of some consonants and the pronunciation of " Soft C" as (often later ) rather than as in Italian and Romanian. Based on

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...

, Dalby counts thirteen languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Gascon, Provençal, Gallo-Wallon, French,

Franco-Provençal Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal, Patois or Arpitan) is a Gallo-Romance languages, Gallo-Romance language that originated and is spoken in eastern France, western Switzerland, and northwestern Italy. Franco-Provençal has several di ...

, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian.David Dalby, 1999/2000, ''The Linguasphere register of the world’s languages and speech communities.'' Observatoire Linguistique, Linguasphere Press. Volume 2. Oxfor

/ref> Some classifications include Italo-Dalmatian languages, Italo-Dalmatian; the resulting clade is generally called Italo-Western Romance. Other classifications place Italo-Dalmatian with Eastern Romance. Sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance, having split off earlier than the two. Today the four most widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish (c. 486 million native speakers, around 125 million second-language speakers), Portuguese (c. 220 million native, another 45 million or so second-language speakers, mainly in

Lusophone Africa The Portuguese-speaking African countries (; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Prínci ...

), French (c. 80 million native speakers, another 70 million or so second-language speakers, mostly in Francophone Africa), and Catalan (c. 7.2 million native). Many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

Gallo-Romance

Gallo-Romance includes: *The Oïl languages. These include

Standard French Standard French (in French: , , or ) is an unofficial term for a standard variety of the French language. It is a set of spoken and written formal varieties used by the educated francophones of several nations around the world. As French is ...

Picard Picard may refer to: Places * Picard, Quebec, Canada * Picard, California, United States * Picard (crater), a lunar impact crater in Mare Crisium People and fictional characters * Picard (name), a list of people and fictional characters with th ...

, Walloon, Lorrain, and Norman. *The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal. It shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. *The

Occitan language Occitan (; ), also known by its native speakers as (; ), sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran in Catalonia; collectively, ...

, or langue d'oc, has dialects such as

Provençal dialect Provençal (, , , ; or ) is a variety of Occitan, spoken by people in Provence and parts of Drôme and Gard. The term Provençal used to refer to the entire Occitan language, but more recently it has referred only to the variety of Occitan ...

, and

Gascon dialect Gascon ( , , ) is the vernacular Romance variety spoken mainly in the region of Gascony, France. It is often considered a variety of larger Occitan macrolanguage, although some authors consider it a separate language due to hindered mutual ...

. Included also in on the Occitano-Romance. Gallo-Romance can include: *The

Catalan language Catalan () is a Western Romance languages, Western Romance language and is the official language of Andorra, and the official language of three autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic I ...

has standard forms of

Central Catalan Central Catalan () is an Eastern Catalan dialect spoken in the whole province of Barcelona, the eastern half of the province of Tarragona and most of the province of Girona, except for its northern part, where a transition to Northern Catalan ...

and

Valencian Valencian can refer to: * Something related to the Valencian Community ( Valencian Country) in Spain * Something related to the city of Valencia * Something related to the province of Valencia in Spain * Something related to the old Kingdom of ...

. Can be classified as Occitano-Romance or East Iberian. *The

Rhaeto-Romance languages Rhaeto-Romance, Rheto-Romance, Rhaeto-Italian, or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of ...

. They include Romansh of

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, Ladin of the Dolomites area, Friulian of Friuli. Rhaeto-Romance languages can be classified as

, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. *The

Gallo-Italic languages The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy: Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. In central Italy they are spoken in th ...

. This group includes languages such as

Piedmontese Piedmontese ( ; autonym: or ; ) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, a region of Northwest Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly regarded as an Italian ...

, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian,

Gallo-Italic of Sicily The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages Languages of Italy#Northern Italy, of northern Italy: Piedmontese language, Piedmontese, Lombard language, Lombard, Em ...

, Gallo-Italic of Basilicata. The Oïl languages, Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance languages are sometimes called Gallo-Rhaetian, but it is difficult to exclude from this group Gallo-Italic, which according to several linguists forms a particular unity with Rhaeto-Romance.

Iberian Romance

Iberian Romance languages of the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...

include:Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Western Romance"
Glottolog
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. *The West Iberian languages: **The

Castilian languages West Iberian is a branch of the Ibero-Romance languages that includes the Castilian languages ( Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish), Astur-Leonese ( Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, Extremaduran (sometimes), Cantabrian),

: includes Spanish and

Judaeo-Spanish Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (autonym , Hebrew script: ), also known as Ladino or Judezmo or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish. Originally spoken in Spain, and then after the Edict of Expulsion spreading ...

. **The Galician-Portuguese languages: includes Portuguese, Galician and Fala. **The Astur-Leonese languages: they are, from east to west, Cantabrian, central-eastern Asturian and Leonese proper. Going from north to south, they are Leonese proper, Mirandese, Extremaduran *The extinct Mozarabic. Can be classified as West Iberian. *The East Iberian language, such as the

and the

Aragonese language Aragonese ( ; in Aragonese) is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken in several dialects by about 12,000 people as of 2011, in the Pyrenees valleys of Aragon, Spain, primarily in the Comarca#Spain, comarcas of Somontano de Barbastro, Ja ...

: also classified as part of Occitano-Romance.

Occitano-Romance

Sometimes considered a subgroup of the previous groups, it constitutes a group of languages that do not have all the Gallo-Romance traits nor the Ibero-Romance traits. The list is as follows: *The

, or langue d'oc, has dialects such as Provençal,

Lengadocian Languedocien (French name, ), Languedocian, or Lengadocian () is an Occitan dialect spoken in rural parts of southern France such as Languedoc, Rouergue, Quercy, Agenais and southern Périgord. It is sometimes also called Languedocien-Guyenna ...

, Lemosin, Auvernhat and Gascon-Aranese dialect. *The

with two main dialectal groups, Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan, with the standard forms of

and

representing each dialect respectively. *The

, with three main dialectal groups Eastern, Western and Central Aragonese. Sometimes it includes a southern dialect which is the former dialects with more Spanish influence

References

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