Romance languages Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Romance
Geographic distribution:	Originally Southern Europe and parts of Northern Africa; now also most of America. Official languages of half the countries in Africa and parts of Oceania.
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Italic Romance
Proto-language:	Vulgar Latin
Subdivisions:	Western Romance (or Italo-Western) Eastern Romance Sardinian
Countries where Romance languages are official (dark orange) or national/secondary (light orange)
Romance languages in the world: Blue – French Green – Spanish Orange – Portuguese Yellow – Italian Red – Romanian Lighter colors mean that the language is not official, but important

The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (In the Latin Language, "vulgar" is the word for "common," so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The biggest Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan. They are called "romance languages" because they originate from a language spoken by Romans.

The area where the Romance languages are spoken in Europe, corresponds well with the extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire, but Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language.

Demographics
List of Romance languages
Family tree of Romance languages
Images for kids
See also

Demographics

Percentage of speakers of each Romance language, out of the total speakers of all the Romance languages

The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total there are almost a billion first and second language speakers.

Spanish is the widest used Romance language, then comes Portuguese, and then French.

Spanish is mainly spoken in Spain and Latin America. Portuguese is mostly used/spoken in Brazil, Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and in some areas of Africa. Romanian is spoken in Romania and Republic of Moldova.