Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance. 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 /t͡s/ (often later /s/) rather than /t͡ʃ/ as in Italian and Romanian.
| Western Romance | |
|---|---|
| Gallo-Iberian | |
| Geographic distribution | France, Iberia, Northern Italy, and Switzerland |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
Early forms | Old Latin
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | west2813 |
Classification of Romance languages | |
Based on mutual intelligibility, Dalby counts thirteen languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Gascon, Provençal, Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian.
Some classifications include 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.[citation needed]
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), 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 as a lingua franca.
Gallo-Romance
Gallo-Romance includes:
- The Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, 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, or langue d'oc, has dialects such as Provençal dialect, and Gascon dialect. Included also in on the Occitano-Romance.
Gallo-Romance can include:
- The Catalan language has standard forms of Central Catalan and Valencian. Can be classified as Occitano-Romance or East Iberian.
- The Rhaeto-Romance languages. They include Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area, Friulian of Friuli. Rhaeto-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages.
- The Gallo-Italic languages. This group includes languages such as Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, 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 include:
- The West Iberian languages:
- The Castilian languages: includes Spanish and Judaeo-Spanish.
- 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 Catalan language and the Aragonese language:[citation needed] 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 Occitan language, or langue d'oc, has dialects such as Provençal, Lengadocian, Lemosin, Auvernhat and Gascon-Aranese dialect.
- The Catalan language with two main dialectal groups, Eastern Catalan and Western Catalan, with the standard forms of Central Catalan and Valencian representing each dialect respectively.
- The Aragonese language, 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
Notes
- Western Romance is synonymous with Gallo-Iberian if Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance are considered the only primary branches. If not, then Shifted Western Romance is considered synonymous with Gallo-Iberian.
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