page_title: Romance languages
hierarchical_section_title: Romance languages
caption_attribution_description: Romance languages: Dark orange = official languages; light orange = national/secondary languages
context_page_description: The Romance languages are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin. The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.
  They are called "Romance languages" because they originate from Latin, the language spoken by the Western Roman Empire. Their grammatical inflection system has been simplified and lost most of the complex case structure of classical Latin.
  The area that the Romance languages are spoken in Europe is mostly the extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire. Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language. In Moldova it is sometimes called Moldovan.
context_section_description: The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages)  are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (in Latin, "vulgar" is the word for "common" and so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.   
  They are called "Romance languages" because they originate from Latin, the language spoken by the Western Roman Empire. Their grammatical inflection system has been simplified and lost most of the complex case structure of classical Latin. 
  The area that the Romance languages are spoken in Europe is mostly the extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire. Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language. In Moldova it is sometimes called Moldovan.
caption: Countries where Romance languages are official (dark orange) or national/secondary (light orange)
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