Definition of Romance Languages

Languages ​​have a certain resemblance to living beings, since they are born at a certain moment and over time they develop and evolve. In this process of transformation, some languages ​​become extinct or are transformed.

Latin is the origin of the different Romance languages

Romance languages, also called Romance languages ​​or Neo-Latin languages, make up a family linguistics, since they all have the same origin, Latin. The main languages ​​belonging to this family are the following: Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan or Romanian.

The grammatical structures of all of them have remarkable similarities, since they derive from Latin.

- The word januarius in Portuguese is janeiro, in Italian gennaio, in French janvier and in Spanish January.

- The adjective bonum in Latin, becomes good in Spanish, good in Italian and bon in Catalan.

- In neighboring French it is voison, in Portuguese vizinho and in Catalan veí.

The similarities between the different Romance languages ​​are of all kinds, since they share the alphabet, lexical similarities and characteristics grammatical (the grammatical agreement between nouns and adjectives is another of the shared characteristics of the languages Romanesque).

Most of the etymologies of the different Romance languages ​​come from Latin and, to a lesser extent, from Greek. In this sense, it must be taken into account that the civilization Roman was founded on the values ​​and traditions of Greek culture.

From the expansion of Latin to the emergence of Romance languages

Roman civilization extended its vast dominions across the Mediterranean. The military presence was accompanied by cultural expansion in large territories. In this way, Latin became the main vehicle of communication on the basin Mediterranean.

When the Romans mixed with the native peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, a process of domination took place and, in parallel, of exchange cultural. The inhabitants of Hispania were learning the language of the dominating civilization, Latin.

However, his way of speaking it was peculiar, as there was a fusion between the original native languages ​​and Latin.

This way of speaking was known as Vulgar Latin and spread throughout Hispania

Thus, Latin in its vulgar version is the remote origin of Spanish and of the different Romance languages.

While the subject peoples communicated in vulgar Latin, a minority of the population he used cultured Latin. This version was also used in the writing, but when the Roman empire a slow process of decline of cultured Latin began. In this way, around the year 1000 in the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish was already being spoken and written in its old version.

Photo: Fotolia - Aytuncoylum

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