Editing Romance languages (section)

== Classification and related languages ==
{{Main|Classification of Romance languages}}

Along with Latin and a few extinct languages of ancient Italy, the Romance languages make up the [[Italic languages|Italic branch]] of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European family]].<ref name="Britannica Online" /> Identifying subdivisions of the Romance languages is inherently problematic, because most of the linguistic area is a [[dialect continuum]], and in some cases political biases can come into play. A tree model is often used, but the selection of criteria results in different trees. Most classification schemes are, implicitly or not, historical and geographic, resulting in groupings such as [[Iberian Romance languages|Ibero-]] and [[Gallo-Romance languages|Gallo-Romance]]. A major division can be drawn between Eastern and Western Romance, separated by the [[La Spezia–Rimini Line|La Spezia-Rimini line]].
[[File:Idiomas y dialectos romances.png|upright=1.36|thumb|Romance languages and dialects]]
The main subfamilies that have been proposed by [[Ethnologue]] within the various classification schemes for Romance languages are:<ref>{{Cite web |title=Romance {{!}} Ethnologue Free |url=https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroup/259/ |access-date=2024-03-29 |website=Ethnologue (Free All) |language=en}}</ref>
* [[Italo-Western languages|Italo-Western]], the largest group, which includes languages such as Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French.
* [[Eastern Romance languages|Eastern Romance]], which includes Romanian and closely related languages.
* [[Southern Romance languages|Southern Romance]], which includes Sardinian and Corsican (even if Corsican is considered by some linguists to be a form of [[Tuscan dialect|Tuscan]], so Italo-Western). This family is thought to have included the now-vanished Romance languages of [[North Africa]] (or at least, they appear to have evolved some phonological features and their vowels in the same way).

=== Ranking by distance ===
Another approach involves attempts to rank the distance of Romance languages from each other or from their common ancestor (i.e. ranking languages based on how [[Conservative and innovative language|conservative or innovative]] they are, although the same language may be conservative in some respects while innovative in others). By most measures, French is the most highly differentiated Romance language, although Romanian has changed the greatest amount of its vocabulary, while Italian<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fleure |first=H. J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yFfvAgAAQBAJ&dq=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin&pg=PA34 |title=The peoples of Europe |publisher=Рипол Классик |isbn=978-1-176-92698-1 |access-date=2023-08-18 |archive-date=2023-09-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918110057/https://books.google.com/books?id=yFfvAgAAQBAJ&dq=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin&pg=PA34 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |year=1942 |title=Hermathena |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q2MUAAAAIAAJ&q=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin |access-date=2023-08-18 |archive-date=2023-09-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918110014/https://books.google.com/books?id=q2MUAAAAIAAJ&q=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Winters |first=Margaret E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yVPdDwAAQBAJ&dq=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin&pg=PA34 |title=Historical Linguistics: A cognitive grammar introduction |year=2020 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |isbn=9789027261236 |access-date=18 August 2023 |archive-date=18 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918110014/https://books.google.com/books?id=yVPdDwAAQBAJ&dq=Italian+most+direct+descendant+of+Latin&pg=PA34 |url-status=live }}</ref> and Sardinian have changed the least. Standard Italian can be considered a "central" language, which is generally somewhat easy to understand to speakers of other Romance languages, whereas French and Romanian are peripheral and quite dissimilar from the rest of Romance.<ref name="Britannica Online" />

=== Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages ===
Some Romance languages have developed varieties which seem dramatically restructured as to their grammars or to be mixtures with other languages. There are several dozens of creoles of [[French-based creole languages|French]], [[Spanish-based creole languages|Spanish]], and [[Portuguese-based creole languages|Portuguese]] origin, some of them spoken as [[national language]]s and lingua franca in former European colonies.

'''Creoles of French:'''
* [[Antillean Creole French|Antillean]] ([[French Antilles]], [[Saint Lucian Creole French|Saint Lucia]], [[Dominican Creole French|Dominica]]; majority native language)
* [[French Guianese Creole|French Guianese]] (native language of [[French Guiana]])
* [[Haitian Creole|Haitian]] (one of [[Haiti]]'s two official languages and majority native language)
* [[Karipúna French Creole|Karipúna]] (regional language in [[Brazil]])
* [[Louisiana Creole French|Louisiana]] (US)
* [[Mauritian Creole|Mauritian]] (''[[lingua franca]]'' of [[Mauritius]])
* [[Réunion Creole|Réunion]] (native language of [[Réunion]])
* [[Seychellois Creole|Seychellois]] ([[Seychelles]]' official language)
* [[Tayo Creole|Tayo]] (regional language in [[New Caledonia]])

'''Creoles of Spanish:'''
* [[Chavacano]] (in part of the [[Philippines]])
* [[Palenquero]] (in part of [[Colombia]])

'''Creoles of Portuguese:'''
* [[Angolar Creole|Angolar]] (regional language in [[São Tomé and Príncipe]])
* [[Cape Verdean Creole|Cape Verdean]] ([[Cape Verde]]'s national language and lingua franca; includes several distinct varieties)
* [[Daman and Diu Portuguese Creole|Daman and Diu Creole]] (regional language in [[India]])
* [[Forro Creole|Forro]] (regional language in [[São Tomé and Príncipe]])
* [[Guinea-Bissau Creole]] ([[Guinea-Bissau]]'s national language and lingua franca)
* [[Kristang language|Kristang]] ([[Malaysia]] and [[Singapore]])
* [[kristi language|Kristi]] (regional language in [[India]])
* [[Macanese Patois|Macanese]] ([[Macau]])
* [[Papiamento]] ([[Dutch Antilles]] official language, majority native language, and lingua franca)

=== Auxiliary and constructed languages ===
{{Main|Constructed language|International auxiliary language}}
Latin and the Romance languages have also served as the inspiration and basis of numerous auxiliary and constructed languages, so-called "Neo-Romance languages".<ref>{{Cite web |title=NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo BERNASCONI) |url=http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150204020228/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin.html |archive-date=2015-02-04}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=NEO-ROMANTICISM IN LANGUAGE PLANNING (Edo BERNASCONI) |url=http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin2.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150710083231/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/novlatin2.html |archive-date=2015-07-10}}</ref>

The concept was first developed in 1903 by Italian mathematician [[Giuseppe Peano]], under the title [[Latino sine flexione]].<ref name="peano-de">Peano, Giuseppe (1903). [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35803/35803-h/35803-h.htm "De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare Internationale"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210504093022/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35803/35803-h/35803-h.htm |date=2021-05-04 }}, ''Revista de Mathematica'' (''Revue de Mathématiques''), Tomo VIII, pp. 74–83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino.</ref> He wanted to create a ''naturalistic'' international language, as opposed to an autonomous constructed language like [[Esperanto]] or [[Volapük]] which were designed for maximal simplicity of lexicon and derivation of words. Peano used Latin as the base of his language because, as he described it, Latin had been the international scientific language until the end of the 18th century.<ref name="peano-de" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Peano |first=Giuseppe |author-link=Giuseppe Peano |date=1903–1904 |title=Il latino quale lingua ausiliare internazionale |url=http://mono.eik.bme.hu/~galantai/LSF/interlingua/interlingua-07.jpg |journal=Atti della Reale Accad. Delle Scienze di Torino |language=Italian |volume=39 |pages=273–283 |access-date=2022-07-03 |archive-date=2023-04-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407174144/http://mono.eik.bme.hu/~galantai/LSF/interlingua/interlingua-07.jpg |url-status=live }}</ref>

Other languages developed include [[Idiom Neutral]] (1902), [[Interlingue]]-Occidental (1922), [[Interlingua]] (1951) and [[Lingua Franca Nova]] (1998). The most famous and successful of these is Interlingua.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} Each of these languages has attempted to varying degrees to achieve a pseudo-Latin vocabulary as common as possible to living Romance languages. Some languages have been constructed specifically for communication among speakers of Romance languages, the [[Pan-Romance language]]s.

There are also languages created for artistic purposes only, such as [[Talossa#Talossan language|Talossan]]. Because Latin is a very well attested ancient language, some amateur linguists have even constructed Romance languages that mirror real languages that developed from other ancestral languages. These include [[Brithenig]] (which mirrors [[Welsh language|Welsh]]), Breathanach<ref>{{Cite web |title=Eall fhoil de Bhreathanach |url=http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/breath.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080610171257/http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/breath.html |archive-date=June 10, 2008}}</ref> (mirrors [[Irish language|Irish]]), [[Wenedyk]] (mirrors [[Polish language|Polish]]), Þrjótrunn (mirrors [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]]),<ref>{{Cite web |last=Henrik Theiling |date=2007-10-28 |title=Þrjótrunn: A North Romance Language: History |url=http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_02.html |access-date=2010-11-06 |publisher=Kunstsprachen.de |archive-date=2011-07-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110722104504/http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_02.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and Helvetian (mirrors [[German language|German]]).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2004-08-28 |title=Relay0/R – Jelbazech |url=http://steen.free.fr/relay10/jelbazech.html |access-date=2010-11-06 |publisher=Steen.free.fr |archive-date=2011-05-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110516015257/http://steen.free.fr/relay10/jelbazech.html |url-status=live }}</ref>