Western Romance languages

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[note 1]
Geographic distribution	France, Iberia, Northern Italy, and Switzerland
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Western Romance
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Proto-Italo-Western Romance[1] Proto-Western Romance[1]
Subdivisions	Ibero-Romance Gallo-Romance
Language codes
Glottolog	west2813
Classification of Romance languages.

The Romance language family (simplified).

Based on mutual intelligibility, Dalby counts thirteen languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Gascon, Provençal, Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian.^[2]

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

Main article: Gallo-Romance languages

Gallo-Romance includes:

• The Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain, and Norman.^[3]
• 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.^[4] 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, 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.^[5]

Iberian Romance

Main article: Iberian Romance languages

Iberian Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula include:^[6]

• 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

Main article: Occitano-Romance languages

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.^[7]
• 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.^[8] Sometimes it includes a southern dialect which is the former dialects with more Spanish influence

Notes

1. Western Romance is synonymous with Gallo-Romance if Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance are considered the only primary branches. If not, then Shifted Western Romance is considered synonymous with Gallo-Iberian.