Dialect Continuum - Romance Languages

Romance Languages

The western continuum of Romance languages, which comprises, from West to East: In Portugal, Portuguese; In Spain, Galician, Leonese or Asturian, Castilian or Spanish, Aragonese and Catalan or Valencian; In France, Occitan, Franco-Provençal and standard French; in Italy, Italian and in Switzerland, Romansh as well as other languages with fewer speakers, is sometimes presented as another example, although the major languages in this group have had separate standards for longer than the languages in the continental West Germanic group, and are not commonly classified as dialects of a common language. In recent centuries, the intermediate dialects which existed between the major Romance languages have been moving toward extinction, as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. This process has been most notable in France, owing to the French government's refusal to recognise minority languages, but has occurred to some extent in all Western Romance speaking countries. Language change has also threatened the survival of stateless languages with existing literary standards, such as Occitan.

A less arguable example of a dialect continuum are the Romance languages of Italy. For many decades since its unification, the above attitude of the French government was reflected in Rome by the Italian government which affected the adjoining dialects of this continuum spoken in Northern Italy. These include Lombard, Venetian and Piedmontese among others. Over the years, however, under pressure from the Northern League, the Italian government has yielded in allowing public signs and other media to use both local and national standard dialects in most affected areas.

The eastern Romance continuum is dominated by Romanian in many respects. Romanian is spoken throughout Romania and its dialects meet the Moldovan registers spoken across the border in Moldova. This too has been a familiar issue whereby Romanians believe the Moldovan language to be an accent (grai) of Romanian and some separatist political forces in Moldova Republic claim that Moldovan is a separate language. Outside Romania across the other south-east European countries, various Romanian language groups are to be found: pockets of various Romanian and Aromanian subgroups continue to live throughout Serbia, Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Croatia (in Istria).