Romance Languages - Modern Status

Modern Status

The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish (Castilian), followed by Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan, all of which are official languages in at least one country. A few other languages have official status on a regional or otherwise limited level, for instance Friulan, Sardinian and Franco-Provençal in Italy; Romansh in Switzerland; and Galician in Spain.

French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of the European Union. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan are the official languages of the Latin Union; and French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Outside Europe, French, Portuguese and Spanish are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that emerged from their respective colonial empires. French is one of the official languages of Canada, many countries in Africa, and some islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean; it is a language of government and education in Asian nations, namely Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, and Vietnam.

Spanish is a national, cultural and official language in much of South America, Central America, the islands of the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean (except in Haiti where the official languages are French and Haitian Kreyol, a French creole, and Jamaica, where English and its Patois are spoken) and Mexico, and it is also the official language of Equatorial Guinea in Africa. Spanish is the most spoken Romance language in the world.

Portuguese is the official language of Brazil (reaching nearly 200 million, it is the language spoken by nearly half of population of South America, mainly among those residing in Brazil, eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay), five African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe) and East Timor and Macau in Asia (while most Portuguese speakers in Asia are in Japan due to return immigration of Japanese Brazilians). Portuguese is the second most spoken Romance language, having communities that account together more than 2 million native speakers in each of the five inhabited continents except Oceania (where it is the second dominant Romance after French, though). Its closest relative, Galician, possesses official status in the autonomous community of Galicia in Spain, together with Spanish.

Although Italy also had some colonial possessions, its language did not remain official after the end of the colonial domination, resulting in Italian being spoken only as a minority or secondary language by immigrant communities in North, South America, Australia, and African countries notably former Italian colonies Libya, Eritrea and Somalia, where it is spoken by educated people and in commerce and government. Romania did not establish a colonial empire, but the language is spoken as a native language in Moldova, while it also spread to other countries in rest of Europe, especially the other Romance countries (most notably Italy and Spain), and elsewhere such as Israel, where it is a native language to 5% of the population, and by many more as a secondary language; this is due to the large numbers of Romanian-born Jews who moved to Israel after World War II.

The total native speakers of Romance languages are divided as follows (with their ranking within the languages of the world in brackets):

• Spanish (Hispanosphere) 47% (2nd)
• Portuguese (Lusosphere) 26% (6th or 7th)
• French (Francophonie) 11% (approx. 18th)
• Italian 9% (approx. 23rd)
• Romanian 4% (approx. 50th)
• Catalan 1% ((not in the top 100))
• Others 2%

Catalan is unusual in that it is not the main language of any nation-state other than Andorra, but nonetheless has been able to compete and even gain speakers at the expense of the dominant language of its primary nation (Spanish); in fact, Catalan is probably the only minority European language whose survival is not under threat. This is due to a strong belief that the Catalan language is a critical component of the ethnic identity of the Catalan people. This has allowed them to resist the assimilationist urges that are in the process of destroying most of the remaining minority-language communities, even those that have strong government support (e.g. Irish language speakers).

The remaining Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. National governments have historically viewed linguistic diversity as an economic, administrative or military liability, as well as a potential source of separatist movements; therefore, they have generally fought to eliminate it, by extensively promoting the use of the official language, restricting the use of the "other" languages in the media, characterizing them as mere "dialects", or even persecuting them. As a result, all of these languages are considered endangered to varying degrees according to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, ranging from "vulnerable" (e.g. Sicilian and Venetian) to "severely endangered" (most of the Occitan varieties).

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities have allowed some of these languages to start recovering their prestige and lost rights. Yet it is unclear whether these political changes will be enough to reverse the decline of minority Romance languages.