What romance means: the Romance Languages

The word romance is both powerful and personal, and inspires unique memories, reactions and emotions in every individual who hears it. It defines a quality of life, a type of story, a class of languages, a kind of art and music, and exciting and mysterious qualities that are difficult to define.

Since Romance Tracker’s mission is to deliver fresh romantic ideas to our readers, we’re going to dedicate a series of posts to the all-important question: what exactly is romance, and what does the word romantic mean?

Last week we talked about the Romantic Period of art, music and literature. Today we’re going to explore the Romance or Romantic Languages, also known as the Romantic Languages, which are languages that evolved from Latin.

There are more than 700 million native speakers of Romance Languages in the world, made up for the most part of people in Europe, the Americas and Africa. The most common Romance Languages spoken around the world are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan.

Romance Languages originated in the vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, not the classic Latin spoken by the more sophisticated upper class. The Romans had much success in conquering a large portion of the globe beginning in 200 BC, and they made Latin the most prevalent language in the places they ruled.

The Roman Empire fell around the 5th Century, but the Latin that had been spoken in the areas they had ruled continued to evolve and become unique languages. Many of those languages still survive today and are spoken around the world.

So the next time you hear about someone who speaks a “Romantic” language, keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a romantic person! English may not be a Romantic Language . . . but you can be just as romantic speaking it as you can be speaking textbook Romantic Languages such as French, Spanish and Italian.