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 rather than as in Italian and Romanian.
Based on mutual intelligibility, Dalby counts thirteen languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Asturleonese, Aragonese, Catalan, Gascon, Provençal, Gallo-Wallon, French, Franco-Provençal, Romansh, Ladin and Friulian.
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.
Today the four most widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Catalan. Many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers; this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout Africa as a lingua franca.
Gallo-Romance
Gallo-Romance includes:- The Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain, and Norman.
- 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. Included also in on the Occitano-Romance.
- 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, Romagnol, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic of Basilicata.
Iberian Romance
Iberian Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula include:- 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. Sometimes classified as part of a Pyrenean-Mozarabic group.
- The Navarro-Aragonese languages. Sometimes classified as part of a Pyrenean-Mozarabic group.
- The East Iberian languages, such as the Catalan language and the Occitan language. Also classified as part of Occitano-Romance.
Occitano-Romance
- The Occitan language, or langue d'oc, has dialects such as Provençal, Lengadocian, Lemosin, Auvernhat and Gascon-Aranese dialect.
- 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.