Romance languages, Group of related languages derived from Latin, with nearly 920 million native speakers. The major Romance languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian—are national languages. French is probably the most internationally significant, but Spanish, the official language of 19 American countries and Spain and Equatorial Guinea, has the most speakers. Languages spoken in smaller areas include Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, and Rhaeto-Romance. The Romance languages began as dialects of Vulgar Latin, which spread during the Roman occupation of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Balkans and developed into separate languages in the 5th–9th centuries. Later, European colonial and commercial contacts spread them to the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
