Romance-speaking Europe

Romance-speaking Europe, or Latin Europe, is the area of Europe where Romance languages (those derived from Latin) are either official, co-official, or significantly used. It is a major linguistic subdivision of Europe alongside Germanic-, and Slavic-speaking subdivisions.

The Latin European or Romance European countries are Italy, France, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and the Vatican City. Many of these countries were members of the Latin Union, until it was dissolved in 2012. It also includes some regions from other countries, such as Wallonia in Belgium and the French- and Italian-speaking cantons of Switzerland, Luxembourg where French is co-official, as well as communities from other non-Latin European countries. Some Eastern Romance languages like Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian are spread across the entire Balkans in small communities within Slavic-speaking countries, Greece, and western Turkey. The total population of all the Romance-speaking areas in Europe is approximately 210,000,000, 42% of the European Union's population.

The spread of the Roman Empire brought with it Vulgar Latin. After the fall of the empire, this started to break up into different dialects, and eventually, whole separate languages, resulting in the Romance languages of today.

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