Branch of Indo-European languages descended from the Latin of the Roman Empire (popular or vulgar as opposed to classical Latin). The present-day Romance languages with national status are French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish.
Romansch (or Rhaeto-Romanic) is a minority language of Switzerland and one of the four official languages of the country, while Catalan and Gallego (or Galician) in Spain, Provençal in France, and Friulian and Sardinian in Italy are recognized as distinct languages with strong regional and/or literary traditions of their own.
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