Romance Languages

700 million people speak a Romance language as their native tongue. Thus the Romance language group ranks among the most significant worldwide. Romance languages belong to the Indo-European language family. All Romance languages date back to Latin. This means they are descendants of the language of Rome. The basis of all Romance languages was Vulgar Latin. By which is meant the Latin spoken in late ancient times. Vulgar Latin was spread throughout Europe through Roman conquests. Out of it there then developed the Romance languages and dialects. Latin itself is an Italian language. There are in total about 15 Romance languages. The exact number is difficult to determine. It is often unclear whether independent languages or only dialects exist. A few Romance languages have died out over the years. But new languages based on Romance languages have also developed. They are Creole languages. Today, Spanish is the largest Romance language worldwide. It belongs to the world languages with more than 380 million speakers. Romance languages are very interesting for scientists. Because the history of this linguistic group is well-documented. Latin or Roman texts have existed for 2,500 years. Linguists use them to examine the evolution of the individual languages. Thus, the rules from which language develops can be researched. Many of these results can be transferred to other languages. The grammar of Romance languages is similarly constructed. Above all, however, the vocabulary of the languages is similar. If a person speaks one Romance language, he can easily learn another one. Thank you, Latin!

Guess the language!

The Japanese language is surely one of the most fascinating. Many people find the writing system especially interesting. It is comprised of Chinese symbols and two syllabaries. Another characteristic of Japanese is that it has many dialects. These differ from one another significantly in some cases. Thus it is possible that two speakers from different regions do not understand each other. Japanese has a melodic accent. If a word needs to be emphasized it is not spoken louder.

The pitches of the sounds are varied. Approximately 130 million people speak Japanese. Naturally, the majority of those live in Japan. There are also large groups of Japanese speakers in Brazil and North America. They are the descendants of Japanese emigrants. There are relatively few true second language speakers. That is exactly what should motivate us to learn this exciting language!