Traditional Geographical Extension
Historically, various Gallo-Romance languages were spoken in France, except for some outlying regions (Corsica, western Brittany, the Basque Country, Flanders, Alsace and part of Lorraine); the Wallonia region of Belgium; the Romandy region of western Switzerland; the Channel Islands; the Eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula; and in Northern Italy.
Today, a single Gallo-Romance language (French) dominates most of this geographic region (including the formerly non-Romance areas of France), and has also spread overseas. Another, Franco-Provençal, is still commonly spoken in Italy's Aosta Valley. Conversely, English (a Germanic, rather than Romance, language) is now predominant in the Channel Islands.
Read more about this topic: Gallo-Romance Languages
Famous quotes containing the words traditional, geographical and/or extension:
“The traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lens and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of the mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)