Romance-speaking Europe is the area of Europe where Romance languages are either official, co-official, or significantly used. It is a major linguistic subdivision of Europe alongside Germanic- and Slavic-speaking subdivisions.
The Romance European countries are France, Italy, Moldova, Portugal, Romania and Spain, as well as Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and the Vatican City. Many of these countries are members of the Latin Union. It also includes some regions from other countries, such as Wallonia in Belgium and the French- and Italian-speaking cantons of Switzerland as well as communities from other non-Romance 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 the European part of Turkey. The total population of all the Romance speaking areas in Europe is approximately 210,000,000, 42% of the European Union's population.
Read more about Romance-speaking Europe: History, Countries, See Also
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors. It’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn’t stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)