How Many Romance Languages Are There Really?

Not even close. Ask a historical linguist, and you might get an answer closer to ten. Ask a specialist who pores over regional linguistic variations, and they might tell you the number is well over 40. How can the answer vary so dramatically? The truth is, counting languages isn’t simple arithmetic. It’s a dive into a fascinating, centuries-old debate where linguistics, politics, and identity collide: the slippery distinction between a language and a dialect.

The Undisputed Core: The “Big Five”

Let’s start with the easy part. The five languages most people recognize are undeniably members of the club. They all evolved from Vulgar Latin, the colloquial tongue spoken by soldiers, settlers, and merchants of the Roman Empire. As the empire crumbled, Latin fragmented, slowly morphing over centuries into distinct local forms.

The “Big Five” are:

• Spanish (Español/Castellano): Over 500 million speakers worldwide.
• Portuguese (Português): With major populations in Portugal, Brazil, and several African nations.
• French (Français): A global language of diplomacy, culture, and cuisine.
• Italian (Italiano): The language of Dante, opera, and the heart of the old Roman Empire.
• Romanian (Română): A linguistic island in Eastern Europe, surrounded by Slavic languages.

These languages achieved prominence because they became standardized and tied to the formation of powerful nation-states. They are used in government, taught in schools, and have rich, independent literary traditions. For most people, this is where the story ends. But for linguists, it’s just the beginning.

What’s in a Name? The Language vs. Dialect Dilemma

The heart of the counting problem lies in a famous quip by the Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

This single sentence perfectly captures the fact that the line between a “language” and a “dialect” is often political, not purely linguistic. Linguists use several criteria to try and draw a line, but each has its flaws.

1. Mutual Intelligibility

This seems like the most logical test. If speakers of two varieties can understand each other without prior study, they are speaking dialects of the same language. If they can’t, they are speaking different languages. Simple, right?

In practice, it’s a spectrum. A Spanish speaker from Madrid might understand a good chunk of what a Portuguese speaker from Lisbon is saying, but struggle with the pronunciation and some vocabulary. Are they mutually intelligible? Kind of. What about a Sicilian speaker trying to talk to someone speaking Piedmontese from Northern Italy? The conversation would likely grind to a halt, even though both are officially considered “dialects” of Italian. This shows that mutual intelligibility isn’t a simple yes/no question.

2. Sociopolitical Factors (The Army and Navy)

This is often the deciding factor. A “language” typically has official status. It has a standardized grammar and spelling, is used in media and education, and serves as a symbol of a national or regional identity. Catalan, for example, was long dismissed by some as a “dialect” of Spanish. However, it has its own standardized form, a rich literary history, and is the national language of Andorra and a co-official language in several Spanish communities (like Catalonia). By any sociopolitical measure, it is a language in its own right.

3. Ethno-linguistic Identity

Sometimes, it just comes down to what the speakers themselves believe. If a community feels that what they speak is distinct and a core part of their cultural identity, they will call it a language, regardless of what outsiders or politicians say. This is a powerful force in language revitalization movements across the world.

Expanding the Roster: The Well-Established Contenders

When we apply these criteria, the list of Romance languages quickly grows beyond five. Here are a few well-established languages that absolutely belong on the list:

• Catalan: Spoken in eastern Spain, Andorra, and parts of France and Italy. It’s not a dialect of Spanish but evolved independently from Vulgar Latin.
• Galician (Galego): Spoken in northwestern Spain. It’s incredibly close to Portuguese—so close that there’s a debate about whether they are sister languages or if Galician is a dialect of Portuguese. Most linguists and its speakers consider it distinct.
• Occitan (also called Lenga d’òc): The historic language of Southern France and surrounding areas. It was the language of the medieval troubadours but was suppressed by the French state and is now endangered.
• Sardinian (Sardu): Spoken on the island of Sardinia, it is often considered the most conservative of all Romance languages, meaning it retains the most features of its Latin ancestor. It is profoundly different from standard Italian.
• Romansh: One of the four national languages of Switzerland, spoken in the canton of Graubünden.

Just by adding these, our count is already at 10.

The 40+ Club: Diving into the Dialect Continuum

So how do we get to numbers like 40 or more? We have to look at the concept of a dialect continuum.

Imagine walking from a village in southern Portugal all the way to northern France. At no point would you cross a clear, hard border where the language suddenly changes. Instead, the speech of each village would be slightly different from its neighbor, but still mutually intelligible. The farther you get from your starting point, however, the more the differences accumulate, until the speech at the end of your journey is completely unintelligible to someone from where you began.

This is the reality for much of Romance-speaking Europe. Italy and France, in particular, are not home to one language and its dialects, but rather to a vast continuum of distinct Romance varieties that predate the modern standardized national languages.

Linguistic databases like Ethnologue, which aims to catalogue all the world’s languages, list 44 living Romance languages. They do this by analyzing linguistic structures and testing for mutual intelligibility. Their list includes:

• Gallo-Italic languages: Such as Piedmontese, Lombard, and Ligurian in Northern Italy. These are structurally closer to French and Occitan than to standard Italian.
• The Oïl languages: A family in Northern France and Belgium that includes not just French but also Picard and Walloon.
• Aragonese and Astur-Leonese: Languages spoken in northern Spain, often overshadowed by Spanish.
• Friulian: A language in northeastern Italy, related to Romansh.
• Mirandese: A recognized minority language in a small part of Portugal.

So, What’s the Final Count?

As you’ve probably guessed, there is no single, definitive number. The answer depends entirely on the lens you use:

• The Political Answer (5-10): If you only count standardized national languages with “an army and a navy”, the number is low.
• The Linguist’s Answer (40+): If you classify based on distinct historical evolution, grammar, and vocabulary, ignoring political borders, the number skyrockets.
• The Speaker’s Answer (It’s Complicated): A speaker in Venice might proudly call their speech “Venetian” (a language), while a speaker in Naples might see “Neapolitan” as their true mother tongue, even if both fall under the political umbrella of “Italy.”

Ultimately, the question “How many Romance languages are there?” is less interesting than the reasons we can’t easily answer it. It reveals that language is a living, breathing thing—shaped by empires, defined by communities, and a powerful symbol of who we are. So the next time someone asks, you can tell them the answer is 5, 10, or over 40… and they’re all correct.