The history of Romance languages states that they are subdivision of the Indo-European language family. The French language is also a Romance language. Romance languages were derived from Vulgar Latin, a dialect spoken in many Roman provinces. This is so because there are several features of Vulgar Latin (as opposed to 1Classical Latin, the formal dialect of the Roman Empire) that have been included in the Romance languages. These variations are mainly related to the prepositions, case system, verbal tenses, application of articles and comparative inflections.

Even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Vulgar Latin maintained its dominance mainly because it was adopted by the Germanic tribes that were spread across Europe. The differentiation of Vulgar Latin into separate regional languages took place after the fifth century of the Common Era. In some regions, the local culture had a higher influence on the development of these new languages, but in others, many aspects of Vulgar Latin were included without many changes. The history of Romance languages shows that this non-uniformity of the Romance languages existed for another thousand years, when the printing press started gaining significance in the seventeenth century. From this time onward, the Romance languages started getting standardized in countries across Europe depending upon the local political situations.

When studying the history of Romance languages, one can observe that modern languages”such as French, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish”all are a part of the Romance languages family. They are distinct from one another because of the inclusion of features of local dialects. The development of these languages has also depended on the influence of specific regions. Because Paris has been a French center of power for many years, the French dialect spoken there was given the status of “Standard French, ” the language of the state regardless of existence of several other French dialects in France.

Like French, several other Romance languages have gained importance in various states, making them official languages of those respective countries, an important milestone in the history of Romance languages. For example, Portuguese is an official language of Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Macau and Portugal. Similarly, although Standard French is the official language of France, it also enjoys official status in more than twenty-five other countries. Spanish, another Romance language, is one of the world’s major spoken languages after English and Chinese.