Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T14:14:30.268Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Geography and distribution of the Romance languages in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2013

By
Alvise Andreose  and
Lorenzo Renzi
Edited by
Martin Maiden ,
John Charles Smith  and
Adam Ledgeway
John Charles Smith
Affiliation:
St Catherine's College, Oxford
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Romance languages are in immediate contact with a number of other language varieties. As for Indo-European languages, the Celtic language Breton, spoken in Brittany, is the result of medieval colonization from the British Isles, and there are numerous German-speaking outcrops in Italy, due to medieval or modern colonization in the valleys. The Romance languages continue in situ the Latin spoken in the western part of the Roman Empire. The dialectal variety within Italy is unparalleled in Romance or in any other linguistic domain in Europe. The modern sociolinguistic situation of the Romance varieties may be efficiently described in terms of bilingualism and diglossia. Romance-speaking Europe played the major part in nineteenth- and twentieth-century migrations. North American and British sociolinguistics, which mainly studied urban language, appeared both a dangerous competitor and a potentially fertile model for traditional linguistic geography to follow, perhaps the answer to the crisis.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages , pp. 283 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×