Romance Languages in Europe

The italic branch represents the languages spoken in italy after various indo european speaking tribes settled there. Overtime, the latin dialect spoken in rome one out as the roman empire came to dominate italy and eventually the entire mediterranian and western europe. The word romance or romantic actually comes from the french word for roman as well. It originally described a type of french literature which involved themes of chivalry. Now, latin is the biggest influence on English outside of native germanic language family. Estimates are that as many as one quarter of the words in a full sized latin dictionary have made their way into english in some form.