The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, Latin languages, Neolatin languages or Neo-Latin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome. There are more than 600 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and Africa, as well as many smaller regions scattered throughout the world. Today, there are 25 surviving Latin languages; but perhaps many more were previously in existence which evolved from local vernaculars of Latin.

The six most widely spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese and Galician, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan. Among numerous other Romance languages are Corsican, Leonese, Occitan, Aromanian, Sardinian and Venetian. Romance languages have their roots in Vulgar Latin, the popular sociolect of Latin spoken by soldiers, settlers and merchants of the Empire, as distinguished from the Classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which the language was generally written.

Between 350 BC and AD 150, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin the dominant native language in continental Western Europe. Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and collapse in the 5th century, dialects of Latin began to diverge within each local area at an accelerated rate, and eventually evolved into languages of their own right.

The overseas empires established by Portugal, Spain and France from the 15th century onward spread their languages to the other continents, to such an extent that about 70% of all Romance speakers today live outside Europe.

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