The Original Latin Countries of Europe. Italy, Romania, France, Spain, Portugal.

Latin Europe is the part of Europe in which Romance languages are predominant. Countries or areas in which such language is officially recognized and/or de facto spoken as a minority language are sometimes included. Their languages share a common background, all being descendants of Vulgar Latin.

The heart of the Latin Europe is situated in southwestern Europe and comprises of four countries around the northwestern Mediterranean Basin (also known as the Latin Arch): Italy, France, Spain (including the Canary Islands) and Portugal (including the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores). During the middle ages modern day Germany would be included in this list. These countries have Roman Catholicism as the prevalent religion. This definition, in a larger sense, also includes smaller political entities of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City(all of these states are members of the Latin Union except the Holy See that has permanent observer status), along with adjacent Wallonia (in Belgium), Romandy and Italian- and Romansh-speaking Switzerland. Istria county in Croatia and Italian-speaking municipalities of Slovenia, often seen linguistically and culturally integral with neighbouring Italy. On the other hand, in particular contexts, the usage of "Latin Europe" may well be ambiguous such as inclusion of Israel. 1PDF (222 KiB)

Romania and Moldova both speak Romanian, a Romance language but are located far from the core of Latin Europe, surrounded by "Slavic Europe" and Hungary. However, these countries have shown conscious enthusiasm for recognition as parts of Latin Europe, historically expressed in official regulation of Latin Romanian script in 1860, Romanian spelling reform in 1993, and installation of the Latin script for the Romanian language in Moldova. Both of these countries are, currently, full members of the Latin Union, and Romanian is an official language of that organisation. Dalmatia, with its own (now extinct) Romance language Dalmatian, may also be mentioned.

Linguistically speaking the first mentioned languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese), as well as Dalmatian, belong to the western branch of the Romance languages, while Romanian and Aromanian (speaken in the southern part of the Balkan peninsula) belong to the eastern branch.