Like all Romance languages, the Iberian Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin, the nonstandard form of the Latin language spoken by soldiers and merchants throughout the Roman Empire. With the expansion of the empire, Vulgar Latin came to be spoken by inhabitants of the various Roman-controlled territories. Latin and its descendants have been spoken in Iberia since the Punic Wars, when the Romans conquered the territory. The modern Iberian Romance languages were formed roughly through the following process:
The diversification of Latin spoken in Iberia, with slight differences depending on location.
Development of Old Spanish, Galician-Portuguese, Astur-Leonese and Navarro-Aragonese and early Catalan language from Latin between the eighth and tenth centuries. The genetic classification of early Catalan and Occitan is uncertain. Some scholars place it within Ibero-Romance, others place it within Gallo-Romance.
Common traits between Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan
This list points to common traits of these Iberian subsets, especially when compared to the other Romance languages in general. Thus, changes such as Catalan vuit/huit and Portuguese oito vs. Spanish ocho are not shown here, as the change -it- > -ch- is exclusive to Spanish among the Iberian Romance languages.
Between Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan
Phonetic
The length difference between r/rr is preserved through phonetic means, so that the second consonant in words such as caro and carro are not the same in any of the three.
Latin U remains and is not changed to.
Between Spanish and Catalan, but not Portuguese
Phonetic
The length difference between n/nn is preserved through phonetic means, so that the last consonant in words such as año and mano are not the same.
The length difference between l/ll is preserved through phonetic means, so that the second consonant in words such as valle and vale are not the same. This also affects some initial L in Catalan.
Initial Latin CL/FL/PL are palatalized further than in Italian, and become indistinguishable.
Final e/o remains.
Grammatical
The synthetic preterite, inherited from earlier stages of Latin, remains the main past tense.
Between Portuguese and Catalan, but not Spanish
Phonetic
Velarized L, which existed in Latin, is preserved at the end of syllables, and was later generalized to all positions in most dialects of both languages.
Stressed Latin e/o, both open and closed, is preserved so and does not become a diphthong.
Statuses
Politically, there are four major officially recognised Iberian Romance languages:
Galician, co-official in Galicia and also spoken in adjacent western parts of Asturias and Castile and León. Closely related to Portuguese, with Spanish influence. It shares the same origin as Portuguese, from the medieval Galician-Portuguese. Modern Galician is spoken by around 3.2 million people and is ranked 160th by number of speakers.
Additionally, the Asturian language, although not an official language, is recognised by the autonomous community of Asturias. It is one of the Astur-Leonese languages with Mirandese, which in Portugal has official status as minority language.
Family tree
The Iberian Romance languages are a conventional group of Romance languages. Many authors use the term in a geographical sense although they are not necessarily a phylogenetic group. Phylogenetically, there is disagreement about what languages should be considered within the Iberian Romance group; for example, some authors consider that East Iberian, also called Occitano-Romance, could be more closely related to languages of northern Italy. A common conventional geographical grouping is the following:
