Italian). In this scheme, "East" includes the languages of central and southern Italy, and the Balkan Romance (or "Eastern Romance") languages in Romania, Greece, and elsewhere in the Balkans; "West" includes the languages of Portugal, Spain, France, northern Italy and Switzerland. Sardinian does not easily fit in this scheme. "Conservative" vs. "innovatory". This is a non-genetic division whose precise boundaries are subject to debate. Generally, the Gallo-Romance languages (discussed further below) form the core "innovatory" languages, with standard French generally considered the most innovatory of all, while the languages near the periphery (which include Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian) are "conservative". Sardinian is generally acknowledged the most conservative Romance language, and was also the first language to split off genetically from the rest, possibly as early as the first century BC. Dante famously denigrated the Sardinians for the conservativeness of their speech, remarking that they imitate Latin "like monkeys imitate men". Italo-Western vs. Eastern vs. Sardinian The main subfamilies that have been proposed by Ethnologue within the various classification schemes for Romance languages are: Italo-Western, the largest group, which includes languages such as Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French. Eastern Romance, which includes the Romance languages of Eastern Europe, such as Romanian. Southern Romance, which includes a few languages with particularly conservative features, such as Sardinian and, according to some authors, Corsican as well to a more limited extent. This family is thought to have included the now-vanished Romance languages of North Africa (or at least, they appear to have evolved some phonological features and their vowels in the same way). This three-way division is made primarily based on the outcome of Vulgar Latin (Proto-Romance) vowels: Italo-Western is in turn split along the so-called La Spezia–Rimini Line in northern Italy, which divides the central and southern Italian languages from the so-called Western Romance languages to the north and west. The primary characteristics dividing the two are: Phonemic lenition of intervocalic stops, which happens to the northwest but not to the southeast. Degemination of geminate stops (producing new intervocalic single voiceless stops, after the old ones were lenited), which again happens to the northwest but not to the southeast. Deletion of intertonic vowels (between the stressed syllable and either the first or last syllable), again in the northwest but not the southeast. Use of plurals in /s/ in the northwest vs. plurals using vowel change in the southeast. Development of palatalized