Here's why:
* "Romance" as a language family: When referring to the Romance language family (which includes languages like Spanish, French, Italian, etc.), it's used as a common noun, describing a group of languages. Common nouns are not capitalized unless they are the first word of a sentence or part of a proper noun.
* Capitalization rules: Proper nouns (names of specific people, places, or things) are capitalized. The "Romance languages" are a group, not a specific name, so they are not capitalized.
Examples:
* "Spanish is a romance language."
* "The Romance languages originated from Latin."
However, if you are specifically referring to the Romance language family, you can capitalize it. But this is less common and usually used in academic writing:
* "The Romance Languages are a significant branch of the Indo-European language family."