Friulan is a language. It is a Romance language meaning that it is descended from Latin. It belongs to the Rhaeto-Romance group. Other members of this group are Romansh (the 4th national language of Switzerland with about 65,000 speakers) and Ladin (which is spoken by about 20,000 people in Italy in the provinces of Bolzano,Trento and Belluno). In Italy there are many minority language groups such as Catalans, Greeks, Albanians. However only Ladin, Friulan and Sardinian are languages that are unique to Italy. Linguists agree that Friulan is a language and that it does not belong to the Italo-Romance group. They do not agree on the status of Italian dialects such as Venetian, Sicilian etc.. Some linguist classify these as dialects others as languages. This is where confusion arises and some Italians claim that Friulan is a dialect of Italian. When we say Friulan is a language we do not claim to be superior or that our language is superior. We are only repeating the fact that linguists believe that the differences between Italian and Friulan are so great (for example plurals in Friulan are create by adding an 's' while in Italian the ending vowel is changed to another vowel) as to require Friulan's classification as a separate language.
Below is a comparison of Friulan, English, Italian and French.
| Friulan | English | Italian | French |
| un | one | uno | un |
| doi | two | due | due |
| tre | three | tre | trois |
| cuatri | four | quattro | quattre |
| cinc | five | cinque | cinq |
| sis | six | sei | six |
| siet | seven | sette | sept |
| vot | eight | otto | huit |
| nuf | nine | nove | neuf |
| dis | ten | dieci | dis |
| omp | man | uomo | homme |
| femine | woman | donna | femme |
| cjan | dog | cane | chien |
| gjat | cat | gatto | chat |
| cjamese | shirt | camicia | chemise |
| bregons | pants | pantaloni | |