Venetian or Venetan (Venetian: vèneto, vènet or léngua vèneta) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by almost four million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia. Venetian is usually referred to as an Italian dialect although it is a Western Romance language, a different branch of Romance from that of Italian. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby Istriot.