I know a great deal about the history of the English language. I know where it comes from, what phases it has gone through, and why it is still a Germanic language even though it looks so Latinate.

The history of a language like Italian is simple enough to guess. Obviously it's a direct descendant of Latin as it was spoken in the Italian peninsula, changing gradually over the years. It wouldn't be completely inaccurate to call Italian "Modern Latin", though of course nobody does.

But where the heck does French come from?

It's classified as a Romance language, and the Latinate elements are obvious even at a glance. So the answer should be, "It's a direct descendant of Latin as it was spoken in Gaul, changing gradually over the years. It's another dialect of 'Modern Latin'."

But the early history of France confuses the issue for me. As I understand it, the modern nation of France is a direct descendant of the Frankish Empire forged by Charlemagne.

But the Franks were a Germanic people. Germany itself is also a direct descendant of the Frankish Empire, through a different grandson of Charlemagne.

Obviously somebody in France was speaking a Latinate language called French by 1066, because that was the language imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons by the Norman invaders, and that's why English today looks so Latinate. (It would look more like Dutch and especially Frisian today if William had lost.)

So, what language did Charlemagne speak, two and a half centuries before William of Normandy? Did he speak Frankish? Or did he speak a Latinate ancestor of modern French? If he spoke a Latinate language, then when and why had the Franks abandoned their Germanic tongue? And if he did speak Frankish, then how and by what means did Frankish disappear from West Francia to be replaced by a descendant of Latin? Does modern French show signs of Frankish influence? Does Frankish survive today in any form in some small pocket of France the way certain Celtic languages survive in France and England? (I should point out before I get any violent flames that when I say 'England' here, I mean 'England'. It wasn't a sloppy way of saying 'Britain', because I'm not referring to Welsh or Scots Gaelic. I'm referring to Cornish.)

Well, that interested me too. But not about France. The answer I got so far, they don't know very exactly. Gallo-roman did in some places stay, while in others it did vanish. And this seems to be dependent from many factors. For one, if a majority of the people are germanic speakers, that does not mean, that they wouldn't adapt gallo-romanic. In some areas they still live mixed parallel, even if those mixes sometimes came too be in the high-middle-ages.

What mix lead to what language in the end is still mostly "dark" as far as I know.

The Franks coming did not mean the other people already living there would vanish. And these people were at least latinized and spoke some kind of latin. So west of the rhine there was a large population speaking a mixture of latin, frankish and some other languages. But East of the rhine, the roman empire did not have that much influence, so latin did not spread that much. So at the times of charlemagne (or Karl dem Großen) the germanic languages had a much stronger influence on the developing german. That is as far as my humble knowledge goes the reason of german and french faling apart.

Karl maybe spoke latin, the language of the educated.:confused:

Just a few remark about English. To me, English is a mix of Norse and French. The grammar is simplified german grammar and the vocabulary comes from the French. Which means by the way a "french" already existed at the time of William the Conqueror.

French is a kind of mix with strong latin roots and other influences. It's not because the Franks invaded the region that people who were there before had left. French is still today really close to Italian. Actually, today's French is mostly the language spoken in Paris during the Middle Age that has spread to the whole country (a bit like English is originally the language of London).

Hey Marla, you forget the old Celtic influences on English - which kind of help to explain how the "Franks" got so Gaulish (who also spoke something like the Ancient Brits, and similar to how Welsh and other Gaelics of today.

So, words like "my" and "me" are Celric, rather than German ("Ich" and "I").

Also remember that, rather than complete population migration, pockets of settlements built up and overlapped in differenct areas. So whereas "eggs" might be the word for the bird embryo's in one district, "Eiren" or "Oeuven" or even "Eifen" might be the word just a tiny distance away - say 20 miles or so for even medieval English.

Don't overlook the Celts.

French belongs to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. It descends from the Vulgar Latin spoken in Roman Gaul. When the Franks came, they, like most Germanic tribes who conquered Roman land, adopted the Roman language. Obviously Frankish words and names (not notably Charles, iirc) were added, and, over time, the phonology of the language changed radically. Nasalized vowels were added (Old French actually had far more than modern French does) and, eventually, the end of words ceased to be pronounced, but that took a while. Old French still pronounced the entire word.

Here's a family tree. French is actually closer to Spanish than it is to Italian, but not by much.

Originally posted by CruddyLeper
So, words like "my" and "me" are Celric, rather than German ("Ich" and "I").It's funny cause "my" and "me" sounds a lot like "ma" and "mon" in french. ;)

Well Seleucus Nicator, don't trust your tree. French is closer to Italian than to spanish. Without speaking neither Spanish nor Italian, I can easily read a text in italian (well maybe not machiavelli but a short text, I can). In spanish, I can't. There are other influences in spanish (maybe arabic) and as a result the spanish vocabulary is more different. I guess in grammar spanish is closer, but in vocabulary it's definitly italian.

Actually, if there are so many languages in Europe, it's mostly because "villages" were very isolated during the Middle Age. The direct effect of that is a Europe divided in many dialects and we had to wait for the 19th century to see the first language "unifications". English was the language of London, French was the language of Paris, Spanish was the language of Madrid. Spanish is actually a very funny country. As you know, the language is actually castillan (In Spain, no one speaks spanish, they speak "castellano"). During the Colonization of South America, many Castillans moved to South America and exported their language. As a result, Castilla is today the most empty region of the country (everyone has left ! it remains no one !).

My pen -> Mein stift -> mon stylo
you saw me -> Du hast mich gesehen -> tu m'as vu

to have -> haben -> (h)avoir

my -> mein -> mon
me -> mich -> moi

I'm pretty sure, that my and me have no celtic roots.

je -> ich -> I
tu -> du -> you

all three languages are close.

I think one/two/three/un/deux/troi/eins/zwei/drei are counted as indogerman even. But I may be mistaken.

German itself is a very "latin" language, I've heard. As I can't speak no latin, I can't verify that.

Actually, if there are so many languages in Europe, it's mostly because "villages" were very isolated during the Middle Age. The direct effect of that is a Europe divided in many dialects and we had to wait for the 19th century to see the first language "unifications".

That's actually why Swissgerman is so different from standard German. It remained and wasn't standardized. We just took their dictionaries to write. ;)

This is a point I always like to emphasize, that language development is often portrayed as a simple and direct affair with bold lines drawn on charts indicating relationships when in reality it is a long and messy affair, usually with many players and circumstances.

When Charlemagne's realm was divided between his three sons, Charles (west), Lothar (middle) and Louis (east), in the mid-9th century the stage was set for independent French and German (and an interesting middle interloper who would last until the death of Burgundy) linguistic development. And as Marla mentioned, there wasn't just one "French" or "German" language, at least not until the 19th century and its nationalist obsession with standardization. The other versions of a language suddenly became known as "dialects", and were usually discouraged or even suppressed, either through schools (universal education) or through the government.

For Spanish, a language that similar to French has Celtic and Germanic as well as Latin linguistic origins, I would bet the differences developed because after the 8th century conquest of Iberia by the Moslems the various component peoples that would come together to make modern Spaniards - Ibero-Celts, Roman Latins and Germanic Vandals - were isolated from the rest of Christendom. French and Italian peoples were able to trade and contact one another (in relative terms) while the peoples of Iberia had little such contact for centuries with their linguistic bretheren to the east. This is not to discouynt the possible impact and influence of Arabic or Berber on modern Spanish as Marla suggested - Sicilian for instance has just such an influence, not to mention Maltese - but I'm only saying one needn't lok even that far for the differences that separate Spanish from the other Latin-derived languages.

My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon, that in fact almost all Celt-derived loan words in modern English came later when the English trampled through Wales, Scotland and Ireland and are almost exclusively related to artifacts. This means that these words derived from the most basic form of language borrowing; coming across a new and unknown artifact from another culture and simply adopting their word for it, like how the English word "walkman" has permeated most languages.

I'm pretty sure, that my and me have no celtic roots.


Yeah, languages don't usually borrow "core" words like that, although English did take the word "the" from Norse.

However, the me/I thing comes from Indo-European, and is evident in all of its daughter languages.


German itself is a very "latin" language, I've heard. As I can't speak no latin, I can't verify that.


German isn't a Latin language, but both German and Latin are Indo-European languages. You can consider Latin to be an Uncle of modern High German: they are not directly related but both have traits of an earlier common ancestor.

IIRC Most modern languages (not just Romance) went through a period of "(re)latinization" during the 19th century.

Originally posted by schmiddi
The Franks coming did not mean the other people already living there would vanish.

No, but it's comparatively rare for invaders who conquer an existing people to adopt the language of the conquered and entirely lose their own. (People who conquer China tend to do that. But the usual world pattern is for the conquerer's language to become supreme.) When the Normans conquered England, they did eventually stop speaking French . . . but by then they had influenced the English language so much that any text written before the Conquest was no longer recognizable as English. They put such a large Latinate element into the language that English speakers today, without special training, can often guess the meanings of signs written in Spanish or French, while signs written in German or Dutch (languages much more closely related to English) that say the same thing are incomprehensible. Many English speakers even today believe that English is descended from Latin, even though it isn't.

By analogy, my prediction at the time might have been that Latin would survive in Gaul (Latin is remarkably tenacious), but at the expense of being filled with so many Frankish words that by this point in history a French person would find a Germanic language easier to grasp than a Romance language. But of course that didn't happen. French today is thoroughly Romance and, so far as I am aware, displays very little Germanic influence.

That is what surprised me. Charlemagne was the most powerful man in Europe, and his empire was so powerful and influential that not one, but two of Europe's most historically important countries are directly descended from it. Yet Frankish, which I can only assume was his native language, has vanished so completely that it doesn't even seem to have had any effect on French. One is left with the impression that French would pretty much be the same language today even if the Franks had been weak, and the modern nation had descended purely from Romano-Gauls. (Though of course it wouldn't be called 'French', 'français'. It would be something more like 'Gallic', 'gaulois'. The words 'France' and 'French' came from the word 'Frank'. But can that really have been all the influence Charlemagne's tongue had?)


Karl maybe spoke latin, the language of the educated.:confused:

He did, but it wasn't his native language. He learned it when he became educated, like everyone else by that point in history. I didn't really consider that as a possible origin of French, because up until quite recently, Latin was the language of the educated all across Europe, and that's had little, if any, effect on local languages.

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Just a few remark about English. To me, English is a mix of Norse and French. The grammar is simplified german grammar and the vocabulary comes from the French. Which means by the way a "french" already existed at the time of William the Conqueror.


There's actually not all that much Norse influence in English. There is definitely some, and some of the words that came to us from Norse are words we couldn't do without (sky, knife, husband, they, window, dirt, law, and neck, to name a few). But the influence is mainly in vocabulary. The grammar is almost entirely our own.

All the most commonly used words in English, especially grammatical words, are native, but most of the longer substance words are from Latin or French.

Actually, as much as I complain about the Normans, it can be quite useful. We have a lot of Germanic words in our language with Latinate synonyms, and that allows us shades of meaning denied to other languages.

English ---> French ---> Latin
kingly ---> royal ---> regal

Or consider the phrase, 'cordial reception'. It's a Latinate way of rephrasing the native 'hearty welcome'. They mean exactly the same thing, but having both allows us to choose. When we wish to express warmth and intimacy, we can say 'hearty welcome'. When we wish to express kind but distant formality, we can say 'cordial reception'.

Originally posted by SeleucusNicator
Obviously Frankish words and names (not notably Charles, iirc) were added

A fact I had failed to observe. Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus). That could simply signify that his father was educated and wanted his son to have a Latin name. But it could also mean that Gallic Latin, in whatever form it had taken by the eighth century, had already taken over as the language of the Franks. And even if it was simply the former, that could mean, by implication, that Latin was in the process of taking over and had become a prestige language among the Franks. (Just as the English, after the Conquest, stopped giving their children English names like Æthelbehrt and Rædwald in favor of Latin or French names like John and Geoffrey.) Perhaps the Frankish language did simply vanish, after all.

Originally posted by Vrylakas
My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon

That's correct. The Celtic languages had surprisingly little influence on English, and what influence they had is basically non-essential.

At any rate, 'me' and 'my' are not Celtic. They are native to English.

Originally posted by SeleucusNicator


Yeah, languages don't usually borrow "core" words like that, although English did take the word "the" from Norse.

However, the me/I thing comes from Indo-European, and is evident in all of its daughter languages.

Yeah, I thought so. But I am confused in the meaninf of Indo-German/Indo-European. Mainly because of conflicting statements from people pretty sure about the meaning. My initial (school) concept of those: Synonymous. Yet I've stumbled over people, which said, that there is a difference between Indo-European/Indo-German. Which leaves to wonder, what it is.

To the norse part, as LW already stressed, English is not as close to the north-germanic languages as to Dutch and German, isch es nöt ? (is it not)


German isn't a Latin language, but both German and Latin are Indo-European languages. You can consider Latin to be an Uncle of modern High German: they are not directly related but both have traits of an earlier common ancestor. [/B]

Well, I've heard that German (and dutch) is something like in the middle of romanic and germanic languages. It's latin influx isn't as high as in the romanic languages, yet English has nearly no original latin influences. Nearly all came via French. Which means, that German (and Dutch) have some romanic grammar influxes. I'm not sure if that's true, yet I am inclined to belief that, as German grammar seems to be near to French grammar in some cases, while not to English.

Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus).

"Charlemagne" is in many European languages remembered in their language, i.e. you will find many "charlemagne-squares" all over, in the language there spoken. I am inclined to belief, that the people knew them in the particular language they spoke.

Earlier Frankish kings had Germanic names like 'Clovis' and 'Clothar'. But Charlemagne's name was Charles, which is indeed a Latin name (Carolus).

It may be rare for invader, but not for immigrants. Where I live, you can clearly see layers of location names, changing from gallo-romanic to allemanic. The language-adoption process did take it's time, and actually, the allemanic did in the beginning adapt gallo-romanic. The constant influx of new immigrants made allemanic predominant in the end in some eras, not the "invasion" itself. And in some areas, alleminc would cease to exist in favour of gallo-romanic. I am inclined to belief, that new influx would have been needed in France to offset the seemingly quite succesful gallo-romanic.

Originally posted by Yago

Yeah, I thought so. But I am confused in the meaninf of Indo-German/Indo-European. Mainly because of conflicting statements from people pretty sure about the meaning. My initial (school) concept of those: Synonymous. Yet I've stumbled over people, which said, that there is a difference between Indo-European/Indo-German. Which leaves to wonder, what it is.

To the norse part, as LW already stressed, English is not as close to the north-germanic languages as to Dutch and German, isch es nöt ? (is it not)


I've never heard Indo-German. Perhaps they mean Proto-Germanic?

You can think of Indo-European as being spoken among a group of people living somewhere in Anatolia or the Caucuses 8,000 to 15,000 years ago. Eventually, groups split off from the main "tribe". These were the Italics (Latin), the Indo-Aryans (Iranians and north Indians), the Slavs, the Baltic people (Latvia, Lithuania, Old Prussia, etc.), the Germanic people, the Anatolians (Hittites), the Tocharians (settled in eastern China and died out), the Celts, the Greeks, and the Armenians.

All of these people originally spoke Indo-European. The dialect of Indo-European they spoke when they broke off is called Proto-whatever (Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic, etc.). Eventually, the Proto-languages had important changes (Grimm's law for Germanic, most famously) and became quite different, often splitting into even more languages.

Dutch, German, and English are all "North Sea Germanic" languages. (I could draw and upload the family map for the Germanic languages, but it is by far the most complicated of the Indo-European family and I have finals tomorrow). I'm not sure if you could say any is closer to Norse than any other.

Remember, there is a difference between being related to a language and being influenced by another language. English is just like German's strange cousin that decided to start dressing up like French. However, that doesn't change his genetic makeup.

I've never heard Indo-German.

BTW, "Indo-German" is what Germans use for "Indo-European". Indogermanische; they apparently like how that sounds...

Originally posted by Vrylakas
I've never heard Indo-German.

BTW, "Indo-German" is what Germans use for "Indo-European". Indogermanische; they apparently like how that sounds...

And I think that's where my confusion stems from. Because I had to do some research for a project in history classes (co-incidently about Germany 1930ies), found that word, used that word, got told by my teacher that's a nah-nah-nah word, that's Indo-European. Later bumped into a colleague (studiying anglistic), talked... I used Indo-European. He said, what should that mean, that's Indo-Germanic and lectured me about it (he's a nice guy, yet a little bit blasé). Since then I am confused and wary about that terminology. Yet, I've seen many posters, particularly from the UK, using Indo-germanic.

And by the way, "germanic", gives me the creeps sometimes. It has a certain vibe to it, that makes one uneasy.

Originally posted by Vrylakas
My understanding of English philology is that the Celtic languages had minimal impact on the early Anglo-Saxon, that in fact almost all Celt-derived loan words in modern English came later when the English trampled through Wales, Scotland and Ireland and are almost exclusively related to artifacts. This means that these words derived from the most basic form of language borrowing; coming across a new and unknown artifact from another culture and simply adopting their word for it, like how the English word "walkman" has permeated most languages.

I remember reading something about this too. The English language has only a handful of celtic lone words were as the French have hundreds...I think. Its been a while since i read it.

Originally posted by Vrylakas
For Spanish, a language that similar to French has Celtic and Germanic as well as Latin linguistic origins, I would bet the differences developed because after the 8th century conquest of Iberia by the Moslems the various component peoples that would come together to make modern Spaniards - Ibero-Celts, Roman Latins and Germanic Vandals - were isolated from the rest of Christendom. French and Italian peoples were able to trade and contact one another (in relative terms) while the peoples of Iberia had little such contact for centuries with their linguistic bretheren to the east. This is not to discouynt the possible impact and influence of Arabic or Berber on modern Spanish as Marla suggested - Sicilian for instance has just such an influence, not to mention Maltese - but I'm only saying one needn't lok even that far for the differences that separate Spanish from the other Latin-derived languages.

I think your hypothesis is wrong, Spain was never really separated from the rest of Europe, particulary not linguistically. You can see that by comparing the southern french dialects (or former languages as you pointed out...) to catalan, which are very similar, and catalan is also very similar to castillian and portuguese. The cause of the difference is that modern french is the direct descendent of the francien, the language of Île de France in the middle age, which was quite different from the languages of the south. The territory of France was linguisticaly divided between the langues d'Oc in the south and the langues d'Oil in the north, which probably comes from a linguistic substrat that precedes roman domination. The southern langues d'Oc had a greater cultural prestige in the middle ages, particulary provençal, the language of poetry all across western Europe. It was the growing political proeminence of Paris that imposed its language over the other northern languages and later over the more prestigious southern languages. But in fact 200 years ago, only 1/3 of the french spoke french, it was only after the XIX century that two institutions, the school and the army, and the policy of centralization reversed the figures. OTOH, and unlike what someone said, italian is not the direct descendent of latin either. Italian is the dialect of Florence, the language in which Dante and Petrarca wrote. No other italian language reached this cultural prestige, so, the absence of a rival having the political favour (contrary to the french case) meant that the florentine dialect was the chosen one to be the standard italian language after the political unification in the XIX century.

@Loaf Warden: the reason why the franks adopted the language of the lands they ruled was because their language hadn't the prestige of latin. Contrarily to what you say, the norman case seems to me the exception actually. If you look closer, you'll see that Vandals, Suevs and Visigoths didn't change a thing in Iberia and Ostrogoths and Lombards also adopted the italian languages. The germanic peoples just wanted the same lifestyle of the south. Furthermorre, the only stable institution of the time was the Church, and the clergy was definitely made of the local people, and the high positions in the church continued to be occupied by the gallo-roman or hispano-roman aristocracy. Linguisticaly, the germanic invasions only moved the romance-germanic border a bit to the west, but not that much.

A few points:

1) Charlemagne spoke Frankish and that definitely was his native language. Einhard speaks of Charles' reforms:i

It was after he had received the imperial name that, finding the laws of his people very defective (the Franks have two sets of laws, very different in many particulars), he determined to add what was wanting, to reconcile the discrepancies, and to correct what was vicious and wrongly cited in them. However, he went no further in this matter than to supplement the laws by a few capitularies, and those imperfect ones; but he caused the unwritten laws of all the tribes that came under his rule to be compiled and reduced to writing . He also had the old rude songs that celeate the deeds and wars of the ancient kings written out for transmission to posterity. He began a grammar of his native language. He gave the months names in his own tongue, in place of the Latin and barbarous names by which they were formerly known among the Franks. He likewise designated the winds by twelve appropriate names; there were hardly more than four distinctive ones in use before. He called January, Wintarmanoth; February, Hornung; March, Lentzinmanoth; April, Ostarmanoth; May, Winnemanoth; June, Brachmanoth; July, Heuvimanoth; August, Aranmanoth; September, Witumanoth; October, Windumemanoth; Novemher, Herbistmanoth; December, Heilagmanoth. He styled the winds as follows; Subsolanus, Ostroniwint; Eurus, Ostsundroni-, Euroauster, Sundostroni; Auster, Sundroni; Austro-Africus, Sundwestroni; Africus, Westsundroni; Zephyrus, Westroni; Caurus, Westnordroni; Circius, Nordwestroni; Septentrio, Nordroni; Aquilo, Nordostroni; Vulturnus, Ostnordroni

2) There is no evidence for "French" among the military aristocracy of Gaul until 842, when Louis the German and Charles the Bald swear the oath of Strassburg. ONE does it in "German" and the other does it in "French":

Lingua romana:

Pro deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di in avant, in quant deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvaraeio cist meon fradre Karlo et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradre salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui meon vol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.

Si Lodhuuigs sagrament, que son fradre Karlo iurat, conservat, et Karlus meos sendra de suo part non los tanit, si io returnar non l'int pois: no io no neuls, cui co returnar int pois, in nulla aiudha contra Lodhuuuig nun li iv er.


Lingua teudisca

In godes minna ind in thes christanes folches ind unser bedhero gehaltnissi, fon thesemo dage frammordes, so fram so mir got geuuiczi indi mahd furgibit, so haldih thesan minan bruodher, soso man mit rehtu sinan bruodher scal, in thin thaz er mig so sama duo, indi mit Ludheren in nohheiniu thing ne gegango, the minan uuilon imo ce scadhen uuerdhen.

Oba Karl then eid, then or sinemo bruodher Ludhuuuige gesuor, geleistit, indi Ludhuuutg min herro then er imo gesuor forbrihchit, ob ih inan es iruuenden ne mag: noh ih noh thero nohhein, then ih es iruuenden mag, uuidhar Karle imo ce follusti ne uuirdhit.

3) Someone claimed that Charles is a Latin name. That isn't true. Carolus is the Latinized version of the name. Check the texts above: the name was "Karl" or "Karlus" (in Old French). And BTW, CLovis isn't Germanic. It is a Latinized form of Chlodovech, the name which would become Ludwig (Louis/Lewis)

4) Frankish was merely a language for the military aristocracy. It is possible that Germanic language was influerntial in simplifying the Gallo-ROman case system. But this was happening everywhere.

On the other, most "French" names [i.e. names used in France beside biblical names] are of Germanic origin. E.g. Louis/Ludwig, William/Guillaume, Robert, Charles, Francis, Henry, etc, etc

Honestly, why can't all Europeans just speak Basque? That would eliminate the need for any debates like this...

And why don't all americans speak Navaho? :p

First, to clear up the matter about english - thru and thru a germanic tongue! Marla says that the vocabulary comes from french, which is complete bollocks. About 1/4 of english words come from latin/french - open any medical or science textbook and you'll see how most of them are accounted for. Of the hundred most used words in english, ALL are germanic. In other words, french has peppered english with many many words and terms, but in the end had less sway than what many people believe.

(now count the french/latin words in that paragraph :p )

French is a romance language, but it is clearly the black sheep of the family. English speakers typically have little trouble learning it (ok, the french may now chime in about the quality... ;) ) because it bears strong germanic qualities - For example, besides reflexive verbs and putting adjectives after nouns, there's little difference from english. Sentence structure is more germanic, too. Word order matters a great deal in french - Not so for the other romance languages. (ex. c'est la vie vs. vie ce la est)

Back on topic - French may be as much a mix of other languages as english, tho the mix may be of greater variety.

Originally posted by Sodak

Word order matters a great deal in french - Not so for the other romance languages. (ex. c'est la vie vs. vie ce la est)


Although overall you may have a ppoint, this is not a very fortunate example. How would you plan to change the word order for the literal translation of c'est la vie in other romance languages?

Originally posted by Sodak
First, to clear up the matter about english - thru and thru a germanic tongue! Marla says that the vocabulary comes from french, which is complete bollocks. About 1/4 of english words come from latin/french - open any medical or science textbook and you'll see how most of them are accounted for. Of the hundred most used words in english, ALL are germanic.

You'll have to forgive Marla, she's very passionate about promoting France and the French, not totally disimilar from my own tendency to promote Scottishness. ;)

Interestingly, English has a 60% lexical similarity with German, a 27% lexical similarity with French and 24% with Russian ( SOURCE:ethnologue.com (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ENG) ). French has "89% lexical similarity with Italian, 80% with Sardinian, 78% with Rheto-Romance, 75% with Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, 29% with German, 27% with English" (SOURCE: ethnologue.com (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=FRN) )

A better example about order or words in French:
"Un brave homme" --> "A good man"
"Un homme brave" --> "A courageous man".

"Vie ce la est" doesn't mean anything.

French is a relatively difficult language, because:
- You can completly change the meaning of a sentence by changing the order of words. The cases when it really happens are relatively few, most of the time you don't have much choice, or the order doesn't change the meaning. However, there are some example where the meanings really change, and the sentences are still in perfect French.
- Spelling is not always obvious, are many letters are written, but not pronounced when speaking.
- Verbs are very difficult. We don't really have regular / irregular verbs... They are all irregular.

What type of languages were spoken in these areas before the latin influence on them. why have these early languages not survived.

Originally posted by Steph
A better example about order or words in French:

Thank you! I'm only familiar with french, I hardly have tourist fluency. :o


"Vie ce la est" doesn't mean anything.
...
- You can completly change the meaning of a sentence by changing the order of words...
My point exactly. "C'est la vie" is a phrase recognized by hundreds of millions worldwide; "Vie ce la est" would earn the speaker nothing but puzzled looks. No meaning at all is a different meaning from the word order version that makes sense.

Almost all the languages have an importance in the order of the words.

In English, "It is life" and "Is it life?" used the same words, but follow two different grammatical rules, making the first sentence affirmative, and the second one a question. "It life is" is not correct, because it doesn't respect standard grammatical rules.

It's the same with your exemple : "C'est la vie" -> affirmative, "Est-ce la vie?" -> question, "vie ce la est" -> no meaning.

So your example only demonstrates that if you put words in a random order in a sentence, so it doesn't follow standard gramatical rules of the language, then you deny a standard meaning to your sentence. The effect is the people who will read it has to do some thinking to put the sentence back in order, and give it a meaning. So if you say to a Frenchman "vie ce la est" he will think you are foreigner, try to identify the words (can be harder if you speak them with a strong accent), and then put them back into "oh, he probably means c'est la vie".

Thus, changing the words in a random, non gramatical order, doesn't change the meaning of a sentence (because the result doesn't follow a gramatical rule), it makes it harder to understand, as listener have to rebuild a gramatical rules from your words.

But this is not typical to the French language, it should be common to most languages.

In my example, both sentence are completly correct gramatically speaking. So someone reading them will not thing they could be incorrect, will not try to "guess" what you are saying, and thus you can have a big misunderstanding.

That's one of the difficulty of French language : you can change the order orf words, and still follow the rules, but change the meaning. French is a relatively subtle language, that's why it can give beautiful poetry, some very good piece of literature, and is often use for international political treaties, because you can find nuances in the wording of agreements that other languages lack.
However, it is not so efficient for commercial agreement and technical description, English is better there because I think it is shorter and more precise.

One more little thing : according to "Ethnologue, 13th Edition, Barbara F. Grimes, Editor. © 1996, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc", French is spoken by 72 M people (this count only people who use the language everyday, not people who learnt it as a second language), putting it at the 14th rank in the world most spoken language

Originally posted by RagingBarbarian
What type of languages were spoken in these areas before the latin influence on them. why have these early languages not survived.

In France? Continental Celtic, which hasn't survived because the Celts were greatly displaced in importance by Romans and Germanic invaders who brought their own languages. People tend to want to speak the language of the most prestigious group, which would of course be the Romans, although certainly with some German influences.

Of course, the Celts were themselves invaders and France was originally inhabited by non-Indo-European peoples that would have spoken a completely different language, perhaps something like Basque. But, in the good Indo-European tradition of genocide, these were eliminated, at least linguistically.

@Sodak- yu cant say a single sentence in Moder english with saying one Latin/Fech based word (I prefer say latin is the root, as i like Rome better tyhen france, no offense Marla ;), but latin is you languages' daddy :yeah: ;))

in fact, its rather absured tolimit the number of words that have a LatinoFrench root to them- I've heard from prominant sorces- teachers, and books, and even national geographic (the only source other then a few teachers that sticks out in my mind) that OVER 60% of modernEnglish is undoubtlly Latin based...

@Calgacus- your the better man in terms of languages, but am i right to suspect that its very possible that the Franks were bi-lingul? They had been known after all since rather well before the fall of the western (Roman) empire, and it seems that a good deal of barbarian leaders knew latin... which why i suspect that the franks were bi-lingul, orginally keeping a native germanic toungue for themselves, but eventually reasserting to what was most convientent to rule with after the splitting of Charlemagnes empire

assuming of course that they kept the traditiond of being bi-lingual in the blood fromt he eafes of the early-franks at least- if they were bi-lingual in the first place

Originally posted by Steph
Almost all the languages have an importance in the order of the words.

No. Most languages, yes, but very many do not require word order at all. For example, various affixes added to roots tell tense, person, etc, rendering word order moot. Nearly all languages do have a typical preferred form, but saying the order is necessary to meaning is not always true.

Xen, whoever said >60% of english is of latin origin is filling your mind with bunk. :p It's simply not true. Sharing 60% might be realistic, IF you count common roots shared with english and latin, as in going back to whatever proto-indo-european was. That just means that much is in common, not that it's of latin origin!

Hello all.
First, I'd like to say that as a measure of how old Basque is, the word for "knife" in Basque actually means "rock" (I remember my Basque teacher saying this, though I have forgotten what the word was, it's been a few years).

A good estimation of the similarity between English and other languages is the ability of English speakers to understand the other languages. My experience agrees with the 27% similarity with French, 60% with German given above.

At first glance, an English speaker trying to read French or Spanish would find much more similarity in the spelling of words than in German. Looking through a French sentence an English speaker would be able to understand about one word in four with a little thought; this isn't much but is probably enough to guess the meaning of the entence. The understandable words would make up key points, but the meat of how those words relate to each other would have to be inferred. Also, the method of spelling words would be recognizable. However, understanding spoken French or Spanish is very difficult, and all the words that are easily caught when written would be lost in different pronounciations spoken.

German or Swedish, on the other hand, would appear incomprehensible at first glance. However, if you took time to
pretend you were in the first grade and pronounce each word phonetically, you would soon understand most of the sentence. Similarly, slowly breaking down the syllables in spoken Germanic languages would reveal much similarity to English. And the degree of similarity increases the closer the language developed to England (Flemish?).

If you think about it this makes sense, because Latin is the language of learning and prestige, and French is the language
of diplomacy, whereas English was used in day-to-day affairs. Since the people who developed written English were
the most learned and prestigious people, and heavily interested in the affairs of the kingdom, it makes sense that they
would borrow more heavily from French and Latin. But the people who spoke English were Germans at heart.

French is a relatively difficult language, because:
- You can completly change the meaning of a sentence by changing the order of words. The cases when it really happens are relatively few, most of the time you don't have much choice, or the order doesn't change the meaning. However, there are some example where the meanings really change, and the sentences are still in perfect French.
- Spelling is not always obvious, are many letters are written, but not pronounced when speaking.
- Verbs are very difficult. We don't really have regular / irregular verbs... They are all irregular.

Speaking of difficult languages, how is English to learn? How difficult is it? I've wondered that before...

I would assume it's hella easy compared to say... learning French.

It's so simple to form.

You have the present tense - e.g. I close
then to put it in the future tense you just make it - I WILL close

compared to French the way you have either Etre verbs or Avoir verbs. You have to remember the list of endings and then there's the agreements... or no wait... is that just with the passé composé?

same with the conditional - I would close
and for most past tense verbs you just add d or ed - I closed

Of course then there's - I run/I ran, I see/I saw but mostly English seems a very easy language to learn.

Unless of course by being a native speaker I'm overlooking some detail...

Anyway, I find it interesting when you look at several languages like when you learn 4 like me and start noticing similarities between some and not with some others and stuff...

Like how in French and German saying for example I do and I am doing are one and the same but you have both I do and I'm doing in Irish and English.

Whereas out of the four, Irish is the only one to have the verb before what's... doing the verb, if you get me. The subject of the verb I suppose you'd say. Does anyone know of any other languages like that? Come to think of it, in certain situations in German the verb comes before e.g. Ich right?

One of the most confusing things I find with German and French is knowing what to use for the and a.

Der, Die, Das Ein,Eine oh and then there's for my Mein, Mein and sometimes meinem I think... or meiner... can't remember.

Then in French you have le, la and les and un and une.

Whereas in English it's just The and a no matter what except before a vowel where a is an. See what I mean? English is so easy to form.

Whereas in Irish the is An or Na is the plural, however it doesn't have a way of saying a.

Yeah... that's pretty much it.

How many posts did you need again to use a custom avatar? :mischief: