How closely related are the Romanic languages

[CaptainF]

I guess that English is the lovechild of Germanic and Romance.

 

[Cuivienen]

What I said, the aficionados who wrote that wiki article don't want to recognize that english is in a considerable percentage romanic. Seems that british don't want to remember that they were colonized by the romans. I think somebody gave a source in another thread where it showed that English is only 10 15 % less romanic than Spanish.

No, language classifications are done by grammar. English is far more similar, grammatically, to German and Old High German than to Latin, French or any of the unrelated Romance languages.

 

[Urederra]

Of course, like Spanish is the lovechild of Iberian (Basque) Romance and with bits of arabic here and there. It was the latin badly spoken by the iberians. Like old french was the latin badly spoken by the franks, British the latin badly spoken by the anglos and so on. (Portuguese the latin spoken by the lusitanias, you get the point, I guess.

Later on, the languages where spiced up with invasions and wars. Spanish has a lot of arabic and words from the new continent, English was normandic (i think) words...


Cuivienen: According to my rules, I take word philology to classify the languages as well as grammar

 

[Cuivienen]

It's not Romanian, it's Romanish. Romanish as in one of the four national languages of Switzerland, not Romanian, that's a Slavic language, or whatever you call those Russian-style languages.

Romansch (or Romansh, but not Romanish), is indeed a Romance language, but so is Romanian. Historically, the people of Dacia were almost completely assimilated into Roman culture and language. Romanian is a bit of an oddity in the region, but it is indubitably Romance.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Our grammar and our simple words are Germanic. But a lot of our vocabulary, especially complex or more recent words, have a Latin base.

Right, but that is because English has so many lender words, we just assimilate words into our language as we come across them.


In regards to the Romanish/Romanian, I thought it was the same language, and people were calling it the wrong name, my mistake.
I am curious, though, what is the name of the language group that Russian is in?

 

[Fox Mccloud]

I am curious, though, what is the name of the language group that Russian is in?

East Slavic.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Oh, I know that English is a Germanic language, I wouldn't ever dispute that. But it does have a very strong Latin influence, moreso than any other Germanic language. And after all, no language is completely free from the influence of another once the two make contact. I mean, Quechua (the language of the Inca) has a lot of Spanish and even Arabic loanwords that become a legitimate part of the language, and English even has Quechua loanwords.

 

[Padma]

The Neapolitan dialect in Italy is very similar to Spanish. ("Official" Italian is really the Florenine dialect.) When I was stationed there, we had many SPanish-speaking Americans who got along just fine without knowing any "Italian".

But Naples itself has many dialects - each "suburb" has its own. ANd they are often mutually unintelligable.

 

[Elta]

Anglish is a form of constrained writing in English in which words with Greek, Latin, and Romance roots are replaced by Germanic ones.


The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mighty small: one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in chills when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike unclefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

That is not the kings english and it's definately hard to underdstand.



As for the romance languages (I have one english only speaking parent and one spanish-english speaking parent I consider english and spanish both to be my first language)

Portuguse - amazaingly easy for a spanish speaker to learn (I am working on mine but I am 100% confident I could make my way around in brazil) You have to listin to it enouf and then it all clicks.

Like R all ways sounds like H in portuguse (Sp: Resturate Po:Hesturantchie (resturante) (ante is often chi ) Y is allways J yaves Javes (keys) there's alot more but I don't consiously know that I just guess and I am ussually right I wanna say 90% + I am right on a word allthou there are some words that are completly diff.

Note: of the three guys I worked with the Rio accent is easyer to under stand than sao paulo (for my mexican ears anyway).
+ Brazil has some of the best music anywhere so if you want to learn there you go



(spanish and portuguse speakers ....I have no spelling training in either
of those languages ...and hell my spelling in english is bad too but thats how it sounds to me ..Disculpa)


(The ones I've heard) difficulty for spanish speaker
Italian - I think I could learn it in school and be okay (thats an hour a day for 180 days of school in the U.S.)



French - one of my cousins learned it in school and knows it perfectly she's working as a waiteres (spl?) at the paris casino here in vegas and people from france come threw all the time and she hasn't been thrown off by anything excpt slang yet.

Romanin - Very beautiful ...very hard for me 2X as hard as the rest

Portuguse - very easy
Italian - medium
French - hard
Romanian - Very hard allthou they (romanians) seem to understand spanish easy and the guys I used to work with told me argentina accents are easyer for them to understand then spanish or mexican ones; probably because there accents are simmalar to italian accents from all the italian immgrants and italy is clos to romania



If you want to learn Spanish and Japanese I recomend using a mexican accent because mexican spanish and japanese are simmalar in the fact that in both languages the vowels are very short and each sylabal tends to be the same legnth Japanese: Do-mo ori-ga-to Spanish: Mi ro-jo Ga-to
a Mexican accent is supposedly better than any non japonic language for learning spanish. I read that here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timing_(linguistics)&action=history
allthou it was edited out and I when my step brother was working at RA (sushi place here in vegas) every Japanese guy there spoke spanish and every mexican guy spoke japanese - If you don't belive me go to RA sushi in the fasion show mall on Las Vegas BLVD (The Strip)

 

[Leifmk]

What I said, the aficionados who wrote that wiki article don't want to recognize that english is in a considerable percentage romanic. Seems that british don't want to remember that they were colonized by the romans.

What?

The Romance elements in English (which are mostly vocabulary rather than grammar) came via French, after the Norman invasion. 1066 and all that. Before then the British Isles had spent getting invaded by everyone who had a boat. The population and language in Roman times were Celtic, subsequently displaced / assimilated by Germanic invaders (the Saxons of whom you may have heard).

 

[Ecclesiastes]

When I was learning french and german(which I am not now) it made it easier pointing out the similarities between the two languages themselves and english.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

It's not Romanian, it's Romanish. Romanish as in one of the four national languages of Switzerland, not Romanian, that's a Slavic language, or whatever you call those Russian-style languages.

Nope, like it was pointed out. We are NOT slavic people.

Romansch (or Romansh, but not Romanish), is indeed a Romance language, but so is Romanian. Historically, the people of Dacia were almost completely assimilated into Roman culture and language. Romanian is a bit of an oddity in the region, but it is indubitably Romance.

We have a few dacian words ... but they are very commonly used even today. Most of them representing everyday items.
Although for several centuries slavic tribes have crossed Romania in the Middle Ages only 10% of our words are slavic. Which is preety odd considering the fact that we are surrounded by slavic countries.

There are so many odd things about our history. This is only one of them.


Btw, this is what wiki says about the similarities between romanian and the other latin languages:
"At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 77%, whereas French follows at 75%, Spanish at 71% and Portuguese at 72%."

And here is where we stand on the romance languages chart:

Source: wiki.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

What?

The Romance elements in English (which are mostly vocabulary rather than grammar) came via French, after the Norman invasion. 1066 and all that. Before then the British Isles had spent getting invaded by everyone who had a boat. The population and language in Roman times were Celtic, subsequently displaced / assimilated by Germanic invaders (the Saxons of whom you may have heard).

Actually, the Latin influence came in several waves:
1. Through the initial Roman colonization of the island, a lot of military-related words
2. Through the introduction of Christianity, a lot of religious vocabulary
3. Through the Norman invasion of 1066, a lot of general vocabulary
4. During the Renaissance, a number of philosophical and other words
5. Through the modern scientific era, which uses a lot of Latin-based words

 

[Veritass]

Back to the OP, I took some Italian when we were first going to travel to Italy, and I am in my second semester of Spanish now. My wife took Latin in high school and is taking Spanish with me now. We both agree that having the other romance language is very helpful with the longer words, the roots of the words, etc. such as the Italian "casa" = Spanish "casa" ("house"). The confusing part is that all of the pronouns are slight variations, e.g. Italian "Te amo" versus Spanish "Ti amo" (I love you). I can understand how people say that they speak Spanish, and thus they can understand someone speaking Portugese or Italian.

btw, I took German in high school, and English is definitely related to German more than the romance languages. However, there are many cognates (similar words such as "la computadora" and "el Internet") that have arisen because there are so many objects and concepts that have been created in the modern times.

 

[MamboJoel]

For a French, Spanish and Italian are pretty easy to read, or at least get an overall idea of what is written. There is a little fence at the start I think.

Though, recently I have just read the 4 first lessons of an Italian manual and I understood quite a lot in the look and feel of this one. I think I could make good progress very fast now because the overall language makes a lot of sense to me.

I heard recently Romanians had few difficulties using Italian and vice versa.

Funny note though. A good friend of mine was fluent in Spanish. He left for a Year in Rio. He had a little hard time at the start, but he surprisingly ended up beeing fluent in Portuguese not by aquiring a new language, but by replacing his Spanish with Portuguese... He has a hard time speaking spanish now

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I knew a woman who was born and raised in Sao Paulo, but when she came to the US she married a Mexican guy and went to a Spanish church congregation - she began forgetting Portuguese, even though it was all she had used the first 20-odd years of her life.

 

[Fox Mccloud]

So, that means if you learn one, and then learn others you begin forgetting the first one?

 

[MamboJoel]

No I think knowing 2 of them facilitates the 3d one.

 

[Elta]

So, that means if you learn one, and then learn others you begin forgetting the first one?

It's allmost like moving from say new zeland to the southern U.S. way diff. accents but double that I guess you just need to keep sharp on both of them, just like slang I guess.
If you never use something you forget it ...like picking up civ 4 agian after a few months of heavy work after a few turns your right back in the grove

 

[Taliesin]

Actually, the Latin influence came in several waves:
1. Through the initial Roman colonization of the island, a lot of military-related words
2. Through the introduction of Christianity, a lot of religious vocabulary
3. Through the Norman invasion of 1066, a lot of general vocabulary
4. During the Renaissance, a number of philosophical and other words
5. Through the modern scientific era, which uses a lot of Latin-based words

I'm not sure 1) there is very important, since the Gaelic spoken in Roman Britain has hardly any influence in modern English.

I think a more important source would be border contact between Germans and the Roman Empire, which produced a surprising number of Germanic-sounding words of ultimately Latin or Greek origin-- anchor, butter, camp, cheese, chest, cook, devil, dish, dragon, fork, giant, gem, inch, kettle, kitchen, linen, mile, mill, mint (coin), noon, oil, pillow, pin, pound, punt (boat), sack, soap, stove, street, table, wall, wine. (List from Wikipedia.) These are the product of words learned from the Romans and then incubated in Germanic tongues for half a millennium.