Lexical similarities between French-Spanish-Italian
what is funny and strange in catalan is that it is reversed compared to the french version :
Dilluns - Lundi
Dimarts - Mardi
Dimecres - Mercredi
Dijous - Jeudi
Divendres - Vendredi
is it a unique case in romance languages ?
I've heard that Portuguese days were compeltly different ?
Le portugais ressemble au médiolatin : Po <terça feira> vs ML <tertia feria>.
Sinon, le Gascon, l'Occitan et le Catalan forment les jours de la même façon.
"So, that's why I say Italian is much closer to Spanish, despite the greater lexical diviance of Spanish. "
This is wrong, as a franco-italian person, i don't understand spanish. I can understand a few words. The phonetic is different with the J, the C+E...
That is easier to learn italian if you are french and vice versa. It does not work with the spanish.
The meanings are REALLY different from italian to spanish but not between french and spanish.
sorry, i made a mystake.
Read: "but not between french and italian." instead of "but not between french and spanish."
<<This is wrong, as a franco-italian person, i don't understand spanish. I can understand a few words. The phonetic is different with the J, the C+E...
That is easier to learn italian if you are french and vice versa. It does not work with the spanish. >>
Of course it is. Because, out of the major Romance languages, French's nearest relative is Italian, and definitely not Spanish. That does not mean Spanish is more difficult for an Italian speaker than French is, because in its own way, Spanish is just as close to Italian as French is. You can think of Italian as an intermediary between French and Spanish, with each on the opposite side of the spectrum.
But because of drastic differences in phonology, Spanish and Italian are more distant from French.
" You can think of Italian as an intermediary between French and Spanish, with each on the opposite side of the spectrum. "
That is not completly true; I think it is not so simple. On some points french has more similarities with Italian, in other it has more with spanish.
In the way we tend to write words, french and spanish often show a great similarity : some Ex:
Fr. "Que", Es. "Que", It. "Che" (Eng. "what")
Fr. "De", Es. "De", It. "Di", (Eng. "Of")
Fr. "Est", Es. "Esta", It. "E" , (Eng. "Is")
Fr. "Se", Es. "Se", It. "Si", (Eng. reflective for "itself")
Fr. "Qui", Es "Quien" It. "Chi", (Eng. "who")
Fr. "Te", Es "Te" It. "Ti" (Eng. reflective for "yourself")
Inthese exemples the pronouciation is something different :
Sometime the french and Italian are pronounced the same but are writed differently: "Qui" and "Chi", or "est" and "E"
Other times it is Spanish and Italian who are pronouced the same way, with writing differences "Que" and "Che".
We could speak endlessly about which language is closer to each other. It depends of the point of view, of the crtiteria of comparaision and also of the words themselves. The truth is they are all closely related and in the same time thay have all their own evolution and specificities.
It would be like, beetween three sisters to speak about which one is more simialr and wich one is different to the others. It depends if we speak about the color of hair, of eyes, of the eight, the weigh, the presonality , the intelligence, etc. two of the sisters can have brown hair and the other blond hair, but the blond haired and one brown haired can share the fact of being both tall or having brown eyes while the third would be little with blue eyes, etc.
That's true fab, there are many similarities between written French and written Italian, but I still think that Italian is closer to Spanish because, while there may not be as many written similarities between the two as like with French, the spoken similarities are more than enough to make up the difference, considering that French has a *very* unique pronnounciation, very different from Italian. This extends beyond the very simple words (like Que, Qui, Quien, etc.), to more complex words like
Comunità. Polizia. Generare. In Spanish, they are pronnounced almost the same, since they use similar phonetic systems.
Comunità vs. Comunidad
Polizia vs. Policia
Generare vs. Generar
However in French, the spelling is different
Comunità vs. Communauté
Polizia vs. Police
Generare vs. Generer
And the pronnounciation is much more different.
Comunita vs. Comunoutei
Polizia vs. Polis
Generare vs. Zhenerei
LAA : « Because, out of the major Romance languages, French's nearest relative is Italian (...) »
Faux à 100 %.
Les langues les plus proches du français sont avant tout les autres langues d'Oïl, puis les langues d'Oc et enfin certaines langues du nord-ouest italien (dont le piedmontais). L'italo-toscan ne vient qu'ensuite.
"Faux à 100 %.
Les langues les plus proches du français sont avant tout les autres langues d'Oïl, puis les langues d'Oc et enfin certaines langues du nord-ouest italien (dont le piedmontais). L'italo-toscan ne vient qu'ensuite. "
I said, out of the MAJOR Romance languages. Not the minor, non-standard languages of France and Italy. "Major" would be the internationally known languages, like standard French, Italian, Spanish (castellano), Portuguese, Romanian. It wouldn't include Occitan, Sardinian, Galician, or other regional languages.
Yea, I think the 100% was a little over the top
LAA : « It wouldn't include Occitan, Sardinian, Galician, or other regional languages. »
Très bien. Dans ce cas je t'objecte le catalan. Ça ira ?
PS : même si l'occitan se porte mal numériquement parlant, c'est un peu plus qu'une langue régionale...
Spanish can be just as close to French in as Italian is.I believe that it is even closer to French in spoken form. For those of you who say that it isn't you obviously don't speak Spanish. If you're a native Spanish speaker you will also feel the same. If you have the chance, watch both Spanish & French news and you will see what I'm talking about.
While watching French news I noticed that some sentences sounded almost the same as Spanish. Watching Italian news I also noticed this. I really can't say which languages are closer because if you know one romance language FLUENTLY..you definitely understand some words in the rest of them. Why fight about languages being similar? Languages are supposed to be different from each other. I'm sure you wouldn't like if someone said: ''Your language is a copy of mine''
"Why fight about languages being similar? Languages are supposed to be different from each other." Yeah, but language similarities is what makes studying them so interesting. It's interesting how the Romance languages are so similar with oneanother, yet, it's also interesting to see that despite their differences, there are many aspects and features of the different Romance languages that overlap oneanother.
That and it is impossible to 'copy' a language. Spanish and French have many similarities. Sometimes, it is only a letter or two that make the difference between Spanish and French words. For example, "Nación" needs only one letter changed to become the French word "Nation", which is pronnounced similarly. Knowing this one rule only, the rule of -ción to -ion from Spanish to French, just expanded your French vocabulary by thousands of words. Tradition, Station, Temptation, Vibration, Animation, Admiration, and many more. Knowing the rule of -dad to -té just added another couple thousand to your vocabulary, words like Compatabilidad, Hospitalidad, Responsabilidad, and more you can now say in French as Compatibilité, Hospitalité, and Responsabilité. There's also
-ar to -er (pensar>penser),
-a to -e (piensa>pense)
-ie- to -e- (piensa>pense) and
-a to -e (piensa>pense) in conjugated verb forms of Je/Yo, Il/El, Elle/Ella
And you can combine the rules, to make words like Nationalité, or the above example I used of Piensa>Pense.