How similar are the Romance languages? If you speak one of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, French, and Romanian...

How similar are the Romance languages? If you speak one of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, French, and Romanian, can you sort of understand the others?

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youtube.com/watch?v=LHUIzUCpsDg
youtube.com/watch?v=0HR4hp_-kSI
quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-write-a-modern-English-essay-without-using-any-words-derived-from-Norman-French-Latin-or-Greek
linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9832/does-basque-sound-like-spanish-or-vice-versa
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language_influences_in_English
youtube.com/watch?v=oucKDfAwNbM
twitter.com/AnonBabble

>How similar are the Romance languages?
they're very similar
>If you speak one of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, French, and Romanian, can you sort of understand the others?
Absolutetly, maybe except Romanians and French

Romanian is very different from all the others, can't understand shit

Personally, I can't understand anything when someone is speaking one of these languages (not counting french of course).

what about catalan? it's like a mix of spanish and french

the following applies for written language:
spanish speakers can understand portuguese and italian decently and get the basic meaning of a french sentence.
portuguese speakers can understand spanish and french decently and can get the basic meaning of an italian sentence.
french speakers can understand portuguese decently and can get the basic meaning of a spanish or italian sentence.
Italian speakers can understand spanish and portuguese decently and can get the basic meaning of a french sentence
nobody understands romanians
catalan, basque, galician, etc. are meme tier languages not worthy of discussion
t. language expert

youtube.com/watch?v=LHUIzUCpsDg
It's understandable when written but it look spanish as fuck when spoken.

if you know spanish and portuguese you can understand 95% of galician (at least in its written form)
basque is not romance language, it's a pre-indo-european language

>french speakers can understand portuguese decently
lel

Vocabulary is very similiar, speaking English helped me alot when I had French in school (many of the words are almost the same, due to the French/Romance influence), and the French helped me learn Spanish better. (of course I don't speak either very well, since it was in school and learning languages was pretty low on my priority list)

Is it easier for the Iberians to understand the Italians than the French, because the French seem to have a whole different pronunciation?

>basque is meme language
Fuck off we're not even related

This.

So what baby got swapped with them in the nursery at the hospital?

their language has, naturally, influences from their neghbours (slavs and magyars)
in spanish and portuguese there are some influences from arabic

french to me is the outlier

maybe it's because of the modern day shitters, but i associate it with a lot of guttural throat shit, vastly more arabic/african in nature.

'proper' french is much more agreeable.

>tfw i'm the only one in my family that can't have a full conversation in Romanian

Are Basque and Galician also romance languages?

And why isn't English considered a Romance language when it's so heavily influenced by French?

Yes. Italian/Spanish/Portuguese are very similar. If you speak any of them, you can learn another in about six months. I had a professor once who liked to brag that he spoke ten languages fluently, but when I asked what they were, he listed every single Romance language except Romanian. Still impressive, though.

Are you ignorant ? Basque is not even a romance language. It's completely different

Our prononciation is germanic as fuck. And even written, our language is very different from others romance languages.

I understand ZERO of portuguese
To me portuguese it's similiar to russian
And moreover I can only understand Spanish and Written French

How much about Basque do you think American schools really teach? Everything I know about it is from Sup Forums.

fair enough, it is supposed that they were there before the indo-europeans and, because of some reason, their language didn't perish

>why isn't English considered a Romance language when it's so heavily influenced by French?
because a) that's not how language families work, and b) despite what memes tell you it's not actually that influenced by french

Basque isn't, but Galician is basically Portuñol

Basque is unknow for most of Europe
Don't worry american education is still shit but this is a thing a normal person don't know (European or American)

>language expert
>basque is romance
pick one

from a portuguese speaker perspective:
>Spanish
Grammar and vocabulary are very similar, shared for the most part, but still different enough to sound like a foreign language, specially with such a different accent.
>Catalan
Bridge between French/Italian and the rest of the iberian language family. Fairly similar.
>Italian
Completely strange at first, but if you expose yourself to the language for a few weeks you'll quickly get the hang of it and find it similar to yours. Spoken form may be more understandable than written form.
>French
Like Italian, strange to untrained ears but you're still quick to pick it up if you expose yourself to the language for a couple of months. They eat too many consonants which makes the spoken form harder to understand than the written one.
>Romanian
Literally undistinguishable from any other slavic language when spoken. The written form hints at a latin root, but it's still unintelligible from our POV.

>it's not actually that influenced by french

Lol

6 words already in your 2 short sentences

French is not a latin word

yes, it's an english word

ah yes it's the "i dont know anything about how language families work and think loan words are more important than they actually are" mentality

see: point a)

For me, I could probably learn very quickly to speak Italian, Spanish or French.

But it's modeled from the French form, not the Latin form that's why.

the english language was exposed to french influence for two centuries

I mean the whole Francia is still not latin
Because it was the name of a germanic tribe.

I think you exaggerate. I can speak Italian but cannot understand any spoken Spanish and can barely figure out a common sentence of the written Spanish and absolutely zero understanding of Portuguese.

well done, you know basic history. that doesn't change the fact english is not a fucking romance language you muppet.

>Basic history
It's pretty much irrelevant the norman conquest outside the anglo world
But okay that's prove your point in your mind

...which doesn't make it a romance language. Same as the arabic words in Spanish doesn't make it an arabic language.

if you speak Spanish you can understant Portuguese and Italian pretty well.
You can't understand spoken French, but may get what a sentence is about if written.

You can't understand Romanian at all. youtube.com/watch?v=0HR4hp_-kSI

do you want to try that sentence again mate

When I was a kid i though of English as Italian wothout the last vocal.
To me even today the language are still pretty similiar yet I understand your point

I understand French better than Portuguese

Ok
The norman conquest of Britannia is not so famous as you may think
Yes, it's famous for your country for obvious reason but ots not so well know in other countries

I think he tries to say that nobody cares about the Norman conquest outside of England.

According to the linguist Mario Pei, from the closest to the farthest, the number indicates the degree of evolution of phonetics and vocabulary

Sardinian 8%
Italian 12%
Spanish 20%
Romanian 23,5%
Catalan 24%
Occitan (Provençal) 25%
Galician 30%
Portuguese 31%
French 44%

>Efter haly kyrces state Þis ilke bok it es translate, Into Inglis tong to rede, For þe love of Inglis lede, Inglis lede of Ingeland, For þe commun at understand. Frankis rimes here I redd Comunlik in ilk a sted; Mast es it wroght for Frankis man — Quat is for him na Frankis can? Of Ingeland þe nacioun, Es Inglis man þar in commun. Þe speche þat man with mast may spede, Mast þarwith to speke war nede. Selden was for ani chance Praised Inglis tong in France; Give we ilk an þar langage, Me think we do þam non outrage. To lauid Inglis man I spell...
is this still pretty similar to you? because it's nigh mutually intelligible with modern english

Personally I think it's cool that French is so distant in this scale
It make the language more French and unique in some way :3

>Let me pick you random text in Old English to prove that modern English has not latin word in it

>I had a professor once who liked to brag that he spoke ten languages fluently, but when I asked what they were, he listed every single Romance language except Romanian

yeah people who do this are memes. I know a lot of people who talk about how they know 2-3 languages and it's always English + romance languages. Usually Spanish/french.

you're missing the point you mong, obviously modern english has romance words in it. the point is that if that text isn't similar to your language, then your language isn't similar to english.
that text is middle english and highly intelligible with modern english, it shouldn't take any english speaker too long to translate it into the modern tongue.

Wathever it makes you sleep at night

Almost everybody can sort of understand the other but no one understands french or romanian

On the other hand, Romanians heavily "deslavicized" their language in the 19th century, mostly using Italian and French as points of reference.

You waste a great opportunity, imo. Romania is a growing country and speaking their language may be useful in the future.

English is basically German-like grammar and a lot of French vocabulary.

Some examples of English written without any foreign vocabulary words is here
quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-write-a-modern-English-essay-without-using-any-words-derived-from-Norman-French-Latin-or-Greek

>Spanish
It's so close to Portuguese I can read relatively long phrases without much trouble
>Italian
Can understand many words but there are also many I can't understand so reading long phrases usually becomes guesswork
>French
what the fuck is this shit

You know that your rhotic R was introduced only after XVII century. Old French would have sounded similar to a weird occitan dialect

Portuguese sounds like Spanish if I didn't speak Spanish. I always think its some weird dialect or my Spanish is just total shit then I realize its huehue.

>German-like grammar
the grammar and sentence structure is actually closer to scandinavian languages, but the core vocabulary is close to german (though closer to dutch and even closer to frisian)
and then obviously the abundance of french loan words

Old English: ''eala Earendel Engla beorþast ofer Middangeard monnum sended''.
Scandinavian as fuck

>basque is romance
American education

Saxony is in Western Germany right? That's why Frisian and Dutch sound so similar too I think.

Yeah because we learn of the famous Basque region in Italy right?
We know that only because of meme on the web

Lower Saxony is North-West Germany and they speak mostly high German (standard German), Saxony is in middle Germany (aka East Germany) and their accent went through the consonant and vowel shifts of Southern German accents, so it's not very close to Frisian or English, unlike Plattdütsch, which didn't have the shifts.

Maybe for Spaniards, since they have a rather simple range of sounds.

For the most part the French pronunciation isn't a problem for us (lots of similar sounds, with a fairly large range), and their grammar is as far removed from Portuguese as Italian.

So it really depends on which constructions they use in their sentences. It's about the same.

Galician and Portuguese are essentially the same language, even today. The biggest problem for us understanding Galician is the amount of Castellization that particular speaker has in their voice, but we can understand Spanish just fine anyway.

>Catalan 24%
>Occitan (Provençal) 25%
>Galician 30%
>Portuguese 31%
Seems about right.

We share a lot of similar sounds.

Castillian is actually the odd one out in the Península, accent-wise.

Portuguese/Galician, Leonese and Catalan all sound similar, with stressed syllabes and similar cadences. Castilian is a lot simpler (more latin, basque and arab influence), and sounds more like Italian than its neighbours.

Obviously, this is not the case in written form, just the (main) accent.

trust me, it couldve been way worse.
you know those normies who drop an englishism every 2 words? thats how it was
some hardliners wanted a purely romance language
those were weird times

French anons, please do a short resume on the differences between Spanish and French easy as to a newbie. I'm really interested in your language.

>11%
No wonder they're so butthurt about English being lingua franca.

We are ?

That's how I interpret language protection laws.

italian is super easy to understand as a french speaker

spanish has longer words
french has shorter words but more sounds and also nasal vowels

spanish has ser/estar, while french only has 1 verb to be, etre, like most languages

french have a partitive article, du, that they can use for "some of something uncountable"

I'm sure that Paul posts on int

Almost everyone with spanish as their native language should be able to understand portuguese, catalan and italian decently if it is written. The speaking is a different world but I would say that italian has a very similar pronunciation and therefore is easier to get the meaning of words.

Basque is even older than Latín

>Sardinian
¿

Native in both french and italian here, I have an easier time understanding Maltese rather than Romanian.

I would argue that except for Romanian you can read most other Romance languages easy enough. French might also be an exception tho if you speak both Spanish and English reading tends to also be relatively straightforward. You do need some basics for more than just very basic comprehension with Italian and French tho which isn't the case for Portuguese, at least for a Spanish speaker.

Now, holding any kind of converstaion is doable tho it requires enough of an effort in practice it is easier to switch to English or any third common language if the option is available, Portuguese seems to be the exception again, tho it seems Spanish is a lot easier for Portuguese speakers to understand than viceversa.

Can understand like 95% of spoken/written portuguese due the obvious influence of Brazil in my country, Italian like 70% i would say, it's even easier if you speak rioplatense dialect, spoken French it's almost impossible for me, despite i can barely understand some written phrases, Romanian it's literally impossible, either spoken or written, they are too influenced by slav languages, Catalan is literally Spanish so is easy

spanish is easy to understand, I could hold a conversation in italian with a spanish guy while he speaks to me in spanish and we would 100% understand each other
french is difficult, both written and spoken
portuguese and romanian are impossible spoken but somewhat understandable written
>catalan
meme """"language"""", just like how catalans are a meme people

I'm not a native Spanish speaker but I'm at an advanced level and I just started Portuguese a few months ago. Reading it was pretty easy but understanding the spoken language was definitely more challenging.

>holding any kind of converstaion is doable tho it requires enough of an effort in practice it is easier to switch to English

Good lad, Everyone should just learn the master language.

did basque influence the Spanish language even a little?

at some point in historu the whole Spain must have had basque speaking population

linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9832/does-basque-sound-like-spanish-or-vice-versa

This

I speak Portuguese and Spanish. I started following the news from Catalonia around when they had their referendum, and now I'm kind of absorbing Catalan by just reading the news in it. It's cool.

From a portuguese speaker perspective
Spanish: Basically the same shit.
Italian: If a person speaks slowly you will understand the basic idea
French: Reading is somewhat comprehensible, speaking is not
Romenian: Can't understand nothing

>The core of English language descends from Old English, the language brought with the Angles, Saxon, and Jutish settlers to what was to be called England in and after the 500s. The bulk of the language in spoken and written texts is from this source. As a statistical rule, around 70 percent of words in any text are Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, the grammar is largely Anglo-Saxon.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language_influences_in_English

>European Portuguese

Try Brazilian Portuguese : youtube.com/watch?v=oucKDfAwNbM

Nigga if you understand spanish you will understand portuguese too.

Português e espanhol são línguas muito parecidas

Portugués y español son lenguas muy parecidas

Le portugais et l'espagnol sont des langues très similaires

It's interesting how we use a different adjective for "similar", but the verb "parecer" in French is paraître.

Me parece = Ça me paraît

Oh and Pareil = Parelho in portuguese.

Why isn't Japanese considered a Germanic language when it is so heavily influenced by English?

European portuguese is a germanic suebi language