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what do you think is the closest language to french ?
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The various other Oïl languages, in no particular order. And if one disqualifies
all Oïl languages and Franco-provençal from consideration, then it would have to
be Occitan, or if one considers Occitan to be a group of related languages, one of
them (but which one it would be, I am not sure, but it probably is not Gascon).
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I think undoubtedly Provencal first then maybe the Rhaeto-Romantsch of Switzerland.
Friulian (spoken in northwest Italy) is considered by some linguists to be closer
related to French than Italian.
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outside of minority languages, what big European language is the closest ?
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Most linguists would say Italian. French and Italian both share a lot of late Latin
voicabulary not found in Romanian or even Spanish and Portuguese. I agree unless
modern research should show otherwise.
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voicabulary (maybe someday) = vocabulary
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Hmm... Ethnologue has the Oïl languages listed so that not only the Rhaetian languages
should actually be closer to them than Occitan, even though Occitan has almost certainly
received more outside influence from Oïl languages than them, but it also marks the
Gallo-Italian languages, that is, Emiliano-Romagnolo (2,020,112 speakers), Ligurian
(1,920,849 speakers), Lombard (9,133,855 speakers), Piemontese (3,106,620 speakers),
and Venetian (2,180,387 speakers), as being closer to the Oïl languages than Occitan
is, even though it doesn't list them as being as close to the Oïl languages as the
Rhaetian languages. Considering that the numbers of speakers of the Gallo-Italian
languages, as listed by Ethnologue, they together are in no fashion inconsiderable,
and also, of all of them, the only one listed by Ethnologue as having few child speakers
is Emiliano-Romagnolo, while they are not "standard Italian" in any fashion, they
should definitely not be relegated to the "minority" bucket.
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Travis,
Sakami is actually asking kind of a tough question for linguists here. If you go
by syntax, French is probably closest to Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese. (Some linguists
classify all of them as "Western Romance"). If you go by lexicon or vocabulary, French
has a little more in common with Italian (Some linguists classify Italian as "Eastern
Romance" along with Sardinian, Dalmatian and Romanian but there is no unanimous agreement
on this). What's your viewpoint?
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Brennus, I was specifically speaking of the Gallo-Italian languages, which are most
definitely closer to all of the Italo-Western languages than the Italo-Dalmatian
languages, one of which is Italian. The Gallo-Italian languages are only "Italian"
due to politics and their current range. And yes, I have heard that the Italo-Western
languages are significantly closer in practice to eastern (Romanian and like) and
southern branches (the Sardinian languages and Corsican) of the Romance languages,
which I also have heard as being an "eastern" group of Romance languages, as opposed
to a "western" group, which the Gallo-Italian languages would be in, but I'm using
Ethnologue's tree here.
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Ack, I meant to say that "I have heard that the Italo-Dalmatian languages are significantly
closer in practice".
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As for Catalan, I myself have heard from Spanish-speakers that from their standpoint
it is "much more like French" than the rest of the languages on the Iberian peninsula,
but then, that isn't that surprising that Catalan is actually very closely related
to Occitan, considering that it apparently is a direct offshoot of Occitan, and some
Occitan-speakers say that they can still understand Catalan to a moderate degree
today, or even more strongly, that Occitan and Catalan should be considered one language.
Considering that Occitan is the Romance language outside of the Oïl languages and
Franco-Provençal with the most contact with the Oïl languages, it wouldn't be surprising
that it would be rather French-like, even if it weren't technically genetically as
close to French, as, say, the Rhaetian languages and the Gallo-Italian languages.
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I just took a look at Ethnologue. While I wouldn't say that it is futile to try and
classify the Romance languages, I think that there is some arbitrariness in all classification
schemes that have been proposed so far. For instance, despite its geographical location
between Italy and Romania, Dalmatian is more similar to Spanish and Portuguese in
some respects than to Italian. Probably because Spain and Illyria were both annexed
by the Romans about the same time in history and therefore had a shared Vulgar Latin.
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I speak French and several other Romance languages. Frankly, spoken French doesn't
sound like *any* other Romance language (maybe Romagnolo, weird as it may seem).
Written French, on the other hand, looks a lot like Occitan or Catalan.
All this to my ears.
the evil nerd
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Mario Pei once said that French is a Latin language which has lost its original Latin
rhythm. This ties in with the Celtic substratum theory that the Romans were never
able to teach the Gauls to speak Latin in Roman fashion so Modern French is basically
a mixture of Latin words and Celtic speech sounds. French is not alone. There appear
to be varying degrees of Celtic substrata in Dutch, Rhaeto-Romantsch, Provencal
and Portuguese too.
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I would make a difference between French spoken in the North of France (Standard
French if you wish including Belgian French and Swiss French) and French spoken by
southerners. Spoken Southern French is more conservative both for a substratum reason
(Occitan) as for the fact that French was originally introduced in the South more
through books (spelling) than through the actual knowledge of the more evolved spoken
Northern French where half the word is swallowed.
Somebody with a popular French accent from Marseilles or Toulouse definitely sounds
more familiar (and closer to Latin) to speakers of southern Romance languages. Furthermore,
a spoken language relies on phonetics but it is also a matter of intonation. There
is perhaps something "more Germanic" and "not quite Latin" to Northern French pronunciation.
It can all be duly explained.
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