How much an English speaker knows French without learning it
>> The limited similarity of English and French is somehow enhanced by the fact that both share a very rare feature among major IE languages: they are not mutually intelligible with any other <<
English is mutually intelligible with Scots, esp. the written form. French is mutually intelligible with some languages in France.
But French and English are really close and do have a lot of very similar cognates:
For example:
Fr père; Eng father
Fr un; Eng one
Fr mère Eng mother
<<Fr père; Eng father
Fr un; Eng one
Fr mère Eng mother
>>
Spanish has more similar words:
Fr pére Sp pero
Fr mere Sp mero
" 20/30% "
wrong, but even if it was 20/30% of usual oral speech, that is nothing compared with the level of lexical similarity of "closely related" languages:
with Italian, french share 90% of lexical similarity, while with english it ias at best 15%, the remaining 85% of english is made of ununderstandable words of germanic origins. with Italian, only 10% of the words can be a problem to a french speaker. This IS what we call languages that are closely related. And those words that are similar into french and Italian are NOT words that have been borrowed from one language to be used into the other as it is in English (but the fact that the two languages derived from the same one).
All we can say is that french words are closely related to the words of french origin that can be used in English, especially in intellectual english. but the languages themselves are not related at all.
In french I can use the words "vodka", "datcha", "balaika", etc. taht doesn"t make french and Russian suddenly related languages.
I can use the words "tsunami", "sushi", "tatami", "karate", "dojo", "sumotori", "wasabi", "sashimi", ec... that doesn't make french and Japanese suddenly related languages...
" Fr père; Eng father
Fr un; Eng one
Fr mère Eng mother "
Those words might be of indo-european origin, they are maybe connected; but definitly doesn't look similar on to the others at all...
Let's look the other romance and germanic languages if you don't understand what does it mean being similar:
(fr) père - (cat) pare - (sp) padre - (it) padre
(fr) mère - (cat) mare - (sp) madre - (it) madre
(fr) un - (cat) un - (sp) un(o) - (it) un(o)
(en) father - (ger) vater - (nl) vader
(en) mother - (ger) mutter - (nl) moeder
(en) one - (ger) ein - (nl) een
Fr pére Sp pero
Fr mere Sp mero
Estàs loco como de costumbre?
fr père Sp padre
Fr mère sp madre
Sp. hermano Ct. germà Pt. irmao Fr. frère It. fratello
Sp. hermana Ct. germana Pt irma fr. soeur It sorella
Sp. primo Ct. così Pt primo fr. cousin It cugino
but:
sp. pajaro/ave ct. ocell, Pt /passaro/ave Fr. oiseau It. uccello
" The limited similarity of English and French is somehow enhanced by the fact that both share a very rare feature among major IE languages: they are not mutually intelligible with any other "
The "mutual intelligibility" is usually what define a language, (vs a dialect). The distinction is of course not clear since it depends what you call "mutual intelligibility". two languages that are mutually intelligible do no need a strong effort to be understood each other, and so can be considered to be two dialects of the same language. In that definition Italian and french for exemple are not at all mutually intelligible, even if with some attention one speaker of one language can understand much of it without having learned the other: this mean the languages are closely related. Italian and Spanish are not mutually intelligible either (less than french and Italian actually). Even Spanish and Portuguese are not despite being very similar; they continue to be considered to be two separate languages.
by "mutually intelligible" I think you meant what I called "closely related" in the sense that you can catch much of it, but not as much as it it was your own language.
That might be true that English is somehow alien in its own linguistic family, (having been a language that developped itself in a island, quite isoleted from the other germanic languages, and having progressively borrowded french words, forgotting the original english words), but definilty not for french. the level of "closelyness" of french with Italian is similar to that of German with Dutch; which mean that a french speaker that never had learned Italian can understand much of it making a limited effort of attention.
I think many English speakers have the feeling of being quite linguistically isolated from the other germanic languages, and on another side they don't feel much attracted to the other germanic-speaking cultures, maybe finding them "unsexy" (to which thay look very similar from a non-germanic point of view). That might be a reason to deseperatly try to think they would have more relation with the french speaking world or the latin world in general.
Italian and Spanish are not mutually intelligible either (less than french and Italian actually
Not at all! Italian and Spanish are more mutually intelligle than French and Italian
" Not at all! Italian and Spanish are more mutually intelligle than French and Italian "
This is what most people who don't know all these three languages think. At first look for an unexperienced person the feel is that Spanish is supposed to be more similar to Italian than french is, this is due to some superficial aspects such as having lots of "-o" and "-a" ending words. But despite having similar kinds of endings many basic words are complelty different between Spanish and Italian. French might not share "-o" and "-a" endings as Spanish and Italian does (so give the wrong impression that it is somehow "alien" to both of them), but the reality is that, outside of this detail, french and Italian share more vocabulary together than Spanish and Italian does. Also the gramatical structures of french and Italian are closer together than Spanish and Italian gramatical structures are.
I'm Italian I can speak both French and Spanish and I know what I'm talking about. There are lots of false friends between Spanish and Italian, but there are some between French and Italian too, anyway for an Italian it's much easier to understand the general meaning of a sentence in Spanish than in French, probably due to different pronunciations...
Well, french and Italian are more closely related than Spanish and Italian
(that doesn't mean that from a spanish point of view Italian is more similar to Spanish than French is; but, from a french or an Italian point of view both languages are mutualy closer than both of them are to Spanish)
many very basic words such as those ones are very similar in french and Italian, but very different with Spanish:
To put: mettre, mettere, poner
To take: prendre, prendere, tomar
To miss: manquer, mancare, faltar
Too much: trop, troppo, demasiado
To say: dire, dire, decir
To want: vouloir, volere, querer
To make: faire, fare, hacer
then: alors, allora, entonces
All: toutes, tutte, todas
To end finir, finire, terminar
Morning matin, mattina, manana
Tomorrow: demain, domani, manana
Afternoon: soir, sera, tarde
Again: encore, ancora, todavia
To eat: manger, mangiare, comer
Day: jour, giorno, dia
speech parole, parole, palabra
hello: bonjour, buongiorno, buenos dias
But: Mais, ma, pero
And many others...
Some lingusitis include Italian in the Eastern Romance group, so it can be seen as a closer language to Romanian than to Spanish too.
<< from a french or an Italian point of view both languages are mutualy closer than both of them are to Spanish >>
-- Possible, mais reste que pour une conversation basique on peut se faire vaguement comprendre resp. en Espagne / Italie en parlant italien / espagnol, tandis que l'intercompréhension orale est pratiquement zéro avec le français, sauf à être préalablement familiarisé avec.
<< English is mutually intelligible with Scots, esp. the written form. French is mutually intelligible with some languages in France. >>
-- L'écossais est une langue-soeur de l'anglais, mais dans la pratique on peut les considérer comme dialectes d'une langue commune. On a le même type de relation entre français et franco-provençal, entre allemand et néerlandais, suédois et danois etc, occitan classique et gascon, etc.