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How much an English speaker knows French without learning it
<<For example:
Fr père; Eng father
Fr un; Eng one
Fr mère Eng mother >>
I think that English is more related to Iranian language Mazandarani than to French:
Eng new-Maz neo
Eng great-Maz gat
Eng better-Maz better
Eng been-Maz bine
Eng being-Maz bien
Eng moon- Maz moong
Eng daughter-Maz deter
Eng cow-Maz go/gu/guw
Eng my-Maz me/mi
Eng Gab-Maz gap
Eng right-Maz rast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazandarani_language
Well, french and Italian are more closely related than Spanish and Italian
it depends.....
school = école, scuola, escuela
cat = chat, gatto, gato
pupil = élève, alunno, alumno
problem= problème, problema, problema
house= maison, casa, casa
theatre= théatre, teatro, teatro
mother= mère, madre, madre
father= père, padre, madre
to fall= tomber, cadere, caer
picture= tableau, quadro, cuadro
cock= coq, gallo, gallo
cow= vache, vacca, vaca
to sing= chanter, cantare, cantar
to pay= payer, pagare, pagar
bill= addition, conto, cuenta
waiter= garçon, cameriere, camarero
to sign= signer, firmare, firmar
and so on..
The true "brigde language" between Spanish and Italian and Italian and French is Catalan
" Possible, mais reste que pour une conversation basique on peut se faire vaguement comprendre resp. en Espagne / Italie en parlant italien / espagnol "
C'est une idée reçue.
Y compris par des hispanophones/italophones qui n'ont pas de connaissance de l'autre langue; mais cette idée reçue largement diffusée et fausse. C'est d'ailleurs ce que j'ai longtemps cru avant que j'apprenne l'Italien, lorsque je ne connaissais que le français et l'espagnol. J'avais tendance à penser que l'Espagnol et l'Italien étaient des langues quasi identiques... J'ai rapidement changé de point de vue en apprenant l'Italien et prenant conscience des points communs qui rapprochent le français de l'Italien tout en les éloignant de l'Espagnol. Il est vrai que sur de nombreux points l'Italien et l'Espagnol possèdent des prononciations plus proches (cependant très loin d'être identiques), mais le rythme et l'accentuation sont très différents, génant la compréhension éventuelle. Compréhension d'autant plus gênée lorque des mots aussi basiques tels que "mangiare", troppo", "allora", "è", "e", "prendere", "mettere", "oggi",
"giorno", etc ne disent absolument rien à un hispanophone non-initié, là ou un francophone moyen comprendrait "manger", "alors", "est", "et",
"prendre", "mettre", etc. Sans oublier que nombreuses tournures et expressions toutes faites sont communes en Français et en Italien mais n'existent pas en Espagnol.
Moi-même parlant français, espagnol et un peu italien, J'ai expérimenté des "discussions" hilarantes entre des Espagnols arrivant à l'aéroport de Rome, venant en Italie pour la première fois, utilisant l'Espagnol (pensant être compris) avec des Italiens qui n'en comprenaient pas le moindre mot... et qui ont switché vers l'Anglais dès la première phrase, comme ils l'auraient fait avec n'importe quel touriste Allemand ou Hollandais. Inversersement le Français est bien plus facile pour communiquer avec des Italiens, la plupart en ayant des notions basiques, tandis que ceux qui n'en ont pas comprennent assez facilement un français simple.... Je n'ai jamais eu de problème à me faire comprendre en Italie même avant d'apprendre l'Italien.
Mais par contre il est vrai que du point de vue hispanophone l'italien semble bien plus proche de l'espagnol que le français (le raccourci intellectuel consiste alors à penser que si tel est le cas alors l'inverse est aussi vrai, ce qui n'est pas le cas...). Comme les hispanophones sont plus nombreux que les francophones et Italophones ils ont peut-être tendance à "imposer" leur point de vue sur les idées communément reçues.
" it depends.....
school = école, scuola, escuela
cat = chat, gatto, gato
problem= problème, problema, problema
theatre= théatre, teatro, teatro
mother= mère, madre, madre
father= père, padre, madre
cow= vache, vacca, vaca
to sing= chanter, cantare, cantar "
to pay= payer, pagare, pagar
In all these "exemples" the french is just slightly bit more divergent, not completly different word than in the exemples of difference between Spanish and french/Italian (concerning very important basic words such as verbs "to make", "to take", etc) I gave above.
a Spanish/Italian won't have problems to understand what means "problème" or "théâtre" even if the french version lacks the final "a" or "o"...
On the other way, any french speaker will understand "scuola" or "escula" because of the adjective relative to "école" which is "scolaire"...
The same for "madre", which every francophone will relate to "maternel"... etc.
" house= maison, casa, casa "
The french will not have problemes to understand "casa" since we have the word "case" (a tropical small house), "caser" (to get married and settle in a house), etc. or the adjective "casanier" wich means someone that stay at home, etc...
" picture= tableau, quadro, cuadro "
The french word "cadre" is almost the same as quadro/cuadro. It is in no way a problem for a francophone to understand.
" cock= coq, gallo, gallo "
once again in french we have "gallinacés", which refers to coks and chikens group of birds. not even speaking of the symbol of France, the cock, we call the "coq Gaulois"... we see the relation.
" bill= addition, conto, cuenta "
it is just a question of how we use words in certain situations. the word "compte" in french means the same, it is just used in a wider meaning. every french speaker will undertand "conto" without any problem and will know immediately what it means.
Inversely the word "addition" exist in both Italian and Spanish: "adicion", "addizione". No problem for them to guess what the french waiter means when he said "l'addition"... since the words exist in their languages, they just won't use it in that situation.
" waiter= garçon, cameriere, camarero "
The usual word we would use for "waiter" would be "serveur". "Garçon" (which means in fact "boy") is used only to call him.
"garçon" in Italian would be "ragazzo", and "chico" in Spanish, they just happen to not use that word to call a waiter as we sometimes do.
the hispanophones can use aslo "servidor", and will not have problem to understand "serveur". Said that a french word "camériste" was quite widely used until some decades.
<<et qui ont switché vers l'Anglais dès la première phrase>>
French word "switché" means "switch" in English?
"Fool bird", you're right. It is the same as between Italian and Portuguese. Communication between speakers of these languages is possible but it's a very clumsy comunication with plenty of misunderstandings. Any Portuguese dealing with Italian tourists, f. ex. knows that well.
I suppose that between Spanish and Italian is the same.
Non-speakers of these languages may think they are almost the same because of some similar sounds of these languages. They are not so.
Both between English and French, and between English and German it's the same I guess.
The English language is basicaly a Germanic language (grammar and roughly 50% of the words, mostly popular ones), with many words from French and the Latin world ( maybe the other 50% of them, mostly formal words, but not always).
The pronunciation system of English has no parallel to any other European language, except a few features simmilar to Dutch (dual sound vowels depending on whether there is a single or double consonant after the vowel).
Add "the lack of any system of the system of English" (the 500 exception rule) (lol), and the lack of interest from natives of English in learning other languages, that explains some problems natives of English have to understand neighbouring languages that contributed so much to what is English nowadays.
Another one: blesser-herir-ferire.
<<How much can an English-speaking person understand a French text without learning the French language?>>
More than most people are willing to admit. An English speaker has a passive french vocabulary of many thousands of words and expressions. Even some words that don't exist in other romance languages.
<<More than most people are willing to admit. An English speaker has a passive french vocabulary of many thousands of words and expressions. Even some words that don't exist in other romance languages. >>
How much of this "passive vocabulary" is echt made up of false friends? i.e. words which English speakers *recognize*, but may be misinterpreting?
If by know you mean: words they recognize.
I imagine if an English speaker could understand a fair amount, upwards fo 25% probably.
If by know you mean: have any idea what's actually being written about.
much less, they may reconize the noun, verb, adjective, but unless they have studied French or related language that doesn't mean they can know for sure what the sentence says.
If by understand: you mean speaking
they'll catch a few words, but be completely lost.
I'm sure that anyone who knows even the tiniest bit of French should be able to understand this:
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From http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomie
"L'astronomie est considérée comme la plus ancienne des sciences. L'archéologie révèle en effet que certaines civilisations disparues de l'âge du bronze, et peut-être du néolithique, avaient déjà des connaissances en astronomie. Elles avaient compris le caractère périodique des équinoxes et sans doute leur relation avec le cycle des saisons, elles savaient également reconnaître certaines constellations. L'astronomie moderne doit son développement à celui des mathématiques depuis l'antiquité grecque et à l'invention d'instruments d'observation à la fin du Moyen Âge. Si l'astronomie s'est pratiquée pendant plusieurs siècles parallèlement à l'astrologie, le siècle des lumières et la redécouverte de la pensée grecque a vu naître la distinction entre la raison et la foi, si bien que l'astrologie n'est plus pratiquée par les astronomes."
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All the words are simple words that you would learn in any beginning French class like:
L'
est
comme
la
plus
des
en
que
de
du
et
peut-être
av-
déjà
etc.
The rest of the words are exactly or nearly exactly the same as in English, because all of those words were borrowed into English.
I would say that would give English speakers a huge advantage in being able to read any French scientific, technical, or encyclopedic articles. There are not that many other languages where the words are so very transparent. It's harder to read Spanish or Italian than French, because many the words usually look altered somewhat. Most other Germanic languages (besides English) don't have the same amount of Latin borrowings, and many of them the cognates with English are not very transparent (at least not compared to French loanwords in English.) Slavic languages are even more difficult, because they don't have as many Latin words in them, and to make things worse, do not have the Germanic component that is sometimes recognizable to English speakers.
Anyway, I could understand that entire French paragraph, and I'm pretty sure any other English speaker that has taken more than a day of French could understand.
>>
How much of this "passive vocabulary" is echt made up of false friends? i.e. words which English speakers *recognize*, but may be misinterpreting? <<
Well, some of course. But I've rarely had problems. It helps to read French books at 1.5 to 3x as fast as you read English books, because your brain can then take each word in context, instead of just interpreting each individual word by itself. Then you can work out any words you don't understand, without immediately resorting to one of those horrible dictionaries, which will interrupt the flow of your reading. However if the text is particularly difficult, then you will need a dictionary. But don't use it right away. Read the passage first through once. Then read it again and circle with a red pen any words that you don't understand. Then look up the words in a dictionary and this time write out a paper translation on the difficult sentences. Then re-read the passage. Also, write down the words that you don't understand on a sheet of lined paper, and make sure that none of them are in alphabetical order. The most dangerous thing to do is to try to learn words that are in alphabetical order--what happens is the words get jumbled around in your standard memory banks, and that can cause you to forget the words. However, do not resort to flash cards, as that is one of the worst things that you can do. Also, do not try to learn more than one definition of a word at a time. Learn only *one * definition first. Then a week later, go back and learn the rest of the definitions. It's very important to wait a week, or you could forget the word entirely.
I agree with Pajaro bobo, I'm from Italy and I have to say that Spanish is much easier to understand than French. There may be some misunderstandings but for an educated Italian Spanish is the easiest language to understand. It's not true that there's only an Italian variant unlike Spanish. Italians are used to hearing different dialects, much more different among them than all Spanish variants. As for grammar, In Italian and Spanish the subjunctive mood is much more better preserved and rich in endings than in French.
" I'm sure that anyone who knows even the tiniest bit of French should be able to understand this: "
This was not the question, the question was how much an anglophone that do not not Nothing of french (even a tiny bit) can understand a text?
Also you shoose a descripitive text (to avoid the complication of gramar and complicate tenses) and have a much greater chance to find words that existe in also English (because many of them are, like most scientific terms coming from latin or greek; but that also the case often exist in many other languages; "Astronomie, science, archeologie, néolithique, constellations, astrologie, etc."
If you shoose to use a usual french text, for exemple a simple conversation that one might hear in a french family, a restaurant, a public space, instead of people speaking abour Astronomy and constellations you will understand thta is a whole différent story. Especially for someone that has not learn a word of french.
a simple random exemple taken from a french method for beginers:
" - Qu'est ce que vous avez fait de beau?
- Nous avons invité ici, chez nous, des amis pour fêter le nouvel emploi de Marc. Te rappelle-tu de Marc, notre ami Parisien? Tu l'as connu quand nous sommes allées à Paris l'année dernière. Je t'ai téléphoné à toi aussi, mais...
- Ah, figure-toi, hier je me suis balladée toute la journée! Qui d'autre est venu?
- Laure et Paul, Claire, Marcel et Catherine sont venus. "
This is the average very basic french, the language that you will hear at every corner, classical french made of basic words, without slangs of complicate words or complicate tenses. What an Anglophone that has not learn a word of french will understand?
Maybe he would recognise "invité" (without understanding if here it is a noun, a verb (at tense?), an adjective, the gender, etc...). he will, as anyone on earth will understand the word "téléphoné" (once again not having an idea if it is speaking about the object or anything else). He will, as anyone that knows that Paris is the name of the french capital understand "Parisien" (without knowing thta it speak about a person, with a precision of gender, etc). Maybe he will make the relation between "emploi" and "employment", but once again will not know the status of the word; is it a noun, a verb, an adjective or anything else.. what it can mean in the sentence?
and, finally he will maybe understand that the last words refers to names, thanks to the fact that Paul and catherine are names used in English.
Finally, what this very basic dialogue was saying?
Ask an Italian without any knowledge of french; he/she will understand everything (will be harder for an hispanic):
" - Qu'est ce que vous avez fait de beau? "
will understand "che cosa avete fatto di bello"
(same expression in both languages wich just means "what did you do", but saying literaly "what you did of beautiful" )
" - Nous avons invité ici, chez nous, des amis pour fêter le nouvel emploi de Marc. "
the Italian will understand that we have invited some friends for celebrating the the new job of "Marc".
And all the rest the same...
" I agree with Pajaro bobo, I'm from Italy "
Et tu viens de quelle région en Italie? Tu comprends et connais réellement le Français, l'Italien et l'Epagnol ou bien tu parles simplement d'une impression personnelle superficielle?
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