spanish,french, english

n   Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:01 pm GMT
lexically, french and italians are the closest, phonetically french and portuguese.
nico   Mon Aug 29, 2005 6:52 pm GMT
Xatufan,

"Franks affected enormously the Vulgar Latin "


This is perfectly wrong, as said Bernard,. Only the phonetic has been a little affected. This is why we have our famous "R".

According to the historians, this is the 1st time invadors had to speak the language of the people they invaded and not the opposite.
Uriel   Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:19 am GMT
No, no, English is not a Romance language, but French IS.
greg   Thu Sep 01, 2005 3:04 am GMT
Selon Henriette Walter (une linguiste), seulement 544 mots de la langue française sont d'origine franque. Quant à l'influence du francique sur la phonologie du français, deux facteurs au moins sont à prendre en considération :

1/ la phonologie du français a toujours évolué (avant, pendant et après l'arrivée des Francs) : dire que la prononciation actuelle est le résultat des invasions franques équivaut à dire que Jules César a eu une influence sur la construction de la Tour Eiffel

2/ les Francs ne sont pas la seule peuplade germanique à avoir essaimé sur le territoire de la Gaule Septentrionale.
Easterner   Fri Sep 02, 2005 11:09 am GMT
nico: <<According to the historians, this is the 1st time invadors had to speak the language of the people they invaded and not the opposite.>>

I think this generally happens when the invaders are on a culturally lower level than the people they have invaded. Apart from the Germanic peoples who conquered the former Roman Empire, the same happened to Bulgarian Turks, who gradually became Slavicised by switching to the language of the Slavic population found there. Therefore they gave the name to the country (formerly it was Thracia), but adopted its language. Interestingly, this was not the case when Hungarians (or Magyars), with a culture similar to that of Bulgarian Turks, settled in the Carpathian Basin, although they did take over a large number of words from the Slavic population there. One reason they did not become Slavic is the fact that the Carpathian Basin was rather sparsely populated at that time.

Greg,

I think the vocabulary and the pronunciation of an invading group can have a very different effect on the native population of a country. As I see it, one reason why words are borrowed is that one group's language is in need of words to be used for the purpose of a changed lifestyle (an example is Magyars borrowing words from the Slavic population, needed for a settled lifestyle, see above). Obviously, the natives of Northern Gaul did not need to borrow any words from the Frankish invaders, except for certain areas of life (such as points of the compass, which are definitely of Germanic origin in French and Italian). On the other hand, the pronunciation of Francien might have been at least slightly influenced by the speech of the Frankish settlers, as they started to adopt the language in larger numbers. Of course, this should not mean that language change was not going on independently from this. In fact, some northern Italian dialects, as well as Occitan and Catalan, seem to exhibit the same features as French (Francien) - the shortening (clipping) of the original Latin words due to some phonetic changes and in the case of Occitan, nasalisation.
Sander   Fri Sep 02, 2005 11:48 am GMT
Nico,

=> According to the historians, this is the 1st time invadors had to speak the language of the people they invaded and not the opposite. <=

Sorry ... 'had to' ?! The Franks were mostly bilingual.The spoke Franconian /Frankish among eachother and ,in this case, Gallo Roman to their conquered countrymen.
Easterner   Sat Sep 03, 2005 10:12 am GMT
<<Sorry ... 'had to' ?! The Franks were mostly bilingual.The spoke Franconian /Frankish among eachother and ,in this case, Gallo Roman to their conquered countrymen.>>

There may have been situations that when they really might have "had to" speak the language of the local population. For example, to ask for directions... They must have sent spies to find out the topography of Gaul as most probably they had no country maps at their disposal. :)
bernard   Sat Sep 03, 2005 10:27 am GMT
" There may have been situations that when they really might have "had to" speak the language of the local population. For example, to ask for directions... They must have sent spies to find out the topography of Gaul as most probably they had no country maps at their disposal. :) "

It is true that at the beguining of the invasion 3 or 4 first centuries the "frank" minority was bilingual, but they tend to be more and more proto-french monoliguals. when charlemagne's empire was divided in three parts (and two at the final : one were the local population was of germanic language and the other where the local population was of proto-french language, the last one will become France) In the romance monoligual Francia occidentalis (France), the decendants of the Franks had a very big difficulty to maintain their germanic language and adopted definitivly proto-french and after was we call now french. When they adopted definitivly the romance language the distinction beetween "franks" and "gallo-romans" lost completly its meaning, because the franks have been culturally assimilated in gallo-roman culture, and since then they had "metissage" with them.
Sander   Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:02 am GMT
=>the decendants of the Franks had a very big difficulty to maintain their germanic language and adopted definitivly proto-french and after was we call now french.<=

Really?! So I speak a Romance language?!

=>because the franks have been culturally assimilated in gallo-roman culture, and since then they had "metissage" with them. <=

LOL! Everybody! I'm French!
bernard   Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:39 am GMT
" =>the decendants of the Franks had a very big difficulty to maintain their germanic language and adopted definitivly proto-french and after was we call now french.<=

Really?! So I speak a Romance language?!

=>because the franks have been culturally assimilated in gallo-roman culture, and since then they had "metissage" with them. <=

LOL! Everybody! I'm French! "


I really doubt that you are decendant of the franks that were living in Francia occidentalis (= France). look the text it speaks about the few franks who lived in France, not in netherlands !
Sander   Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:44 am GMT
You have a very unclear style of writing Bernard ...

You claimed this:

"the decendants of the Franks had a very big difficulty to maintain their germanic language and adopted definitivly proto-french and after was we call now french"

You SAY that the Franks (read ALL FRANKS) adopted GalloRoman as their new language. Now I ask you why don't I speak French?!I live in the real country of the Franks.Well?!Why do I speak Dutch and not French?! Huh?! You tell me.
Another Dutchman   Sat Sep 03, 2005 11:58 am GMT
Bernard
Like some-one said before: why even waste your time on Sanders?

Jo
Sander   Sat Sep 03, 2005 12:00 pm GMT
Jo,boy

You're not a Dutchman ...

And it's 'someone' not 'some-one'.
nico   Sat Sep 03, 2005 12:29 pm GMT
Easterner,

Bernard said it perfectly. The franks who invaded the Gauls were not numerous compared to the population who was living in the area. There has been a mix, and adopted the laguage usually spoken.

bernard,

As said Another Dutchman, the best is to ignore Sander. He has nothing to say except negative stuff. Ignore him and today or tomorrow he will get bored.


In fact, german gave some other words later to the french, like bière, chenapan (i am not quite sure). The biggest influence to French is italian because of Renaissance, spanish, and few influences from croation, dutch............
Sander   Sat Sep 03, 2005 2:13 pm GMT
nico wrote:

=>As said Another Dutchman, the best is to ignore Sander. He has nothing to say except negative stuff. Ignore him and today or tomorrow he will get bored.
<=

Lol this is very interesting. A troll tells other trolls to ignore a person. It's the world turned upside down.