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What language is the most similar to French in terms of vocabulary? I'm asking because one of my friends who speaks Spanish said that while Spanish and French have some words that are similar to each other, they are not mutually intelligible. I've heard it suggested that Portuguese and French are similar in terms of accent, but I don't really know.
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I actually meant out of the major Romance languages such as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, but thanks for your answer. I'm also wondering how much of the French vocabulary stems from Latin.
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Franco-provençal was originally part of the 'oïl' continuum, that doesn't count.
"What language is the most similar to French?" is like asking "Which language is closest to English?". The answer is: none.
English shares some native similarities to Frisian, Danish or Dutch, but all in all English is something very unique that doesn't resemble any other language (except for Scottish, but it was part of the English dialect continuum). French is just in the same situation, has no brother language it could be partially intelligible with (like German/Dutch, Swedish/Danish, Spanish/Portuguese or Spanish/Catalan or even Spanish/Italian)
"how much of the French vocabulary stems from Latin": don't know, must be at least 80%.
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French is the odd one out in the Romance family, like English is the odd one out in the Germanic family.
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When French is writin it resembles Spanish but the words resemble latin... French is not the only odd of the romance family, Romanian is also an odd ball... Spanish, Italian, & Portugese are way closer together, and French & Romanian are the odd ones.
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The closest language to French is Occitan.
The closest official widely spoken Romance language is Catalan, a bridge language between Gallo and Iberian Romance languages. Occitan and Catalan are obviously very close and were even closer in the early Middle Ages.
The language with the widest French influence (in lexicon at least) is English both through its mediaeval Norman dialects and Modern and Contemporary French.
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Of the five major Romance Languages, Romanian is definitely the odd ball. While French pronounciation is definitely unique and separate, if you're a native speaker of Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, you still can read most of it, and get the gist of what they're saying. This is not true with Romanian.
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It is often said that in terms of vocabulary, the closest major Romance language to French is Italian.
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I would say closest to French in vocabulary is Italian too.
This is due in large part to French having borrowed a lot from Italian over the centuries, part from their proximity. French also looks to Italian too as an older brother for inspiration.
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Look in the Lexical Similarities thread. Italian it is,
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Catalan happens to be official (next to Castilian) in a great part of Spain and is also the only official language of Andorra. It has approximately 10 million speakers according to official census. It is very much alive and widely spoken in its area of influence. It has several television channels and a few hundred radio stations, for examples.
Are we speaking as linguists or are we speaking as politicians?
Since the Latin languages are a continuum it's easy enough to understand.
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french is not at all a odd language among the romance languages as some non-romance speakers may think. French is actually closer to italian than spanish is - the only difference is tha pronounciation and the lack of "o/a" endongs which leds some people foreign to romance language that french might be appart, which is wrong.
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French lacks two verbs for to be like typical romance languages do. It has non latin plural markers like -aux, etc... I think that it is really a class on its own in the Romance group.
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