European Languages - A Comparative Analysis

European Languages - A Comparative Analysis

The Indo-European Family of Languages (please note that not every language is included):

Italic (Latin)

Romance
Catalan
French
Italian
Occitan (Provençal)
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish


Germanic

North Germanic

Danish
Faroese
Icelandic
Norwegian
Swedish

West Germanic
Afrikaans
Dutch
English
Flemish
Frisian
German
Yiddish


Slavic

Western

Czech
Polish
Slovak
Sorbian

Eastern

Belarusian
Russian
Ukrainian

Southern

Bulgarian
Croatian
Macedonian
Serbian
Slovenian


Baltic

Latvian
Lithuanian

Celtic

Brythonic
Breton
Welsh

Goidelic

Irish Gaelic
Scots Gaelic


Hellenic (Greek)


Albanian


Armenian


Indo-Iranian


Indo-Aryan (Indic)

Bengali
Gujerati
Hindi-Urdu
Marathi
Punjabi
Romani
Sanskrit
Singhalese

Iranian

Balochi
Farsi (Persian)
Kurdish
Pashtu (Afghan)


You may have noticed that a few languages spoken on the European continent are not included in the Indo-European family of languages. Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian belong to the Uralic (also called Finno-Ugric) family, and Basque (spoken in the Pyrenees region) has no genetic relation to any other language. Two branches, Anatolian and Tocharian, are also not included in this diagram because they are now extinct. Anatolian languages include Hittite, Akkadian, Assyrian, Luwian, Palaic, Lydian and Lycian. Tocharian is classified as two dialects, East Tocharian or Turfan and West Tocharian or Kuchean. There are other extinct languages related to the above languages as well, such as Gothic of the East Germanic group and Old Prussian of the Baltic group.

So far I have only studied languages in the Romance, Germanic and Slavic branches so that is what the following analyses will include.

Romance Languages

The Romance languages are spoken by about 600 million people across the globe. All of these languages derive from Latin, and the five national standard languages that are recognized include French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. There are other dialects/languages as well, such as Catalan, Occitan, Romansh, Galician, Corsican, Sicilian and Rhaeto-Romance, but language status is accorded in different ways, and usually on cultural grounds.

The modern Romance languages have a high number of lexical overlap. French and Italian share 89% lexical similarity, as do Spanish and Portuguese. (It should be noted that Sicilian is as different from standard Italian as Portuguese is from Spanish.) However, Spanish and Portuguese have borrowed from Arabic, French from Germanic, and Romanian from Slavic because of historical and geographical reasons.

Phonemic nasals are found in French and Portuguese, and the palatalization and affrication of velar and dental consonants before front vowels is a departure from Latin. The western languages generally use /s/ as a plural marker, though it is silent in spoken French, while the eastern languages use vowels. All languages recognize two genders masculine and feminine, and use articles before the noun (except in Romanian, where they follow the noun as enclitics). Word order is generally subject-verb-object except when the object is a pronoun, then it precedes the verb. Most adjectives follow the noun they describe as well.

Because of its geographic isolation from the other four main languages, Romanian is a unique Romance language. Although attempts to write the language in the Cyrillic alphabet failed, the Slavic languages still contribute to the lexicon, pronunciation and morphology. Romanian still uses three distinct cases: nominative/accusative, genitive/dative and vocative. Occasionally, object-verb-subject word order is used, as in other Balkan languages.

More people learn French as a second language than any other language, except English, although there are several other languages spoken by more people (Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi/Urdu, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, German, Indonesian and Portuguese.) The grammar and pronunciation can be difficult at times, and there is a great difference between the spoken and written forms, but it is not too hard to learn. French used to be the lingua franca of the world, and is still respected as the language of great literature and diplomacy. French is probably the only language that you need to really master and speak perfectly. If you aren't that great with French, your language accomplishment will be regarded as poor, no matter how well you speak other languages.

Spanish is the other obvious choice for learning a Romance language. The Hispanic influence on the United States continually grows, and more people are finding Spanish a necessity. Spanish pronunciation is closer to English, but the grammar is similar to French. Once you've learned Spanish, Portuguese will be simple. Portuguese is one of those languages that is spoken by many, many people, yet no one seems to learn it as a second language. The grammar is slightly harder than Spanish, but the pronunciation is easier than French.

In my opinion, Italian is the easiest language to learn. The pronunciation is crystal clear, and the grammar is not hard at all. If you're interested in opera, cuisine, history, archaeology, or art then Italian is a good choice. Moreover, Italians really love people who are learning their language.

Germanic Languages

The Germanic languages are spoken on every continent by about 450 million people. Most people speak English, but German, Dutch and even the Scandinavian languages remain spoken in former colonies all over the world. Afrikaans is actually a variety of Dutch spoken in South Africa, and Flemish is just Dutch spoken in Belgium. Faroese is spoken in the Faroes Islands, and Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands) is the language that is the most closely related to English. However, out of the five major languages in this branch, Dutch is closest to English.

One third of the vocabulary of the Germanic languages is not of Indo-European origin. The stress of words is primarily on the first syllable, and several vowel shifts separate the Germanic languages from other Indo-European languages. Originally, there were three numbers (singular, plural, dual), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and four noun cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) but these only remain in German (minus the dual) and Icelandic. Word order in German is less strict because of the cases, but it is also much more complicated because of the verb final position in subordinate clauses. Dutch has combined the three genders into common and neuter, common being the former masculine and feminine. English has no genders or noun cases except for changes among a few personal pronouns. As well as strong and weak verbs, there are also strong and weak adjectives that decline before nouns.

German retains most of the Proto-Germanic language, but is least like the other languages in its group. Consequently, it is the most difficult to learn. The noun cases are extremely easy compared to those of the Slavic languages, and German is the most used language among the eastern countries of Europe.

Dutch is much easier to learn than German, but many people dismiss this language because The Netherlands is no longer a world power. The verbs are less complicated, as well as word order, and the vocabulary even sounds more like English. When you learn Dutch, you will also be able to communicate with those who speak Afrikaans in South Africa, as well as some Indonesians who have learned Dutch as a result of centuries of colonial rule. One caveat about Dutch though is that it is the most guttural language in the world. Which means it does not sound pretty at all, and you might get a sore throat trying to pronounce some words.

Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are also very easy for English speakers to learn. Like Dutch, they use two genders, but verbs only change for tense and word order is much like English. Definite articles attach to the end of the noun as a new word. These three languages are said to be mutually intelligible, meaning they can be considered dialects of one language. However, it is often hard for Swedes and Danes to communicate with each other, but not so hard for either to communicate with Norwegians. You should learn Norwegian first if you plan to learn all three, as it will give you a head start in both Swedish and Danish.

Slavic Languages

The Slavic languages are spoken in Eastern Europe and Russia and are the harder of the three language groups analyzed to learn. They are most closely related to the Baltic languages of Lithuania and Latvia. In terms of geography, Austria, Hungary and Romania separate Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian from the other languages, but Bulgarian and Macedonian are the only two that are somewhat different from the northern languages. The Western languages in the diagram above use the Roman alphabet, while the Eastern languages use the Cyrillic alphabet.

These languages are characterized by palatalizations (sounds such as ch, sh, zh) and a few palatal consonants (the sounds nj, lj, rj). All languages recognize the numbers singular and plural, as well as three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. There are at least six noun cases, sometimes seven: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and vocative. Russian does not have the vocative case and sometimes calls the locative case "prepositional." Because of the extensive case system and declensions of nouns, word order is relatively free.

None of the languages make use of any articles (except Bulgarian and Macedonian), but all use the imperfective and perfective aspects of verbs. Bulgarian and Macedonian are the most closely related languages to Old Slavonic, although all morphological case has been lost in these two languages. The dual number is only retained in Slovenian and Sorbian, while the aorist and imperfect verb forms only survive in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Sorbian and literary Serbo-Croatian.

If you're interested in learning Slavic languages, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Russian are the most useful. It will probably be easier to begin with the Western languages as they use the Roman alphabet. Russian will seem very easy if you've learned Croatian first, even easier if you've learned Serbian. Polish isn't as closely related to Russian though, so if Russian is your ultimate goal, Serbo-Croatian might be a better choice.

http://www.ielanguages.com

Sigma, good resume but I don't agree in a couple of things.

<<Spanish pronunciation is closer to English,>>

I find Spanish (more vowels) pronunciation way different from the English one (more consonants).

<<Italian is the easiest language to learn. The pronunciation is crystal clear,>>

That's relative and depends on the geographical area where a language is spoken. I would say that Spanish has the most uniform phonetic system which has only a few exceptions much less than the Italian. I mean with respect to the relation symbol-sound.

Yes, I agree Aldvs. And I would say that French pronounciation is closer to English than Spanish is to English. But even French has a very different phonology than English.

" And I would say that French pronounciation is closer to English than Spanish is to English "


Could you provide some exemples ? for a french speaker English pronouciation is a nightmare, almost all letter are pronouced differently.
That the reason why the english words of French origins are completly unintelligible to us, even if they keept the original french spelling:

Some ex of words whose pronouciation is completly alien for e french:
nation, different, respect, instrumental, intelligible, changes, among many others...

See, for me, when I hear these words in French, I immediately recognize their meaning. The same for Spanish, "nacion" or "diferente" or "inteligente". To me, it sounds like the English word with a thick accent.

French pronounciation is still very, very different from the English one. And as an English speaker, I can tell French accents are Latin ones, because of the way the vowels are pronounced usually.

'a' - ah
'e' - eh, ay
'i' - ee
'o' - oh
'u' - ooh

But, because of the way many consonants like 't' and 'r' are pronounced in French, English speakers can usually pronounce French more effectively than Spanish, because they are closer to the English pronounciation than the Spanish equivalents are. A lot of native English speakers find Spanish's rich vowel endings, and 't's, (which sound in-between an English 't' and 'th') and rolled 'r's to be very difficult. French is more like English than Spanish in the sense that word endings are not as vowel heavy, and often flat. In this regard, French sounds more like English than Spanish does. And because much of our vocabulary is directly imported from French, English and French cognates are virtually exactly the same, while the Spanish equivalent is a little different, like:
comunicacion
communication

Cognates are one thing, but how are they pronounced in each language? The French and English cognates may be spelled the same, but I'm pretty sure the difference in pronunciation is just as great as the gap between Spanish and English.

Also, is the uvular 'r' easier for English speakers than the rolled 'r'? I haven't seen any evidence that it is easier. Why do you think it is easier, LAA?

« French pronounciation is still very, very different from the English one. And as an English speaker, I can tell French accents are Latin ones, because of the way the vowels are pronounced usually.

'a' - ah
'e' - eh, ay
'i' - ee
'o' - oh
'u' - ooh »

Actually, German vowels are pronounced pretty much like this as well.

Hi LAA,

hhmm, the pronountiation of the French vowels is a bit more complex than the way you put it in. You forgot to differentiate open and closed e and o. And the pronountiation of 'u' has nothing to do with the sound ooh...

't' is exactly the same in French and in Spanish.

It is true that the cognates shared by En and Fr are in many cases identical, but when it comes to the pronountiation, I think that the distance Es-Fr, En-Fr is not so different.

For the rest of your comments, I mostly agree.

<<'t' is exactly the same in French and in Spanish.>>

How so? Perhaps we have heard different accents. Could you give me an example?

<<hhmm, the pronountiation of the French vowels is a bit more complex than the way you put it in. You forgot to differentiate open and closed e and o. And the pronountiation of 'u' has nothing to do with the sound ooh...>>

Yes, I know they are, but I was just trying to keep it simple. And I'm not very good at writing sounds phonetically. And as for the 'u', that was just the best way of writing it I could think of. In English, a 'u', often makes a (yoo) sound.

<<Also, is the uvular 'r' easier for English speakers than the rolled 'r'? I haven't seen any evidence that it is easier. Why do you think it is easier, LAA? >>

I don't know. I just think the uvular 'r' is closer to the English 'r' than the rolled 'r' is. And it has been my experience that many English speakers have little trouble pronouncing the French 'r', while they struggle to pronounce the rolled 'r'. For me, it's the opposite, but that is because of my exposure to rolled 'r's all of my life, along with the fact that I was rolling 'r's on a daily basis since I was about six years old.

<<The French and English cognates may be spelled the same, but I'm pretty sure the difference in pronunciation is just as great as the gap between Spanish and English.>>

It helps if you sound these words out aloud. Say the word, in Spanish, English, and French, and you will find that the English word sounds identical to the French equivalent, only with a heavy French accent. As a matter of fact, I have heard a few French speakers pronounce French-derived words in English almost identical to the French cognate because of their accent. Try it yourself. Say a word in English like "different". Now say it with a French accent. (Deef-er-ahnt). Now say it in French. It sounds exactly like the English word, only with a French accent. Now compare that to the Spanish "diferente" which sounds like (deef-er-ente). To me, the French word sounds very similar to the English, while the Spanish word sounds very different.

Hi LAA,

>How so? Perhaps we have heard different accents. Could you give me an example?
Unfortunately not, because I don't have sound files, but to me, there is no difference between Fr and Sp 't'. But let's wait to a francophone who happens to speak Spanish to corroborate either perspective.

The last comment was from Tiffany, which I supported in my last answer being Spanish speaker, and being able to speak English and French (even if it is unfortunately quite out of practice these days....), and precisely because of the different vowel sounds, diphthong sound, and places of the stressed syllables, I would insist in the distance from En and Sp to French being more or less the same. Citing your own example:

different in En has the first syllable stressed.
different in Fr has the third syllable stressed.
diferente in Sp has the third syllable stressed as well.
Besides, the 'i' and the first 'e' sound the same in Sp and Fr, whereas the En 'i' is another sound, and the first 'e' is a schwa, because it is unstressed.
The quality of the third syllable is another matter, being the first a schwa again, the second a nasal vowel, and the spanish an open 'e'.

Portuguese is one of those languages that is spoken by many, many people, yet no one seems to learn it as a second language.
-------

I do not agree with this.
Portuguese is taught in the schools of spanish speaking south american countries. There are so many people that learn portuguese as a second language. People only count the native speakers and have no idea of how many second language speakers exist this is the truth.

"I just think the uvular 'r' is closer to the English 'r' than the rolled 'r' is "

??!! the uvular "r" is light years from the "unpronounced" english r (I say "unpronounced", because to us the english "r" seem to be something that olmast doesn't sound as a consonant, but more to a "inbetween" sound "w/r", which is very difficult to pronounce for a french speaker.


" But, because of the way many consonants like 't' "

I speak both french and spanish, and for me "t" is pronounced exactly the same way in both languages.


" In this regard, French sounds more like English than Spanish does. And because much of our vocabulary is directly imported from French, English and French cognates are virtually exactly the same, while the Spanish equivalent is a little different, like: comunicacion - communication"

Once again you prouve that you know nothing about french. The exemple you give clearly shows it. the word "comunication" may be writed the same way in english and french (because it is a french word), the french prononciation is almost the same than Spanish one.

Let's see.
En. Ko-mee-u-nee-kai-chon
Fr. Ko-mü-nee-ka-si-on
Sp. Ko-mu-nee-ka-si-o-n

all english words in "-tion" are pronounced "chonn", while "sion" in french as in spanish.

« all english words in "-tion" are pronounced "chonn", while "sion" in french as in spanish. »

Or sometimes 'thión' (as in the English 'think'), depending on which dialect of Spanish is being used. (I would use X-SAMPA, but I don't know if you know it).

I think the thing with the '-tion' words is that is probably easier for English speakers to understand the French version than the other way around. If I were to say 'communication' the French way, I'd be understood. It might sound a bit pretentious or over-elaborate though.

<<Or sometimes 'thión' (as in the English 'think'), depending on which dialect of Spanish is being used.>>

Possibly you meant "cion" not "sion". Where Spaniards would pronounce it like "thion" (EN).

<<En. Ko-mee-u-nee-kai-chon >>

English pronounciation sounds nothing like that! It would sound more like this: (Ko-mun-ee-kay-shion). The "-tion" endings in English do not make a "ch" sound, but a soft "sh" sound. If you pronounce your "t"s like a Spanish 'c' or 's' then that just proves my point all the more. Spanish 't's are always pronounced something like between an English 'th' and 't'.