moi je trouve l'allemand plus facile que le latin, il faudrait peut-être arrêter de faire des généralités, non ?
What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language
<<moi je trouve l'allemand plus facile que le latin, il faudrait peut-être arrêter de faire des généralités, non ? >>
Oh yeah, suuuure.
Generalities such as you are most likely a linguistically inclined individual who does not adequately represent the *average* Francophone?
Desire to learn a language also plays into this assessment as well. You may have desire to learn Latin more ;)
You are the exception to the general rule, and that must be taken into consideration.
Some, such as you might be, are skilled in linguistics. Others are skilled in making assessments.
Oh yeah, suuuure.
Generalities such as you are most likely a linguistically inclined individual who does not adequately represent the *average* Francophone?
Desire to learn a language also plays into this assessment as well. You may have desire to learn Latin more ;)
You are the exception to the general rule, and that must be taken into consideration.
Some, such as you might be, are skilled in linguistics. Others are skilled in making assessments.
You are the exception to the general rule, and that must be taken into consideration
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Pas du tout, j'étais un latiniste dans mes années de collège et lycée et je peux te dire que le latin était considéré comme très difficile (en plus d'être "inutile") par la majorité des élèves. Même les premiers de la classe. :)
Je n'ai jamais entendu ce genre de plainte concernant l'allemand ( à part les insultes du type "langage de fachos" etc...).
J'ai même trouvé l'allemand plus facile que l'anglais, mais c'est du au fait que c'était une LV2, et les LV2 semblent toujours plus faciles.
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Pas du tout, j'étais un latiniste dans mes années de collège et lycée et je peux te dire que le latin était considéré comme très difficile (en plus d'être "inutile") par la majorité des élèves. Même les premiers de la classe. :)
Je n'ai jamais entendu ce genre de plainte concernant l'allemand ( à part les insultes du type "langage de fachos" etc...).
J'ai même trouvé l'allemand plus facile que l'anglais, mais c'est du au fait que c'était une LV2, et les LV2 semblent toujours plus faciles.
Fonéticamente el alemán también es más fácil que el inglés para un hispanohablante.
" I know many native speakers of French who speak fluently German as a second language. You state that Learning Latin is more easy than Learning German for you - so you speak Latin fluently? What lever did you achieve in Latin? "
Ouest, you're comparing learning a dead language with a language spoken by 100 million Europeans... Of course you'll find more easily a greater number of good german than latin speakers, not because German is more easy, but because the wish of speaking a living language is much more widely spread than the wish of speaking a dead language. Generally when someone learns latin the objective is not to achieve a fluent speaking level since it is not a language that is spoken anymore. People who have a wish of learning german stronger because they are interested to German culture and want to reach fluent lavel to be able to visit or live in german-speaking nations and comunicate with German-speaking peoples.
Ouest, you're comparing learning a dead language with a language spoken by 100 million Europeans... Of course you'll find more easily a greater number of good german than latin speakers, not because German is more easy, but because the wish of speaking a living language is much more widely spread than the wish of speaking a dead language. Generally when someone learns latin the objective is not to achieve a fluent speaking level since it is not a language that is spoken anymore. People who have a wish of learning german stronger because they are interested to German culture and want to reach fluent lavel to be able to visit or live in german-speaking nations and comunicate with German-speaking peoples.
Its clear that everyone on here, especially the ones who think French is germanic in nature, is so hell bent on proving their point that they have descended into making generalisations about everything and everyone. If someone gets on here and says that latin was easier for them than german, its ridiculed. If someone says that they found spanish similar to french, they are ridiculed and told that they are wrong. If someone puts forth a linguistic theory or fact that deserves discussion on here, but that conflicts with the whole "French is more German than Kaizer Wilhelm" they are shot down.
I'm not French, and I admit, I dont speak it all that well, but I, and any twit can figure out the following:
French is a language descended from the popular form of spoken Latin, that went under lots of phonetic changes over 1000 years, and it did have some germanic influences, and it did take on some vocabulary from germanic peoples since they were the elites of society for a long time. Lots of that vocabulary has fallen out of use in the language, and French teetered on throughout history, like all other languages have, and survives in its current form today.
Though the whole creolisation theory is quite interesting (especially since it deals with major, western european languages, and not "third world" languages), its not able to be proved, and it will never be. We can speculate until the German cows come home and no one will ever find an answer. Unless someone has some hidden document somewhere, written in the 300's that recounts the creolisation of vulgar latin, or a document from the 700's that talks about how German the gallo-romans were, just shut up. My god, there are other things in the world to worry about other than the exact percentage of germanic loan words are found in two paragraphes of written French, or if someone living in Paris finds German or Greek or Latin or Zulu easier to learn.
And since I am a bit biased, I will pose one last question: The Germanic language family has lots of languages in it: German (high and low!), Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, English, and lots lots more. Do you have to take over the romance languages as well? What next? The germanisation of Arabic? How Germanic forever changed Aramaic? How Vandals and Ostrogoths fought to keep China German? My god...you lost the war and your languages (except english, since French influenced it so much) sound like people choking and throwing up. Just live your lives and be happy. Stop trying to make up silly theories.
Am I generalising? Haha....I guess I am!
I'm not French, and I admit, I dont speak it all that well, but I, and any twit can figure out the following:
French is a language descended from the popular form of spoken Latin, that went under lots of phonetic changes over 1000 years, and it did have some germanic influences, and it did take on some vocabulary from germanic peoples since they were the elites of society for a long time. Lots of that vocabulary has fallen out of use in the language, and French teetered on throughout history, like all other languages have, and survives in its current form today.
Though the whole creolisation theory is quite interesting (especially since it deals with major, western european languages, and not "third world" languages), its not able to be proved, and it will never be. We can speculate until the German cows come home and no one will ever find an answer. Unless someone has some hidden document somewhere, written in the 300's that recounts the creolisation of vulgar latin, or a document from the 700's that talks about how German the gallo-romans were, just shut up. My god, there are other things in the world to worry about other than the exact percentage of germanic loan words are found in two paragraphes of written French, or if someone living in Paris finds German or Greek or Latin or Zulu easier to learn.
And since I am a bit biased, I will pose one last question: The Germanic language family has lots of languages in it: German (high and low!), Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, English, and lots lots more. Do you have to take over the romance languages as well? What next? The germanisation of Arabic? How Germanic forever changed Aramaic? How Vandals and Ostrogoths fought to keep China German? My god...you lost the war and your languages (except english, since French influenced it so much) sound like people choking and throwing up. Just live your lives and be happy. Stop trying to make up silly theories.
Am I generalising? Haha....I guess I am!
<<Though the whole creolisation theory is quite interesting (especially since it deals with major, western european languages, and not "third world" languages), its not able to be proved, and it will never be.>>
You are correct in this. This is why we are *discussing* it. We are not here to claim facts, nor to indoctrinate anyone (at least that is not why I come here). I come here to openly discuss certain topics, certain possibilities, certain conjectures, and to bounce them off people who know a lot about languages, to prove to myself whether they have validity. That's all.
This is an arena for friendly debate; not hostile interrogation : )
You are correct in this. This is why we are *discussing* it. We are not here to claim facts, nor to indoctrinate anyone (at least that is not why I come here). I come here to openly discuss certain topics, certain possibilities, certain conjectures, and to bounce them off people who know a lot about languages, to prove to myself whether they have validity. That's all.
This is an arena for friendly debate; not hostile interrogation : )
I agree that this should be a forum for friendly discussion, but its not. Lots of people have brought up quite good points, some of which have really made me think. The problem is that lots of other people (including yourself, unless someone else has been using the name "guest" and pretending to be you), have shot them down without admiting that they are proving a good point.
You accuse people of lying and exaggerating, but what boggles my mind is, if someone who is French gets on here and says "I learned German easier than Latin" you say nothing.
If someone says the contrary, you accuse them of either lying or exaggerating.
Language and language learning is a very complex domain. People learning an L2 are motivated by a whole array of factors. To accuse someone of not being a part of the norm because they dont fit what you want to believe isnt right. Personally, I found French quite a bit easier than Spanish to learn. Lots of people say Spanish is easier for an anglophone, but I found French easier, since I had more interest in it. I was more motivated and that made learning easier. I know people who found Chinese much easier than other languages because they had personal reasons for learning it. To just use a blanket statement like "French people learn German easier than X language" is over-simplistic and ignorant.
You accuse people of lying and exaggerating, but what boggles my mind is, if someone who is French gets on here and says "I learned German easier than Latin" you say nothing.
If someone says the contrary, you accuse them of either lying or exaggerating.
Language and language learning is a very complex domain. People learning an L2 are motivated by a whole array of factors. To accuse someone of not being a part of the norm because they dont fit what you want to believe isnt right. Personally, I found French quite a bit easier than Spanish to learn. Lots of people say Spanish is easier for an anglophone, but I found French easier, since I had more interest in it. I was more motivated and that made learning easier. I know people who found Chinese much easier than other languages because they had personal reasons for learning it. To just use a blanket statement like "French people learn German easier than X language" is over-simplistic and ignorant.
But im sure youre a nice guy (or girl) and other people probably do get on here using the name "guest" since they lack creativity! ;)
<<I wonder from where do the people who claim Latin is easier get the input to become fluent in Latin (both writen and spoken). Do they communicate with Julius Caesar or something? >>
1) for your knowledge the official language of the vatican city is latin. It spoken and written in special occasions.
2) I know this will have a lot of criticism. ; however a great man use to say: to be a real historian is to be ready to accept a proven fact, even if it is the opposed of what you have beleved untll then as false.
So, in linguistic, by definition language is a way to comunicate. Furthermore: A language is alive if does not cease to be spoken by the same group of peaple; its also alive because it continues to transform itself due to new reality.
Now, french. spanish,portuguese, roumanian etc. are neolatin languages, only because latin, at a certain point of the above mentioned nation' s
histoiy, put a stop to all the former spoken languages of those country (Germanic, dacian, lusitania iberian etc), On the countrary in Italy, after the collapse of the roman impire, the language spoken in Italy was an italic language (latin). With the end of Rome, Italy was divided in many parts for century, but peaple continue to talk an italic idiome, (voulgar latin)developping in many dialects. So a spoken latin, even if voulgar never stop to be spoken on the peninsule, and like any live language transformed itself into what we call today italian: therefore the modern italian is the modern language of the ancient Rome.Latin never died. If the tuscan dialect was chosen, among other italian dialect to be the language of the unified italian nation today, so did the latin, not by choise but by the egemony of Rome over all unified Italy by Augustus, became the language (it stil was an italic language) of roman italy
I don't want to be presomptous, logically if sameone want to specialise in old french or old english language, its possible, but nobody speaks it. If they want to learn modern french or english its possible.
Same thing with old italian.And if someone want to go at its roots, they wl have to study latin at different level of transformation;but if someone want to speak latin iin a modern way they wold have to study italian and its dialects. Vales !!!!, Italicus.
1) for your knowledge the official language of the vatican city is latin. It spoken and written in special occasions.
2) I know this will have a lot of criticism. ; however a great man use to say: to be a real historian is to be ready to accept a proven fact, even if it is the opposed of what you have beleved untll then as false.
So, in linguistic, by definition language is a way to comunicate. Furthermore: A language is alive if does not cease to be spoken by the same group of peaple; its also alive because it continues to transform itself due to new reality.
Now, french. spanish,portuguese, roumanian etc. are neolatin languages, only because latin, at a certain point of the above mentioned nation' s
histoiy, put a stop to all the former spoken languages of those country (Germanic, dacian, lusitania iberian etc), On the countrary in Italy, after the collapse of the roman impire, the language spoken in Italy was an italic language (latin). With the end of Rome, Italy was divided in many parts for century, but peaple continue to talk an italic idiome, (voulgar latin)developping in many dialects. So a spoken latin, even if voulgar never stop to be spoken on the peninsule, and like any live language transformed itself into what we call today italian: therefore the modern italian is the modern language of the ancient Rome.Latin never died. If the tuscan dialect was chosen, among other italian dialect to be the language of the unified italian nation today, so did the latin, not by choise but by the egemony of Rome over all unified Italy by Augustus, became the language (it stil was an italic language) of roman italy
I don't want to be presomptous, logically if sameone want to specialise in old french or old english language, its possible, but nobody speaks it. If they want to learn modern french or english its possible.
Same thing with old italian.And if someone want to go at its roots, they wl have to study latin at different level of transformation;but if someone want to speak latin iin a modern way they wold have to study italian and its dialects. Vales !!!!, Italicus.
" To just use a blanket statement like "French people learn German easier than X language" is over-simplistic and ignorant. "
I agree with your wise attitude
Especially when you know that a french learning latin has only gramar to really learn, he already can guess or understand most of the vocabulary, and also basis of conjugaison. While in German he has to learn Thousands of words in the same time as learning the grammar...
I agree with your wise attitude
Especially when you know that a french learning latin has only gramar to really learn, he already can guess or understand most of the vocabulary, and also basis of conjugaison. While in German he has to learn Thousands of words in the same time as learning the grammar...
I'm fascinated. can an Italian, Spaniard, Frenchman really decipher the meaning of the following text just by speaking their native tongue?
"Quocirca invenimus nihil esse aliud discere ista, quorum non per sensus haurimus imagines, sed sine imaginibus, sicuti sunt, per se ipsa intus cernimus, nisi ea, quae passim atque indisposite memoria continebat, cogitando quasi colligere atque animadvertendo curare, ut tamquam ad manum posita in ipsa memoria, ubi sparsa prius et neglecta latitabant, iam familiari intentioni facile occurrant. et quam multa huius modi gestat memoria mea, quae iam inventa sunt, et sicut dixi, quasi ad manum posita, quae didicisse et nosse dicimur: quae si modestis temporum intervallis recolere desivero, ita rursus demerguntur et quasi in remotiora penetralia dilabuntur, ut denuo velut nova excogitanda sint indidem iterum -- neque enim est alia regio eorum -- et cogenda rursus, ut sciri possint, id est velut ex quadam dispersione colligenda, unde dictum est cogitare. nam cogo et cogito sic est, ut ago et agito, facio et factito. verum tamen sibi animus hoc verbum proprie vindicavit, ut non quod alibi, sed quod in animo colligitur, id est cogitur, cogitari proprie iam dicatur. "
Meaning and all?
As an Anglophone, I can pick out the odd word here and there, but the gist of the passage is wholly incognizable to me.
"Quocirca invenimus nihil esse aliud discere ista, quorum non per sensus haurimus imagines, sed sine imaginibus, sicuti sunt, per se ipsa intus cernimus, nisi ea, quae passim atque indisposite memoria continebat, cogitando quasi colligere atque animadvertendo curare, ut tamquam ad manum posita in ipsa memoria, ubi sparsa prius et neglecta latitabant, iam familiari intentioni facile occurrant. et quam multa huius modi gestat memoria mea, quae iam inventa sunt, et sicut dixi, quasi ad manum posita, quae didicisse et nosse dicimur: quae si modestis temporum intervallis recolere desivero, ita rursus demerguntur et quasi in remotiora penetralia dilabuntur, ut denuo velut nova excogitanda sint indidem iterum -- neque enim est alia regio eorum -- et cogenda rursus, ut sciri possint, id est velut ex quadam dispersione colligenda, unde dictum est cogitare. nam cogo et cogito sic est, ut ago et agito, facio et factito. verum tamen sibi animus hoc verbum proprie vindicavit, ut non quod alibi, sed quod in animo colligitur, id est cogitur, cogitari proprie iam dicatur. "
Meaning and all?
As an Anglophone, I can pick out the odd word here and there, but the gist of the passage is wholly incognizable to me.
Speaking any romance language is bascially speaking a form of modern day spoken Latin (note I didnt say classical latin!). It's the same for English speakers who speak a modern and evolved form of Anglo-Saxon! When you run into someone speaking German, they are carrying on the speech of a culture thousands of years old. When you hear someone speaking French, Italian or Spanish, you're hearing the modern versions of a form of Latin that goes back to antiquity.
I totally agree with you Lucca pietro. Even though it sounds like a really romantic way of looking at language, we all are just carrying on what our ancestors spoke, even if 2000 years has brought on so many differences that we could never understand eachother!
I totally agree with you Lucca pietro. Even though it sounds like a really romantic way of looking at language, we all are just carrying on what our ancestors spoke, even if 2000 years has brought on so many differences that we could never understand eachother!
To "Really"
No, a person who doesnt have training in Latin couldnt understand the full meaning of the text for two reasons: Romance languages arent descended from this form of Latin, and even if they were...ouf.. its been a long time since the Augustine Confessions were written...the language would have changed a lot since then. But mainly, its because French and all the other romance languages didnt come from a written form of Latin, based on more Classical forms.
Id like to know (just for linguists fun... if "fun" can be applied to linguists), would an anglophone or a speaker of dutch or frisian understand any of the following text (and be honest guys!)
Hwaet! We gardena in geardagum theodcyninga, thrym gefunon, hu tha aethelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum, monegum maegthum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Sythan aerest wearth feasceaft funden, he theas frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorthmyndum thah, othdeat him aeghwylc thara ymbsittendra
(sorry for the lack of certain letters...my computer cant do them. I just replaced them with modern usage....gotta love Beowulf!)
No, a person who doesnt have training in Latin couldnt understand the full meaning of the text for two reasons: Romance languages arent descended from this form of Latin, and even if they were...ouf.. its been a long time since the Augustine Confessions were written...the language would have changed a lot since then. But mainly, its because French and all the other romance languages didnt come from a written form of Latin, based on more Classical forms.
Id like to know (just for linguists fun... if "fun" can be applied to linguists), would an anglophone or a speaker of dutch or frisian understand any of the following text (and be honest guys!)
Hwaet! We gardena in geardagum theodcyninga, thrym gefunon, hu tha aethelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum, monegum maegthum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Sythan aerest wearth feasceaft funden, he theas frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorthmyndum thah, othdeat him aeghwylc thara ymbsittendra
(sorry for the lack of certain letters...my computer cant do them. I just replaced them with modern usage....gotta love Beowulf!)
"Quocirca invenimus nihil esse aliud discere ista, quorum non per sensus haurimus imagines, sed sine imaginibus, sicuti sunt, per se ipsa intus cernimus, nisi ea, quae passim atque indisposite memoria continebat, cogitando quasi colligere atque animadvertendo curare, ut tamquam ad manum posita in ipsa memoria, ubi sparsa prius et neglecta latitabant, iam familiari intentioni facile occurrant. et quam multa huius modi gestat memoria mea, quae iam inventa sunt, et sicut dixi, quasi ad manum posita, quae didicisse et nosse dicimur: quae si modestis temporum intervallis recolere desivero, ita rursus demerguntur et quasi in remotiora penetralia dilabuntur, ut denuo velut nova excogitanda sint indidem iterum -- neque enim est alia regio eorum -- et cogenda rursus, ut sciri possint, id est velut ex quadam dispersione colligenda, unde dictum est cogitare. nam cogo et cogito sic est, ut ago et agito, facio et factito. verum tamen sibi animus hoc verbum proprie vindicavit, ut non quod alibi, sed quod in animo colligitur, id est cogitur, cogitari proprie iam dicatur. "
At first glance writen Latin resembles Spanish but with more -um and -ur. Appart from that it's completely unintelligible for me. Anyways I wonder if an English speaker can understand 100 BC Anglosaxon , probably they can't as well.
At first glance writen Latin resembles Spanish but with more -um and -ur. Appart from that it's completely unintelligible for me. Anyways I wonder if an English speaker can understand 100 BC Anglosaxon , probably they can't as well.