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What makes French a Latin-Germanic mixed language
<<blanc Tue Jan 20, 2009 7:56 pm GMT
^If you can't understand French you can bugger off to "English" forum. This is "Languages" forum. >> That's a very good way to attract people to your dying language is to exclude them!!!!!! [/sarcasm]
<<blanc Tue Jan 20, 2009 7:56 pm GMT
^If you can't understand French you can bugger off to "English" forum. This is "Languages" forum. >> That's a very good way to attract people to your dying language!! Exclude them!!!!!! gnagnagnagna [/sarcasm]
Good point 12345. The frenchies always manage to show their true arrogance.
<(He is English and German after all). But no. He has to be "difficile">
What does this mean? Not "difficile", but the other part?
Just curious, why do some say that French is a dying language? It seems to be going strong in France, Quebec, and other areas that were touched by French colonization. Quite frankly I'm a little worried that Italian might not have too long to go since Italy's birth rate is dismally low in addition to the fact that few outside of Italy speak it fluently and/or regularly. Italians better start having those large families again!
French is romance, not germanic, the fact that have some germanic words does not makes it germanic, as well as a good bunch of arabic words does not make Spanish semitic.
But appart from vocabulary French has syntactical and morphological features that derive from Germanic: for example French is not pro-drop (Latin and Spanish are), prepositions can be at the end of a sentence (like in English), very simplified verbal conjugations compared to Latin and Spanish (following the Germanic fashion), article des (plural of la) comes from German "das", etc.
<<French is romance, not germanic, the fact that have some germanic words does not makes it germanic, as well as a good bunch of arabic words does not make Spanish semitic. >>
Correct; however, as mentioned above French does have a lot more germanic qualities than merely a few germanic words here and there. Passé Composé is undoubtedly germanic; as is adjectival placement option before the noun (eg. "excellent question"; "grand homme"), and forced placement (eg. "jolie fille", "Je vis dans la même petite maison", etc). Truly, there are germanic fingerprints all over French, it's hard to cite them all
Passé Composé
All latin languages have the present perfect (passé composé), just its usage and the type of auxiliary differ from one language to another.
<<All latin languages have the present perfect (passé composé), just its usage and the type of auxiliary differ from one language to another. >>
And a germanic model (passé composé did not exist in Latin prior to the germanic influx) is the root of all of it. However, the construction of French's is analog to that of Dutch and German, and older forms of English. It is exactly the same in regards to verbs of motion and change of condition.
je suis allé
ich bin gegangen elle est allée Sie ist gegangen Nous sommes allées Wir sind gegangen !!The past participle does not change in German and in Dutch Nous nous sommes rasés Wir haben uns rasiert !! With reflexive verbs French makes use of the verb to be unlike German
«Passé Composé is undoubtedly germanic»
You're absolutely correct, and thus you will agree with me that Passato Recente (Italian), Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto (Spanish), Pretérito Perfeito (Portuguese), and Pretèrit indefinit (Catalan) are undoubtedly germanic. «as is adjectival placement option before the noun» Again, I completely agree with your reasoning. And therefore you will have no problem with my claiming that the same grammatical feature in Japanese and Chinese is also Germanic. «Truly, there are germanic fingerprints all over French, it's hard to cite them all » Absolutely. Surely you will indulge me with a few more examples?
" Passé Composé is undoubtedly germanic"
I don't know if passé simple is undoubtely germanic in origin, what is sure is that this tense is used in the other romance language as well as in french. Spanish use it a lot (European spanish use it almost exclusively, using preterit-passé simple in more writing cases, like french tend to do. Italian use it a lot, as well as Catalan (and probably other languages also) Passé simple clearly doesn't make french anymore "germanic" than the other romance languages. " as is adjectival placement option before the noun (eg. "excellent question"; "grand homme"), and forced placement (eg. "jolie fille", "Je vis dans la même petite maison", etc). " In french both order exist, depending of the case - and, once again this is not a french specificity. contrary to germanic language in which only one order is possible (i think, I'm not a germanic speacialist) ex: in a sentense "c'est un excellente question" can as much be said "c'est une question excellente", "c'est un grand homme" can be said "c'est un homme grand", "c'est une jolie fille" can be said "c'est une fille jolie" This is not different in other romance languages: "una excelente pregunta" can be said also in Spanish, not only "una pregunta excelente". In Spanish "un grand homme" would be said "un gran hombre" - the same in Italian ("grande uomo" or "grand'uomo"). "une jolie fille/belle fille" would be said "una bella chica" in spanish, "una bella ragazza" in Italian... we can use both orders in same sentense: ex: "c'est un grand avion blanc" (it is a big white plane - one order possible only). In spanish it will be said the same way than in french: "Es un gran avion blanco" and in Italian: "E un grande aereo bianco" " Truly, there are germanic fingerprints all over French, it's hard to cite them all" I have no doubt that it might be hard for you to find those so-called numerous exemple since you seem not knowing nothing about romance language and cultures... sorry |