English and romance languages extremely similar?

<<"tot ziens". >>

'tot ziens' is literally "until [again] seeing" (lit "to [the] seeing")

<<Walter: Graag gedaan. {My pleasure/you're welcome!.}
>>

though graag gedaan does mean "you're welcome", the usual Dutch way of saying 'you're welcome' is simply "Welkom!" : )

<<Graag gedaan>>

graag means "gladly", "willingly"

gedaan is "done"

graag gedaan literally translates as "gladly done"

graag < older Dutch gradig "hungry" is related to the English word "greedy" so etymologically it translates as "greedily done"

<<"En 1806, la Louisiane devenue l'un des États-Unis en 1803 voit arriver plus de 10.000 créoles, des riches planteurs de sucre d'Haïti, selon Carl A. Brasseaux, historien et directeur du centre d'études louisiannaises de Lafayette. Une partie d'entre eux sont d'abord passés par Cuba, où les quinze années qui ont suivi 1792, date de l'introduction du commerce libre, ont fourni plus d'esclaves que les deux siècles et demi précédents.
Vers 1810, on estime que mille personnes vivent à proximité de Bâton-Rouge, dans l'Est, en grande majorité des francophones.
1812 : La Louisiane est admise au sein de l’Union, le 30 avril 1812, devenant ainsi le 18e État américain. À cette époque, la Louisiane était le premier et le seul État de l’Union dans lequel un groupe non anglophone, les descendants d’Acadiens — les Cadiens — et de Français et d'Espagnols -les Créoles-, constituait une majorité linguistique. Grâce au juriste Louis Moreau-Lislet, un Code civil plus complet (que le précédent basé sur la Coutume de Paris) reposant sur le Code Napoléon fut adopté par le législateur du nouvel État. Ce code avait été rédigé en français, puis traduit en anglais. Le texte français prime encore aujourd'hui en cas de problèmes d'interprétation de la version anglaise." >>

^ This text posted by Jole illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. It translates practically word-for-word (only slight differences in word order), with the grammatical constructions being almost identical. French is only a moderately inflected language which for the most part is every bit as analytic as english is, and has the same character.

EX: Ce code avait été rédigé en français, puis traduit en anglais.
This code had been written in french, then translated in english.

^ structurally/syntatically identical sentence.

Ignoring the lexical similarity that is a result of borrowing, the similarities still far outweigh the differences.

I myself would say that while written literary English may seem more like French simply due to the many French/Norman and Latinate literary vocabulary, written everyday English seems infinitely closer to other Germanic languages, in which one can easily see very clear parallels, whereas the French equivalents of the same seem to have no relation at all with the English. The only clear exception to this is German, whose connection with English seems largely opaque outside the simplest sentences; conversely, the continental North Germanic languages seem strikingly close to the English in practice despite their genetic distance from English.

***Have you ever seen the play "The Foreigner"? It's about an Englishman that travels to Georgia. But he's so shy that he is afraid of talking to anyone, so his friend comes up with a plan. He tells everyone in the lodge that they're staying at that his friend is a foreigner and can't speak a word of English***

Well, this "shy and retiring" Englishman...a rare breed in itself no matter what old fashioned stereotypical images may conjure up - personally I don't know any such kinds of Englishmen, but there you go!...actually IS a foreigner when he's in Georgia - obviously the American Georgia and not the Russian one. That's right, isn't it?

He may well be a native English speaker in native English speaking GA, USA (for the most part I assume, depending on how prevalent Spanish is in that particular State) but he's still every bit as foreign over there as he would if he was a Greek or an Albanian or a Finn.

The assumption from your text is such that because a person whose native Language is English could somehow be less of a foreigner than someone who's not! Or am I being TOO pedantic? Again....

It reminds me of the occasion when I was waiting in line at Edinburgh airport after flying in from Prague - I was in the "UK/EU passport holders" section when this American guy sort of got all wound up when told he was in the wrong queue..sorry, I mean line. "But I'm an American!" he protested. He probably thought he was in the right queue (oops...line) because he was surrounded by native born Brits....all guys who looked very much like a weekend stag party returning home again just a wee bit worse for wear....and all speaking (Scottish) English of course... and our American friend thought that was the place for him to be.

No, I've never seen or heard of this play...when time permits I will research it.....

<<Ignoring the lexical similarity that is a result of borrowing, the similarities still far outweigh the differences. >>

Yes, there are some similarities, but as Travis and others have pointed out, the Low Germanic varieties (Dutch, Frisian, Plattduutsch) and the Scandinavian languages show closer parallels to English than French.

But French does appear closer to English syntactically than German in my opinion; but German is distant from all Germanic languages (somewhat) in this respect as well, except for maybe Dutch.

<<Oh, daar heb je hem net.>>
<<Oh, there have I him now [--there he is now]. >>

"daar heb je hem net" means
"there have *you* him just [now]", not "I"

Dutch 'net' is related to our word "neat"

>> It reminds me of the occasion when I was waiting in line at Edinburgh airport after flying in from Prague - I was in the "UK/EU passport holders" section when this American guy sort of got all wound up when told he was in the wrong queue..sorry, I mean line. "But I'm an American!" he protested. He probably thought he was in the right queue (oops...line) because he was surrounded by native born Brits....all guys who looked very much like a weekend stag party returning home again just a wee bit worse for wear....and all speaking (Scottish) English of course... and our American friend thought that was the place for him to be. <<

Well, of course. I was a little put out by that when I vistited the UK for the first time. I think it's because we don't understand why you have a closer relationship to a bunch of foreign countries than you do to the US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand. Standing in the line for "Other nationalities" lumped in with the Chinese and the Russians seems rather jarring. I think it has to do with how we reckon relationships with other countries: as Americans we think of ourselves as having a close relationship with the UK, Canada, and more distantly Australia, and New Zealand; rather than geographic proximity.

>> Well, this "shy and retiring" Englishman...a rare breed in itself no matter what old fashioned stereotypical images may conjure up - personally I don't know any such kinds of Englishmen, but there you go!...actually IS a foreigner when he's in Georgia - obviously the American Georgia and not the Russian one. That's right, isn't it? <<

Not really. I don't think any American would refer to someone from England as a "foreigner". That'd be almost as weird as calling a Canadian a "foreigner".

<<Not really. I don't think any American would refer to someone from England as a "foreigner". That'd be almost as weird as calling a Canadian a "foreigner". >>

True. I don't regard people from the UK as foreign. We're the same culture, by and large, and we interculturalize constantly

Many people here say that structure in english is same as in french.

Those people say that french structure is very different from the other latin languages, because of this heavy german influence it suppose to look much more germnic in grammar and structure than romance.


So, how can they explain that even in English acronyms where all words are latinates (english seems to like a lot using latin words in acronyms), the word order differ so drastically from romance languages (it is inverse of it), including french (considered structurally more germanic than latin) show same word order (and of course similar words) than the other romance languages.

exemples of this:

Engl UNO: United nations organisation
Fren ONU: Organisation des nations unies
Spa ONU: Organizacion de las naciones unidas
Ital ONU: Organizazione delle nazioni unite
Port ONU: Organizaçao das naçoes unidas


Engl AIDS: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
Fren SIDA: Syndrome d'immunodéficience acquise
Spa SIDA: Síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida
Ital SIDA: Sindrome da ImmunoDeficienza Acquisita
Port SIDA: Síndrome da imunodeficiência adquirida


Engl NATO: North Atlantic treaty organsation
Fren OTAN: Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord
Spa OTAN: Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte
Ital OTAN: Organizzazione del Trattato Nord Atlantico,
Port OTAN: Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte


Engl DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid
Fren ADN: acide désoxyribonucléique
Spa ADN: ácido desoxirribonucleico
Ital ADN: acido desossiribonucleico
Port ADN: ácido desoxirribonucleico

etc.


In other acronyms, even with majority or latinate words in English, the words are oftenlty completly different to those used in the romance languages (included the so distant french!), and the structure still inverse, ex:

Engl UFO Unidentified fying object
Fren OVNI Objet volant non-identifié
Span OVNI Objecto volador no identificado
Ital OVNI Oggetto volante non identificato
Port OVNI Objeto Voador Não Identificado

etc.

Not only french word order is the same than the other romance languages, but it also has to use the same "link words" in the exact sam way, but english doesn't them need in its germanic "word adding" structure.
de, d', da, da
du, del, del, do

when we think to the much numerous times in which those acronyms or little sentences use complete different words in Romance language and English we can't help thinking that english relation to french is very very more distant than french with the other romance language, and we have difficulties to find any germanic structure and vocabulary.

No sorry, I don't see English close in any way to the romance languages and I don't see in any way in what sense french has a germanic structure or influence.

Not only English seem to inverse its structure to romance languages but when we see the acronyms in other germanic languages they often are the same structure, and often use similar words:

English is far to be the only germanic language that have words of latin origin, Germana also does.

German:

UFO: Unidentifiziertes Flug-Objekt
German also use latinates, in an exact same way English does, with same syntax and structure, very alien from the romance version.

NATO: Nordatlantikvertrag-Organisation;
at one word almost all similar words and exact same structure
Usage of latinates words in similar structure than English

AIDS: erworbenes Immundefektsyndrom
at one word almost all similar words and exact same structure

etc.

>> True. I don't regard people from the UK as foreign. We're the same culture, by and large, and we interculturalize constantly <<

Exactly.

In those set acronyms, no, you wouldn't find a germanic structure for French, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in the spoken language.

In French, the adjective can come after the noun (like typical romance languages) OR it can come before (like germanic languages). This tendency in French is undoubtedly of Germanic origin.

When we say that French has germanic structural/syntactical elements we mean mainly compound verbal tenses, many of which are also found in the other romance languages.

" In those set acronyms, no, you wouldn't find a germanic structure for French, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in the spoken language. "


We didn't say that it never can exist, but that when it does it is rare and not a french specificity.
What I say is also that it is not because a gramatical feature is found in both a romance language and a germanic one that it is necesseraly coming from germanic. You know at a certain level both have a distant indo-European ancestor.

The idea that French is a germanic-influenced language seems to be a myth that exist almost only in English-speaking nations, (probably to feel more secure with the idea that the old rival might have also "barbarian" in itself like English has at its core). Unfortunally this is quite far to be true. french is a actually a romance language like the others, which, like the others can have some influences of greek, arabic, celtic and even germanic, but its structure is no more germanic from Italian, Spanish or Poartuguese.





" In French, the adjective can come after the noun (like typical romance languages) OR it can come before (like germanic languages). This tendency in French is undoubtedly of Germanic origin. "


i don't know if this "tendency" is Germanic in origin, but what is sure is that your affirmation is wrong. let's explain.

For two reasons:

1- Firstly the adjective in french CAN'T be either after OR before the noun in all cases. In some minority cases it is possible to use both orders, but it is generally to create specific literatural effects. There are (implicite) rules. The general rule is to be placed after.

In the huge majority of cases it HAS necesseraly to be placed after the noun (and this is why English seems to us like a "reversed language* ").
In all the previous exemples you saw in the acronyms exemple where it is absolutly incorrect to reverse the order. It is the case in at least 90% of the cases.

But there are some exceptions to this general rule, limited to some specific adjectives generally short ones: it concern mainly only these ones: "petit, grand, autre, beau, bon, gros, jeune, joli, maigre, mauvais, méchant, même, meilleur, moindre, pauvre, petit, pire, vieux."

Those adjectives CAN be placed after the noun, they are usually, but CAN also be placed after, depending with the noun they qualify (ex. Un meilleur ami, un monde meilleur), or depending the meaning ("un homme bon", "un bon homme" which have complete different meanings.
Playing with the slightly changes of meanings by reverting the order is it germanic?


2- And the last but not the least, once again all I explained before is true also for other romance languages (exemple of Spanish here), where there is the same implicite general rule: the adjective comes generally after the noun: "un libro blanco" (un livre blanc), "un edificio interresante" (un édifice interressant)

As in french there are exceptions of the rule: most of the time these exceptions take place in the same cases than in french:
"un dolce beso" (un doux baiser), una gran via (une grande voie), "un buen aire" (un bon air), "un buen amigo" (un bon ami), etc.

In other cases spanish reverse the order but not french:
" el correcto functionamiento del ordenador" (le fonctionnement correct de l'ordinateur)

in some other cases the order in both languages can be reverse without really changing the meaning and connotations
"una reunion breve"(une réunion brève); "una breve reunion" (une brève réunion)

<<i don't know if this "tendency" is Germanic in origin, but what is sure is that your affirmation is wrong.>>

Adjectival placement in front of the noun in French is ultimately of germanic origin. Compare: un homme grand (a tall man) vs un grand homme (a great man). The figurative is a germanicrelic of Old Frankish settlemtn of the region. Charlemagne was a GERMAN.

Not all front adjectives are of germanic origin. Latin used bonus before the noun, but in French it is more common than in any other romance language except for Walloon.

In French, you can ALWAYS put an adjective before the noun and be right, but not always after (you cannot say "jour bon"), mai on can say "question excellente" ou "excellente question".

French is a pro-drop language due to germanic influence.


<<The idea that French is a germanic-influenced language seems to be a myth that exist almost only in English-speaking nations>>

Wrong.
Most English speakers aren't even aware that French is a germanic language. They only know it as a romance one. It is the French and the Spaniards and the Italians who say French is GERMAN. And they would know eh?

Do a google search in English for French + Germanic + Influence. You will find nothing.

Not so in a Frencg search hehe ;-)