The relationships between the neo-Latin languages
Thanks, OldAvatar.
Romanian is undoubtedly inconclusive.
Anyhow,
Sal, "Show a romanian text to somebody who has a little knowledge about romance languages and the first impression that he/she might have is the text is written in latin."
Romanian has been often called "barbaric" latin by scholars, due to its strange organization of words (i.e. articles at the antepeultimate & some recognizable latin-fragmented words) and its slavic with latin
pronunciation. Romanian has come a long way to it's present-day look, it didn't always look as people perceive it to be.
Note to all:
The Romanian you see typed here on antimoon is an artificial form of Romanian.
22.12% French words
15.26% scientific Latin words
3.95% Italian words
Take most of these out, and you'll have a slightly different picture.
@Guest
Indeed.
On the other hand, considering some scholars oppinions, English, for example, has borrowed up to 40% of its words from French and Old French. Romanian, even in its so-called old Slavonic form, still had more than 30% of its words coming directly from Latin.
PS: The above percentage might look inaccurate due to the fact that I didn't include percentage below 1%.
Best regards
I'd say that portuguese is close to spanish more than french and italian or romanian.
Written portuguese is close to spanish but spoken portuguese could be seen as close to french because of it's phonology. We portuguese have a lot of silent vowels wich resembles french and many open vowels aswell as spanish and italian.
For example bom (good) it's pronounced as french bon, spanish bueno, buono italian.
Agustin713 << The Romanian you see typed here on antimoon is an artificial form of Romanian. >>
I don't agree with you. Have you the late Nicolae Ceausescu speak when he was about to get arrested? If so, he was talking as if his language was latin.
What is un-latin about rumanian? It's so remarkable that despite its isolation from its sister languages sorrounded by salvic speaking people, its speakers manage to preserve its latin identity.
João << Written portuguese is close to spanish but spoken portuguese could be seen as close to french because of it's phonology. We portuguese have a lot of silent vowels wich resembles french and many open vowels aswell as spanish and italian. >>
True! But just in written form but when it comes to sound system its more closely related to french and when it comes to word order to italian. Sometimes Italian and poruguese use the cognates words for the same object/idea that spanish would use another term otherwise, sometimes the spanish and italian parallel and sometimes spanish and portuguese coincide.
You see the relationship of these three languages is analogous to that of polish, czech, and slovak languages to each other and scandinavian to each other.
Spoken swedish and norwegian closely resembles each other than to danish. On the other hand written norwegian are more closely related to each other than to swedish. But all three can understand each other's speech. Same thing with polish, czech, and slovak.
Spanish, italian, and portuguese are mutually intelligible languages.
@Sal
As a matter of fact, Ceausescu never spoke a correct Romanian. His language still had archaic and rural influences, with Latin words, but dominated by Slavic accent. For example, he couldn't say "e" at the end of the words, instead, he always used the Slavic "i" (English "ee").
"correct Romanian."
There is not such thing
OldAvatar << As a matter of fact, Ceausescu never spoke a correct Romanian. His language still had archaic and rural influences, with Latin words, but dominated by Slavic accent. For example, he couldn't say "e" at the end of the words, instead, he always used the Slavic "i" (English "ee"). >>
No matter how strong the slavic influences on romanian, it's still a romance language. Latin derived words make up 70% of its vocabulary.
Take note of english 60% of its words are latin derivative while teutonic words make up 40% but still linguist classify it as germanic/teutonic language.
From all latin languages,romanian is the most difficult in pronounciation
similar to brazilian portuguese
At a pronunciation level, Romanian is not difficult at all. It has a phonetic alphabet and pronuntiation is almost identical with Italian and a bit different than Portuguese. Instead of Italian "zz" for example, there is "ţ" in Romanian and instead of Italian "sci, sce", Romanian language has "ş". The other letter groups "che, chi" are the same as in Italian. The difficulty comes up when you speak of Grammar, that's indeed quite harsh, having a complex combination of Latin and Slavic.
Another difference that might make it a bit more difficult is the presence of letters "ă" and "î,â", but those are vowels which are quite easy to pronounce. "Ă, ă" exists in Portuguese too, as far as I know.
Best regards
If you put a Spaniard, a Portuguese, an Italian, a Frenchman, and a Romanian all together in a room (all well educated speakers), it would be the Spaniard and Portuguese who would be carrying on a conversation consistently and effortlessly. The Italian would sometimes tune out of that conversation, and ocassionally made some headway with the Frenchman and Romanian. In good faith, the Spaniard and Portuguese tried to do the same, but never got past the initial pleasantries with the Frenchman and Romanian, and resumed the interesting conversation they were having about Iberian history and the glory of the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries.
Eventually, the Romanian felt like a third wheel, left the conversation between the Italian and Frenchman, and later tries to re-establish a conversation with the Italian, who earlier got bored with both of them. So the Italian again re-joins the conversation between the Spaniard and Portuguese, who understand the Italian much better than the other two did. Naturally, he talks to the Iberians about the ancient glory of Rome.
In a last ditch attempt to avoid feeling left out, the Frenchman and Romanian attempt to communicate with one another and maintain the conversation for 5 minutes, at which point it peters out. I've never actually tried this experiment folks, and as funny as it is, I am pretty sure that this is the way it would play out.
Except...
The Romanian would be able to understand the Italian
The romanian in that room would establish communication with the French in the French language which again proves that French is the most International and prestigious than either Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese.
Even in Bulgaria (a Slavic Country), and Armenia lots of people there speak French than English.
In the example, they only speak their respective languages, only...I guess I should have specified that.
Yes, I agree completely, a couple of Romanians speaking French in a chat room is irrefutable proof that French surpasses any other major world language and has now become the lingua Franca for the whole globe.
I also have other interesting revelations to make: I have two friends who are married to two Englishmen, both Cambridge graduates, which is the unquestionable proof that intelligent Englishmen are irresistibly attracted to Spanish women. My sister used to have a Scottish maid who stole some things from her house, which proves that all Scottish women have a dogdy sense of ethics. The other day I saw a dog eating an apple, which proves that dogs love fruit.
Have you heard of a vice called Chauvinism? It can reach ridiculous proportions in some people when coupled with a flaw in logical thinking called over-generalisation.