Do you native English-speakers have difficulty w/other Germa

;), tus ejemplos son muy chistosos, ? realmente crees lo que dices ?


Algunos comentarios,


" "station" - I would relate this with the English "station" which is the exact same word, not the Spanish "estacion" "

Estas serio ? Crees realmente que un espanol no va a entender lo que significa "station"?
si escuche "la station", "la estacion" o "the station"... realizaras que la prononciacion francesa y espanola son muy similar. Cuando en Ingles la "a" se prononcia "ey"; el "tion" "chonn".



"maison" - I would relate this with English "mansion", not Spanish "casa"

yo voy a associar "maison" con la palabra italiana "mansione".


"France" - I would relate this with English "France", which is spelled the same way, not with Spanish "Francia".

Un espanol no puede saber que "France" significa "francia"!? hehehe !




And so many English words are spelled and pronounced almost identically as their French versions, like "boy", blue", (whereas Spanish is "nino, azul")


!!!!??? "boy", que significa eso en Frances ??!
"azul" se puede decir "azur" en frances (French Riviera is french is named "la côte d'Azur") que quiere decir "la costa de azul". Como el Italiano "azurro".
En frances e italiano se dece usualmente para "azul", "bleu(fr)" y "blu"(it). La prononciacion italiana es la misma que el ingles, la francesa no.




"petite" - English - petite (small, as in petite frame, or dress size)

En este caso, algunos anglos usan la palabra francesa "petite" por piensan que suena mas "chic" que "small" o "little".
para mi la relacioando con la palabra catalana "petit/petita" que quiere decir "pequena" en castellano.



"fille" - English fille - used to refer to maidens, or female horses

yo la relacionada con las otras lenguas romances : catalan "filla", portugues "filha", o italiano "filia", que se prononcia quasi exactamente lo mismo que el frances, muy differente de "hija".



" "papier" - English - paper, not "papel" "

Yo hace la relacion con el latin para "papel" que se dice "papyrus" !




" I would relate "cheval" to English "chivalry", "

Y yo relato "cheval" con el catalan "cavall", o el italiano "cavallo" !




" "La famme" - I would relate this to English "feminine" "

se dice "la femme", y no "la famme". y la relaciona con la palabra espanola "feminina"




" "La nourriture" - I would relate this to English "nourishment", "

Y yo la relaciona con el latin "nutricia"




" "La proposition" - I would relate this to English, because it is spelled exactly the same way, and is pronounced nearly identical in English. "

Hahaha! nunca habes oido frances ! "proposition" y "proposicion" se escriben quasi lo mismo y se prononcian tambien muy similarmente !




" I generally think of Romance languages as having a lot of words which end in pronounced vowels like "o" or "a" "

Y catalan ? occitan ? portuguese ? Piemontese ? etc...
el latin en si mismo no tenia mucha palabras terminando por "o".





" with "T"s pronounced almost like an English (th) as in Taco, Tortilla, Terreno, Tio, or my own last name, Teran "

En que idioma, Con que accento hacen eso ?!!



" and "R"s that are rolled. "

hay accentos portugueses donde no se prononcian las "r".
Por el frances puedes ver en el otro "topic".



" French on the other hand, is flat like English, and lacks the same phonology that Italian and Spanish have. "

de que tipo de frances estas hablando ? con que accento ?
No pienso que los sonidos del espanol y del italiano son los mismos.



" I also think of Romance languages as being phonetic, the way Spanish and Italian are. French is much like English in that regard, with a sharp contrast between written and spoken language. "

Catalan tambien. Potuguese probablemente tambien, rumeno..
En italiano "gli", "ch" "ciao" ,etc. se prononcian foneticamente tambien ?...

"Estas serio ? Crees realmente que un espanol no va a entender lo que significa "station"?
si escuche "la station", "la estacion" o "the station"... realizaras que la prononciacion francesa y espanola son muy similar. Cuando en Ingles la "a" se prononcia "ey"; el "tion" "chonn"."

There are many Sanskrit words which sound "similar" to Romance or Germanic words. That doesn't mean they are easily recognizable in normal speech. The word "station" is closer to "station", and not "estacion".

I'm not saying that French is more Germanic than Spanish. What I am saying is that because English has borrowed so much of its vocabulary from French, and therefore Latin, than in many cases, English is more useful in catching certain words than a knowledge of Spanish is. If 40-60% of English is directly imported from French, than it is no wonder that this would be the case. This does not mean that French is more Germanic. It merely shows that English is heavily Gallicized, and hence, heavily Latinized or "de-Germanicized".

LAA : « French on the other hand, is flat like English (...) ».
Rien n'est plus faux : le français est dépourvu d'accent tonique de mot, en général. Ceci, conjugué à la disparité des inventaires phonémique, éloigne irrémédiablement l'anglais du français.

" I'm not saying that French is more Germanic than Spanish. What I am saying is that because English has borrowed so much of its vocabulary from French, and therefore Latin, than in many cases, English is more useful in catching certain words than a knowledge of Spanish is. "


Tu estas contradiciendote. me recuerdo que dijiste eso :

" Those are just basic examples, which you yourself provided. But perhaps this is why I think of French as being the most distant Romance language. "


No veo en que mentida el facto que les ingles a introducido palabras francesas en su vocabulario podria hacer del frances "el idioma latino mas distante" como habes dicho.
Los ejemplos que me das, cuando les compares con italioano, latin o otros idiomas latinos como el Catalan, te puedes dar cuenta que en la mayoridad de los ejemplos que me das, si la forma Francesa te parece mas differente de la Espanola es porque en muchos casos es el Espanol se es mas diferente comparativamente al latin o con las otras lenguas latinas :

Fr. Bleu, it.Blu, Es. Azul (En. Blue)
Fr. Fille, Cat. Filla, It. filia, Es. Hija (En. daughter, girl)
Fr. Papier, Lat. papirus, Es. papel (En. paper)
Fr. Cheval, Cat. Cavall, It.Cavallo Es. Caballo (En. horse)
Fr. Petit, Cat. Petit, Lat. Pititus, It. Piccolo, Es. Pequeno (En. Small)
Fr. Stationner, Lat. Stationare, It. Stazionare, Es. Estacionar (En.To park)
Fr. Maison, Lat. Mansione, Es. Casa
Etc.



De un orto lado hay palabras Ingleses que tienen puntos communos con el Espanol , pero no con el Frances :

En. Expect, Es. Expectar, Fr. Attendre
En. much, Es. Mucho, Fr. Beaucoup
En. Computer, Es. de America. Computadora, Es. Ordenador, Fr. Ordinateur
Etc.

LAA,

I'm always amused to see how a lot of english speakers here claims that their language is "half-french" or with majoritary latin vocabulary or such things. I agree that a great part of the total vocabulary of english has latin roots, but a lot of the words of this 40-60% of latinates are very specific ou "romance doublets". a big part of them scientific or intellectual terms that a lot of english people don't even know and will never use.

In current language the proportion onf french/latin words is close to 10%, and a lot of them are heavily "anglicized" and integrated in the Anglo-saxon syntax (such as "-ing" endings). Their prononciation make them completly unintelligible for french speaker, due to the way letters are prononced added to a very different stress.


In your text, there are about 100 words.
the words with french similarities are : vocabulary, latin, cases, certain, directly, imported, case, germanic, latinized, de-germanized, gallicized.
That is to say about 11 words. these would be the only words that a french-speaker who don't speak english could catch, about 10%.

And a lot of these words are proper names or peoples names such as "germanic", "latin", "gallic", wich would be with the same similarities even in a lot other languages, even in Japanese.

Whilst 40-60% of English may come from French, how much of it do you use in everyday life? Look at this post and it should become clear to you how few French words are said.

So yeah, I'm agreeing with fab, whose post I didn't read before responding with my own.

To LAA, another exemple from one of his posts :

" Do you find other Germanic languages to be very alien, as opposed to a language like French? I know I do. I have much more trouble with German or Dutch or Danish, than I do with French, Spanish, or Italian. I understand several times more French than I do a Germanic language. Granted, this might have something to do with knowledge of Spanish, but with English as my first tounge, you would think the other Germanic languages would come more naturally to me. "

=83 words.


French/English cognates are only :

Germanic, languages, alien, opposed, language, trouble, German, Germanic, language, languages, naturally.
= 10 words (only 6 if counting only once each)

total : 12%

Actually "granted" is also a Romance borrowing. "Spanish" is too, as well as "Italian". French, perhaps ironically isn't.

" Do you find other Germanic languages to be very alien, as opposed to a language like French? I know I do. I have much more trouble with German or Dutch or Danish, than I do with French, Spanish, or Italian. I understand several times more French than I do a Germanic language. Granted, this might have something to do with knowledge of Spanish, but with English as my first tounge, you would think the other Germanic languages would come more naturally to me."

There are 49 different words in the above text. 12 are from Romance roots. They are: Germanic, very, alien, opposed, trouble, german, spanish, italian, several, language, granted, naturally.

So I'd say it works about at slightly under 25%. Not what I'd call overwhelmingly Romance.

You should read a paragraph in German, and a paragraph in French, and compare the two to English. If it talks about anything above basic, primitive vocabulary, I guarantee you, it will be more similar to French.

Now, I can understand most Romance sentence structure because of my knowledge of Spanish, so that Romance languages aren't totally foreign to me. That might have something to do with it. But I can understand twice as much, especiallly written, of French, Italian, or Portuguese, than I can of Dutch, German, or Swedish. And my English (Germanic) vocabulary is about 5 times as large as my Spanish (Romance) vocabulary is.

Virtually all of English's advanced vocabulary is of French-Latin origin! Sure, numbers, and basic words like, "man", "maiden", wind, fire," etc, are very similar to other Germanic languages. But the more advanced vocabulary, such as that which we use on this forum, is mainly of Romance origin, via the Norman conquest.

The point is, knowing English, does not make learning other Germanic languages easy, the same way, one can easily transition between Italian and French, or Italian and Spanish. This is because English is so far removed from the other Germanic languages, as a result of hundreds of years of infiltration of French vocabulary, introduced by the Norman conquerers, and English nobility.

Hundreds of years?

<<Hundreds of years? >>

Well, about a thousand years.

There are 49 different words in the above text. 12 are from Romance roots. They are: Germanic, very, alien, opposed, trouble, german, spanish, italian, several, language, granted, naturally.


You can put off also "Naturally" wich is very similar to the German "natürlich" than to French/Spanish "naturalmente, naturellement"
You can put off "very" which have no similarity with none of the romance languages.
You can put off "alien", wich despite having latin (from greek) origins is not used in romance language that way, but "etranger, estrany, estrano, estranjero, etc."
The same for "several". It is not use in romance languages.

So the only words that are intelligible (in writen form) to french ones and not to German/germanic ones are : "opposed", "trouble", "germanic", "italian"

"spanish" is almost like the german "spanisch" and not like "Espagnol, Espanol, Spagnolo".

In general you can put off the names and words which, whatever their origins are the same in germanic language such as in German :
" Germanisch, Spanisch, Italiener"

So, only Trouble and opposed are really similar to french !
2 words in a list of 49 words !! 1% !! you understand why for french-speaking people English is really an alien language.

The fact that English seem to be far removed to other germanic languages doesn't make it close to romance language, from a romance-speaker point of view, despite the fact of using a lot a latinates intellectual words, wich most of them would be used also in a lot of other germanic languages.

« Guest » : « You can put off also "Naturally" wich is very similar to the German "natürlich" than to French/Spanish "naturalmente, naturellement"
You can put off "very" which have no similarity with none of the romance languages.
You can put off "alien", wich despite having latin (from greek) origins is not used in romance language that way, but "etranger, estrany, estrano, estranjero, etc."
The same for "several". It is not use in romance languages. »

Risible.

Même si <lich> & <ly> sont des suffixes germaniques, il n'en reste pas moins que la base sémantique est de forme latine et que dans le cas de l'anglais cette base est assise sur l'étymon français <naturel>. Pareil pour le substantif <nature>.

Le mot <alien> est certainement à retenir car il est un emprunt direct à l'ancien français. Inutile de préciser le sens du verbe <aliéner> ni même celui de l'adjectif substantivé <aliéné>...

Ah ! Le cas de <several>... Eh bien c'est un mot tout ce qu'il y a de plus vétérofrançais : <several>, <severall>, <severel> = {séparé}. On trouve aussi l'adverbe associé : <severalment>, <severalement>, <severlament>, <severaument>, <severeaument>, <sevraument>, <severallment> = {à part, séparément, un à un} (plus une forme voisine : <severablement>). Mais aussi le substantif : <severaument>, <sevrement>= {séparation, disparition} (autres formes : <severalté>, <severaulté>, <severauté>, <sevrance>). Des adjectifs : <severibile> & <severable> = {séparé, séparable}. Allez, un autre adverbe : <severauntment> = {respectivement, individuellement}. Et les verbes pour finir : <seiverer>, <seivrer>, <ceverer>, <severir>, <seivre>, <severer> = {séparer}.