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Shared vocabulary of Italian, German, and Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4377 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 24 29 May 2013 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Does Italian share more vocabulary with German or russian ? Could you give me a rough
percentage ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 24 29 May 2013 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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maybe 20% with German and 10% with Russian? just a guess. I'd say that with both languages, English will give you a more significant advantage than your native language.
BTW Polish has more Latin and German loans than Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6428 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 24 29 May 2013 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Italian shares more vocabulary with German. The percentage isn't particularly high with either language - most shared vocabulary is borrowed from other languages (like English, Latin, and Greek), or has shared Indo-European roots but has undergone significant sound shifts (for instance, brother/frato/bruder/брат (brat)). For the latter, I recommend "The Loom of Languages" as a good introduction.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5045 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 4 of 24 29 May 2013 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Why does it happen? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5119 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 24 29 May 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Historically, there's been much more contact between Italy and ancient Rome and Germanic peoples than there was between Italy and Russia. I would imagine that has a lot to do with it. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5588 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 6 of 24 30 May 2013 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think, apart from technological terminology, the overlap between Russian and Italian is quite low, especially in literature.
If I take one page from the fantasy novel, I am just reading (Night watch), there are 266 words. This novel uses a modern style, where you find more internationalisms than in a more traditional style An Italian might understand: - станция (well, it means station, but Italian stanza means chamber) - амулет 3x: amuleto - знергия: energia - термометр: termometro - интеллект: inteletto - вагон 2x: vagone - металл: metallo - бетон: beton - структура: struttura - эффект: effetto - мигрень: emicrania 13 from 266 are 5 %. If you take a text about computers, the quota is certainly higher, but in fictional texts I guess 3%-5% is the most you will get without learning slavic vocablulary. Edited by Cabaire on 30 May 2013 at 2:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6428 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 24 30 May 2013 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I second what Cabaire says, but some high-frequency words do become obvious (at least in retrospect) once you know about sound shifts and have a bit of a feeling for etymology. A lot of family terms fit into this category; so do some numbers (due/two/zwei/два (dva), tre/three/drei/три (tri)), etc. These similarities are uncommon enough that they're not much use in predicting words, but can certainly make them easier to recognize and remember.
Марк: I don't know why, exactly. I do get the impression that there has been more cultural and intellectual contact between German and Latin (and between the Romance and Germanic languages in general) than between the Romance and/or Germanic languages and the Slavic ones. Call it an accident of history and geography, just like how Russian is closer to English than, say, Persian and Hindi are, despite the shared roots of all of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 24 30 May 2013 at 10:04am | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by Serpent on 30 May 2013 at 10:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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