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Common ancestry of French and Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6744 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 22 10 July 2006 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
I think most French people seem to only distinguish three nowadays. For the younger generations in many regions only two, even. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Pilar Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6658 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, Italian | Message 18 of 22 03 September 2006 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Alas,
I read a history of Catalunya that talked about Catalan and how it evolved as a language independent of Castilian Spanish. According to this source, which I find credible, the Romans stationed in the outlying provinces of the Roman world (like France, Portugal, and modern-day Catalunya) were, in contrast to the educated Romans who settled near Seville, a bit rough around the edges. The "vulgate" as they were called did not speak the refined tongue of the Roman gentry, and the languages there evolved accordingly. That would explain why we hablar in Spanish and falar in Portuguese and Catalan, I guess. But that doesn't account for why the verb for "to speak" in Italian and French is so close, does it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 22 03 September 2006 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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This thread surely raises some interesting, but also devilish difficult questions!
The main problem is that there is a fatal lack of facts about important questions. For instance I have found maps where the whole North Western part of the Iberian Peninsula - far more than Galacia - is marked as Celtic territory, but I have not seen anything that details exactly how their language influenced the Latin of the later inhabitants (much less the later Romance languages), and as far as I know their language has not even been recorded in any source. You also have to take in account the oldest languages (today probably only represented by the Basque dialects) plus the later Iberian languages, - they may have had an influence, but where and when and how much? To postulate a heritage from these early influences to the current languages you MUST be able to show an impact on the languages of all periods from back then to now, including (Vulgar) Latin. And this will not be easy. I doubt that the brief interlude of the Visigoths and Vandals have left any trace at all, but it is fairly well documented that the long Arabian occupation had a big impact, which may have obscured any influence from the preroman languages. So what is best method for answering the central question of this thread: are Portuguese and French related in a way that bypasses the other relevant languages (Castilian, Catalan, Occitan)? It must be possible to show that the traits that unites Franch and Portuguese against the others existed also in the very oldest sources you can find, preferably even in the local variants of Vulgar Latin. The most obvious trait is the use of nasal vowels, especially when you know that the present 3- or even 2-ways system of French is a simplification of a 4-ways system akin to the one in Portuguese (as evidenced by the spelling). But where is the missing link? At least one source denies any nasalisation of -in, -un in French before before 1531, where it was unknown to Palsgrave. In contrast -an - on were nasalized much earlier, but spoken with the following nasalized consonant until around 1600. So you see, the whole parallel between the languages sort of crumbles (but please don't trust me blindly on this, I have just checked my good ol' books that I studied during the 70ties, and science may have progressed since then!). As for the guttural R in modern day French it is a fairly new invention, dating back to the French Revolution. Until then it had been a pronunciation particular to lower class Paris and the area around Paris, - Louis XVI would have proncounced rolled tongue-r's. So the direct relation on this point between French and German is also not too reliable, - but I don't really know whether the Franks of Chlodowech & co. rolled their r's or not. At least the guttural R's of Rio de Janeiro are localized and probably late. "Falar" of Portuguese and "hablar" of Castilian both go back to Vulgar Latin "fabulare", - is that more civilized than the Catalan "parlar" and French "parler"? It's rather one more case where the outlying areas of the Roman empire have preferred another form than the more Central areas, cfr. Italian "parlare" (Romanian was the odd man out with "a vorbi"). You have to cull the whole vocabulary of every Romance language to see whether this example is typical or not, and the answer will probably be quite complicated, but to sum it all up, I see no reason to see any special connection between French and Portuguese. By the way, I have made some comments on the consequences of the massacre on the Occitan language in this thread, which might also be relevant in this context. Edited by Iversen on 03 September 2006 at 4:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alas Oscuras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 6860 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Japanese | Message 20 of 22 03 September 2006 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually I think the relationship, coincidental or not, between French
and Portuguese is as simple as listening common phonetic traits, that don't resemble their surrounding tongues like Castillian, German, etc. Another phonetic trait besides from the nasalization that I note intensely present in both languages in question, is the "sh", similar to the Engilsh word "shop". It's true there is a lack of information about the ancient cultures of Iberia, in general, even the somewhat famous "Iberians". At least that's what I've found, a lot of voids. So, it is difficult to build theories that need to rely on the knowledge of these cultures. Besides, I personnally lack technical abilities on languages, so I can't postulate in form a theory. Maybe someday since I like to study the details of tongues. But right now I can nevertheless find coincidences, wether they are random or not, and as I've said before in this forum, there are elements besides my hearing of French and Portuguese to amateurly, yet not invalidly, postulate a relationship. Like the Roman culture push intensity through time, the record of Celtic populations, their homeplaces, the today's surviving Celtic heritage and the key question, where is it lasting? Things like this that show what I've stated before. I don't think the point is to demonstrate both languages are related in a way that bypass the surrounding ones. Because it's evident that Portuguese shares more traits with Castillian. But since I'm taking only the sound, the accent, the pronunciation as the departing point, maybe it's not as easy as measuring the transparency in terms of grammar, for example. Northern Iberia didn't have as much impact from the Arabian culture as the south. A theory that makes sense on the reason why Castillian dropped initial "F"s is because the region in which the basic carachteristic structures of Castillian were born, was a region within the influence of the Basque speaking people, who doesn't have initial Fs. Actually, many phonetic traits of Castillian are similar to Basque, and as the former's birth region is neighbor to the Euzkera speaking region, it is not strange. French and Italian seem to share a higher degree of lexicon tha Portuguese and Castillian, from what I've found. A famous example is the word for head. The more classical word was changed in Italy and France for a rather comical one meaning something like "pot". This became "testa" in Italian and "tete" in French. But Casillian retained the more conservative form, so, deriving from "caput" I guess, the word "cabeza" evolved. I supposse this was because Hispania had less comunication with Rome than regions of France, and certainly the Italian popluations, so new word usages arisen in the capital didn't spread easily to Hispania. There were a lot of vulgar Latin variants, though there are some general sound shiftings in most Neolatin languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 22 04 September 2006 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||
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There are two sides to this issue: the historical and the pedagogical. I doubt that there is enough evidence to prove that French and Portuguese have any sounds in common because of their Celtic roots, but that doesn't not diminish the value of the ressemblances for those who have learnt one of the languages and now want to go on with the other. These ressemblances do not need a historical reason, so they will function even across the systematic boundaries. For instance should Swedes and Castillians have some common ground in their use of lisped sibilants (s'es etc.), and Dutch and Castilians would love each other's deep throat consonants. And of course French and Portuguese will share their nasals and sh's even if we cannot prove that these sounds go back more than 2000 years to a shared Celtic substratum.
Edited by Iversen on 04 September 2006 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alas Oscuras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 6860 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Japanese | Message 22 of 22 05 September 2006 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Though there seems to be an historical reason,
contrastingly differently to the comparison between Castillian and Dutch used as a random example. Celtic populations weren't random, nor the places that preserved more intact their culture in the continent. On other affairs, I should learn someday more linguistic terminology and techniques to express better all the resemblance picture which I can't express explicitly right now, besides the sounds I've mentioned as similar in use and frequence. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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