|
 |
Italian most transparent of Romance? | ||
Tags: Italian | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| jmlgws Senior Member Canada Joined 7102 days ago 102 posts - 104 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 7 29 October 2006 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
|
I can personally speak only as someone who is studying French. Other Romance languages are somewhat transparent when they are written, but I don't think any of the other languages really "sound" like French. I do notice though that I seem to be able to pick up a lot of the gist of Italian news, a bit less of Spanish news, not much from Portuguese or Romanian. So from my point of view, Italian is the "most transparent" other Romance language, albeit not yet transparent enough for me to carry on a conversation. Spanish is a bit less transparent, Portuguese sounds like Spanish but less clear, Romanian sounds like Italian but less clear.
I have been told by Spanish speakers that they can carry out a conversation quite easily with Italian speakers. I have been told the same is true between Portuguese and Italian speakers, though I haven't heard this directly from Portuguese people. I recently met some Romanians who told me that Italian is the most similar Romance language to Romanian, and that they can understand Italian the most easily. If I am right, this means that Italian is at least somewhat transparent to all of the other four major Romance languages. Is this correct? If so, why? I'm guessing perhaps that Italian is the most conservative to Latin, so perhaps occupies a "middle position" with respect to other Romance 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 2 of 7 29 October 2006 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I think jmlqws is right about the position of Italian. It is very clearly spoken, the spelling is decent. Of course there are things that Italian does differently from the western Romance languages, but they are relatively easy to learn, - for instance Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan all use -s as a marker of plural (French too though you can't hear it nowadays), where Italian relies on the morphemes -i and -e. Romanians may be nearer to Italian on the language tree, but they have more loanwords from French. But I'm not a native speaker so if the Romanians themselves find that Italian is easier for them, then that's the way it is.
Edited by Iversen on 29 October 2006 at 12:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 3 of 7 29 October 2006 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a very interesting point about Italian that I've never thought of before.
Quite true. I find this true as well and if I'm correct, it's because of the physical isolation of northern France where modern French came from as opposed to the regions the other Romance languages came from. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jmlgws Senior Member Canada Joined 7102 days ago 102 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 7 30 October 2006 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Iverson,
I actually met those two Romanians at a French meetup, so at least they could understand some French :) It might be that Romanians can understand French more easily than the other way around, we had some native French speakers who couldn't understand a thing when they talked to each other in Romanian. Then again perhaps they studied a bit of French while none of us studied Romanian, I am not sure. As a non-native person studying French it seemed to me that for example Spanish and Italian (for me the most transparent other languages) often have two syllables where French has one (je parle vs. parlo). Perhaps the extra syllable serves to emphasize the word, or make it more clear? I want to say "slow it down", but that isn't really true, it seems some Italian is awfully fast. It isn't fair for me to say this (a lot of foreign speech sounds "fast" to me), but it seems to me Italians speaking French can speak it awfully fast. On the other hand the silent letters, the elision etc. in French seems to "smush" the speech a bit, at least in terms of rhythm, the sound comes out different to my ears. 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 5 of 7 31 October 2006 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
|
If you take a Romanian dictionary and look through a couple of pages you will find many loanwords from French, but not nearly as many from Italian (of course you have to know both French and Italian fairly well to do this test). On the other hand Italian generally has a clearer pronunciation than French, which might make it easier to understand for Romanians. Only native Romanians are able to say which factor is the more important and by implication whether French or Italian is easier to understand for Romanians. The Romanians that you met may have learnt some French in school, whereas very few French learn any Romanian. However I also happen to know that in certain areas of Romania there is a strong Italian tradition, maybe due to immigration long ago.
The diminishing number of syllables in French is quite evident in the spoken language, but the written form still testifies to the endings that were pronounced in Ancient French. As for the 'speed' of different languages spoken by native speakers it should in principle be possible to make measurements by letting speakers of different countries read aloud and count the number of syllables or words per minut, but I have never seen anything reliable on this question. In Guinness Book of Records i faintly remember that no less than president Kennedy was quoted for 400 words/minute, and he spoke English. Auctioneers also can attain impressive speeds in almost any language. Edited by Iversen on 31 October 2006 at 3:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 7 31 October 2006 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
|
It's slightly off-topic, but I'd add that Romania is a member of la Francophonie, so French is probably of some importance and regular use there.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 7 of 7 31 October 2006 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
|
From what I've read, French seemed to diverge more from Latin than any of the other Romance languages. It would follow that French would be the least transparent of the Romance languages.
Italian did less than the other languages to go its own way, so that could help make it more transparent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
