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Are romance languages unclassificable? | ||
Tags: Occitan | Germanic Languages | Catalan | Romance Languages | Linguistic relationships | Dialect | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Capsula Diglot Groupie Andorra Joined 5263 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes  Studies: Catalan*, Spanish, English Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 35 30 March 2011 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Why are so many different classifications of the romance languages? Why do some linguists say Italian is closer to Spanish than French, and others put Spanish and French closer to each other?
Why is Sardinian viewed as the most "archaic" of the romance languages, when obviously there have been many changes in the language after Latin? What criteria are used to define "archaicness" of a language? Why do some people classify Italian and Romanian in the same group (Eastern Romance) only because they have 2-3 traits in common, and Italian vocabulary is much closer to that of Western Romance? Why are some Italian "dialects" very different from standard Italian? Are they more closely related to Romanian, or Sardinian? Why do some people say Italian and Sardinian are the closest to Latin? What about the "Italian dialects"? Is a fact there are many different classifications, but isn't there any generally accepted by most linguists? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 35 30 March 2011 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
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People say many different things, and sometimes it is nonsense. But not always - you actually can view the classification of the Romance languages from several different angles. For instance the strict historical linguists drew the dividing line between Italian + Dalmatian + Romanian the the East and the Ibero-Romance languages, Occitan and French the the West - and one of the reasons should be the treatment of final consonants (as manifested in the -i of 2.p.sing. in the present tense of Italian verbs, where the consonant has gone). But this is more or less irrelevant now, where Dalmatian has died out and Romanian has been stuffed with Slavic and Turkic vocabulary and grammatical features shared with the neighbouring non-Romance languages. Now Romanian effectively forms an isolated branch, and Italian has more in common with for instance Spanish.
Sometimes similar has happened in the West, where Catalan and Occitan once were pretty close (as witnessed by Medieval manuscripts). But with the downfall of Occitan French has been left to follow its own route to the North, while Catalan has slipped ever more in the direction of Castillian (and other kinds of Iberoromance which now have all but died out, such as Asturian). So now Catalan firmly belongs to the Iberoromance group with Castillian and Portuguese/Gallego. And finally the kind of Italian that was forged by Dante A and others has been undermining the Italian dialects - which in some cases were so different from Tuscan Italian that it might have been reasonable to see them as languages. I'm not going into a discussion of the current status of these language forms, but just state that their chance of becoming fullyfledged languages with an army and a fleet has disappeared with the unification of Italy and the emergence of nationwide television. Even though there still are some intermediate dialects in places like the Aosta valley, the line between French and Italian will become more and more clearcut as the 'central' language forms kill off the dialects in the area. Finally: Sardinian (or Sardic) is in my humble opinion the most archaic Romance language, followed by Italian. A couple of years ago we discussed this question here, and I duly checked the history and present form of this language - and yes, for once I do mean language, not dialect. I wrote something about it here, and I have also commented on the claims of other Romance languages in a number of posts from the same period, for instance this one about Romanian and this one about Corsican. But frankly I don't understand why being close to Latin should be so wonderful - if you want something that is close to Latin, then go for Latin. It is still up for grabs - anybody can choose to learn it. Edited by Iversen on 31 March 2011 at 9:22am 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6961 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 3 of 35 30 March 2011 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Italian and Spanish have a high degree of intelligibility otherwise it will not be possible a tv show in prime time where Lorena Berdun speaks (slowly) without translation. With french this is not possible (maybe it can be understood a little by speakers of piedmontese dialect) look the link below http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgi-eUCzR-A Why is Sardinian viewed as the most "archaic" of the romance languages, when obviously there have been many changes in the language after Latin? What criteria are used to define "archaicness" of a language?(quote Capsula) Maybe because Sardinia is an island and the evolution of the language from latin happenened slower than in the mainland .There are many more original latin words in Sardinian than in Italian. And there are at least 6 different kind of Sardinian. As far I know a Cagliaritano (south) and a Sassarese (north) to understand each other need to speak Italian or Logudorese(centre) There are Italo-romances languages and dialects ( Italian Corsican and all Italian dialects under the line La Spezia-Pesaro and Gallo-Romance languages and dialects over this line (Lombardian-Piedmontese-Emiliano-French and french dialects) Northeastern Italy languages belong to Veneto-romance family. Romanian is the only slavo-romance language,completely incomprehensible for Italians. Some Italian dialects are understandable almost by everyone (Tuscan,Romano,Central Italian dialects) and also Neapolitan and Sicilian are not so difficult if spoken slowly and in certain way. There are allways different levels to speak dialects. When you don't want to be understood you can speak it in the "narrow" way ortherways you can speak it in a way that is nearer to standard Italian 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 35 30 March 2011 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Different people classify in different ways.
We're still suffering the legacy of the view of language change as being dominated by divergence. If you look at older history books, they're obsessed with the idea of different tribes/races invading and slaughtering or chasing out the existing population. If this was true, yes, language would constantly diverge. But invasions don't normally involve total slaughter. This is clear from the empires of Rome, France, Britain, Spain, Portugal etc. We know they didn't wipe out indigenous populations, and it's fairly obvious how the indigenous languages have altered the language imposed on them. But if we stick to drawing lines of divergence, we get peculiarities like Italian and Romanian being in the same box. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Capsula Diglot Groupie Andorra Joined 5263 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Studies: Catalan*, Spanish, English Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 35 01 April 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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"Sometimes similar has happened in the West, where Catalan and Occitan once were pretty close (as witnessed by Medieval manuscripts). But with the downfall of Occitan French has been left to follow its own route to the North, while Catalan has slipped ever more in the direction of Castillian (and other kinds of Iberoromance which now have all but died out, such as Asturian). So now Catalan firmly belongs to the Iberoromance group with Castillian and Portuguese/Gallego. "
Groupings such as "Ibero-romance" "Gallo-romance" and so on are largely politically biased (in my humble opinion as well), and the classification of Catalan and Occitan are among the most complicated ones -because of non-linguistical issues, I think- I've seen these two languages placed sometimes closer to Italian, others to French, others to Spanish and even others... closer to Romanian! That's why I'm asking if there's any criteria at all to classify languages: if Catalan was Gallo-romance in the XIII century but Ibero-romance now, why couldn't English be considered a Romance language? It was Germanic in its origins, certainly, but it borrowed a lot from French and other Romance languages, then, why shouldn't linguists classify it as a "transitional" between Germanic and Romance? Are they using different criteria? "Sardinian (or Sardic) is in my humble opinion the most archaic Romance language, followed by Italian. A couple of years ago we discussed this question here, and I duly checked the history and present form of this language - and yes, for once I do mean language, not dialect. I wrote something about it here, and I have also commented on the claims of other Romance languages in a number of posts from the same period, for instance this one about Romanian and this one about Corsican. But frankly I don't understand why being close to Latin should be so wonderful - if you want something that is close to Latin, then go for Latin. It is still up for grabs - anybody can choose to learn it. " But what does "archaic" mean? That it has preserved more Latin vocabulary than any other language? That there have been less phonological changes and/or innovations? And if that the case: why? Sardinian is spoken nowadays, just like all other romance languages. Why should it be considered more archaic? "Maybe because Sardinia is an island and the evolution of the language from latin happenened slower than in the mainland. There are many more original latin words in Sardinian than in Italian. " Yes, but Sicily is also an island, and Corsica. When I read a text written in Sicilian... God, it's completely different from standard Italian!! Edited by Capsula on 01 April 2011 at 12:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 35 01 April 2011 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
There's a growing movement that wants to stop talking about English as a Germanic language. It has been proposed instead that we should be talking about the "Anglic" language family, covering all variations of both Scots and English. The more I learn about languages, the more I find myself agreeing with this viewpoint, but there's a lot of inertia to overcome before this can gain widespread acceptance. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 35 01 April 2011 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Of course it's still a Germanic language. If I add a lot of curry to whatever I'm cooking - does that make the dish "Indian"? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 8 of 35 01 April 2011 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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English is Germanic because of its Germanic origins, because the most commonly used vocabulary is Germanic, and
because it's hard to say even one sentence without at least one Germanic word, but you can certainly construct an English sentence that lacks a Romance word. Interesting discussion on Romance languages. Does anybody know anything about Dalmatian Romance? How Slavicized was it? Was it closer to modern Italian (Venetian?) or to modern Romanian? Anybody heard it spoken? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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