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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 |  | |
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes  22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 25 of 35 04 April 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's why I would call English a Germano-Romance language and not a Romano-Germanic language ;). The foundation and lower stories of the building are Germanic, but the higher up you go on the edifice, the more Romance it becomes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 26 of 35 04 April 2011 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Letztebuergisch (Luxembourgish) is another Germano-Romance language (Flemish might also be considered one as well if you accept it as a language) which makes it a fascinating study for those, like myself, who are intruiged by languages that straddle the Germanic and Romance Groups.
It's also very much influenced by Dutch. However, I sill get a thrill reading Frisian because it always makes me feel like I'm reading a language that is "What English might have been." For example, you can see in this short passage how close the Frisian is to English, the main differences being the Romance(R) derived words in English: Yn it oanbigjin skoep God de himel en de ierde. 2 De ierde lykwols wier wyldens en woastens, en tsjusternis laei oer ’e djipte, en Gods Geast wier sweevjende oer de wetters. 3 En God sei: Der sij ljocht! En der waerd ljocht. 4 En God seach dat it ljocht goed wier; en God makke skieding twisken it ljocht en de tsjusternis; 5 en God neamde it ljocht dei en de tsjusternis neamde Er nacht. En it waerd joun en it waerd moarn, de earste dei. 1In the beginning God created(R) the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was formless(R) and void(R), and darkness was over the surface(R) of the deep, and the Spirit(R) of God was moving(R) over the surface(R) of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4God saw that the light was good; and God separated(R) the light from the darkness. 5God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Edited by JW on 04 April 2011 at 11:40pm 3 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 27 of 35 05 April 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Occitan has certain similarities to Catalan, but there are several significant differences:
Occitan's indeterminate past tense doesn't occur in any Ibero-Romance language. Occitan's present tense is formed on both to have and to be. Occitan maintains the original Latin use of "aver" as both auxiliary and lexical "to have". "Tener" maintains the original Latin sense of "to hold". Occitan only has one verb "to be". Is there any Ibero-Romance language with only one? AFAIK, Occitan doesn't have anything like Catalan's "passat perifrastic" (vaig fer etc). And I can't see any evidence of a present continuous in Occitan either, and the present continuous is a pretty good marker of the Ibero-Romance group. " Well, no one is denying there are differences between Occitan and Catalan, as there are certainly differences between Occitan and Spanish or Catalan and Spanish. Does this indeterminate past tense occur in any Italo-romance language? Or in French? Present tense can vary a lot between romance languages, and in some varieties of Catalan you can use to be as well, althought this was far more common in the Middle Ages, when the two languages were practically indistinguishable from each other. "aver" was maintained by Catalan as well in the Middle Ages, but now, most likely due to Spanish influences, it is more common to use the verb "tener". Italian also has two to be verbs: essere and stare, and their use is more similar to that of Catalan than Spanish, even thought Italo-romance is less closely related to Ibero-romance than Gallo-romance. Also, I read French and Occitan initially had two to be verbs, but then became fused in one in the case of French, and Occitan followed it. Catalan has passat perifrastic and also the most common tense used by most romance languages, althought it's rarely used. Present continuous? I don't know what do you mean, could you put an example? Anyway, if that's the only trait in common for all Ibero-romance, I think it's a very weak evidence to group Catalan with these languages but not with Occitan, when they were so close in the Middle ages. Vocabulary it's much closer (or was) to that of Occitan, specially basic words. Of course Catalan has borrowed a lot from Spanish, but English also borrowed a lot from Latin and French, and no one wants to classify it within the Romance family, right? Another problem with Western and Eastern Romance: Aragonese and Gascon (Western) have maintained some traits in common to Eastern to the exclusion of their Western neighbours. There are some problems with Eastern varieties as well. See more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia-Rimini_Line About Bable: some classify it in a different group from both, Spanish and Portuguese. I've seen lots of different classifications for Romance languages, maybe there isn't a good one at all. As for English, I'd never classify it as Romance. I don't know if it has moved away from the Germanic family or not, but it's clearly different from the romance languages I know more or less (Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Occitan and Spanish). Edited by Capsula on 05 April 2011 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 28 of 35 05 April 2011 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, but English is close to Spanish. I would consider that Spanish and Dutch are the two closest (major) languages to English. 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 29 of 35 05 April 2011 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
So? You would find it difficult to write two paragraphs in any European language without stumbling across a borrowing, particulary Latinate or Greek borrowings. I wasn't trying to claim there's no Latinate and/or Romance vocabulary in English, just that the figures in the graph were misleading.
Well it's Astur-Leonese, but doesn't Astur-Leonese sit comfortably within Ibero-Romance. And as others have said -- please use the quote button. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 30 of 35 05 April 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
I would venture to assert that it would be easier to write a coherent two paragraph composition with no borrowings in any major European language other than English, than it would be to write one in English... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 31 of 35 05 April 2011 at 7:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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When I was younger, I came across an older man whose thoughts greatly shaped my own. It is not the things he taught me, but the things that he helped me unlearn, that did the most to make me leave aside my old, unthinking path. As it is sometimes said, it is not what we do not know, but what we know that is not so, that makes us think and do wrongly. Though I only knew the old man for a year or two before his death, in that time he made me ask myself many times if the life I was leading was the one I wanted, or the one that my fellows thought I should have. This gave me a way of seeing unlike that which I had before, and so I grew to be a true man, my own man. Looking back, I cannot help but see that without those times we shared, I would not have led the life I lived, and I would be much less rich for it.
A bit hackneyed, and it's not high art, but I can imagine finding a similar passage in one of the older self-help books that pretended to plainspokenness. Four Romance words in that last sentence, though. Edit: Not sure if "rich" is Germanic or Romance. Edited by BartoG on 05 April 2011 at 7:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cntrational Triglot Groupie India Joined 5128 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes Speaks: Hindi, Telugu, English* Studies: French | Message 32 of 35 05 April 2011 at 7:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Re: Italian "dialects" being considered part of Italian: ever hear the saying "a language is a dialect with an army and navy"?
English is Germanic, but I thought the Anglic subfamily was fairly well accepted? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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