French so different from other romance languages

[TheForeigner]

Why does french sound so different from other romance languages and how great was the frankish or germanic influence on it. It's grammar is difficult and I think it's frankish influenced too. But it doesn' sound like german,dutch or even english. Doesn't sound germanic at all. Just sounds very distinctive. You wouldn't confuse it for anything. Portuguese you might confuse for slavic at times, but it doesn't have any slav influence and I don't know about the germanic influence there.

[TheForeigner]

Bump

[Mens-Sarda]

maybe the Celtic substratum influenced French evolution

here you can find the first example of Old French

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text

the Oaths of Strasbourg are written in Latin, Old French and Old German in 842 A.D.

the text in Old French still has a distinct Latin look, but is no more Latin, it's evolving in something else

[Ouistreham]

Just sounds very distinctive. You wouldn't confuse it for anything.

I've heard that French sounds extremely distinctive. And that — second only to English— it's the language you can't confuse with any other.
I don't know, it's my mother language.

Why does french sound so different from other romance languages and how great was the frankish or germanic influence on it.

I don't think there ever was any strong Germanic influence. Only a few commonalities, due to areal diffusion. For instance the closed front vowels (the ö and ü sounds), and the fact it's non-pro-drop, i.e. that an explicit subject is always required with the verb, a feature only seen (as far as I know) in French in addition to all Germanic languages. Which has a lot of structural consequences on the grammar, like the use of inversion for interrogative clauses.

Portuguese you might confuse for slavic at times.

Yes. Portuguese sounds even more Slavic than Rumanian. But when a Portuguese speaks French he has a very Latin accent (more Italian than Spanish actually), while a Rumanian, if he's fluent in French, has a distinctive Balkano-Polish or Ukraino-Magyar accent, he exsudes a potent Eastern block vibe if you see what I mean.

[Ouistreham]

maybe the Celtic substratum influenced French evolution

here you can find the first example of Old French

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text

the Oaths of Strasbourg are written in Latin, Old French and Old German in 842 A.D.

the text in Old French still has a distinct Latin look, but is no more Latin, it's evolving in something else

The Old French version of the Oaths of Strasbourg looks very close to modern Occitan.
Which suggests that the Southern French dialects (Langues d'Oc) were and still are very conservative, never dropped their links to neighbouring Italian and Iberian languages (Piedmontese, Catalan), while in the largest part of the country, the Romance vernacular was left on its own and evolved quickly to become something significantly different.

I don't think Celtic and Germanic substrates played any significant role. Languages evolve primarily according to their own internal rules and idiosyncrasies.

[Ars Moriendi]

Romanian is the most distant Romance language. I speak 3 Romance languages (different degrees of mastery), and I barely understand anything. 15% at best.

[Tchek]

maybe the Celtic substratum influenced French evolution

here you can find the first example of Old French

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text

the Oaths of Strasbourg are written in Latin, Old French and Old German in 842 A.D.

the text in Old French still has a distinct Latin look, but is no more Latin, it's evolving in something else

Another early old French text, but from a different dialect, more northern... the Sequence of st-Eulalia (around 880 A.D.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequenc...t_Eulalia#Text

[Sikeliot]

Portuguese and French sound the least "Latin", if you use Italian as a benchmark. Romanian sounds Italian but Slavicized, and Spanish has an Italian sound also.

[Ars Moriendi]

Portuguese and French sound the least "Latin", if you use Italian as a benchmark. Romanian sounds Italian but Slavicized, and Spanish has an Italian sound also.

In phonology, you're right.
However, in written language (lexical aspect), French and Portuguese are actually not hard to understand for a Spanish speaker for example.

[Sikeliot]

In phonology, you're right.
However, in written language (lexical aspect), French and Portuguese are actually not hard to understand for a Spanish speaker for example.

Yes, this is true. I grew up hearing Portuguese from my grandmother and aunt, and when I hear Russian spoken from a distance I think I am hearing Portuguese, but assume I just don't understand enough of it to be able to pick up any words