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At secondary school as a teenager, I loved French lessons and was even eager as a child to learn the language prior to secondary school. I've always been very keen on both the French and Italian languages from an early age, and I know lots of French vocabulary but struggle with the grammar, whereas my sister speaks fluent High German. She studied both Latin and German at her Grammar School and she said she finds German easier than French.
I can recognise the meanings of words in Italian and Spanish, and entire sentences sometimes in Spanish (even though I've never had any Spanish lessons,) due to learning French at secondary school. I see similarities with the Romance languages and with the French and English vocabularies.
But Welsh, Cornish, Gaelic, Irish, and Manx words are more difficult for English people to recognise similarities with the modern English language, and it's easier to recognise similar words to the English vocabulary in French, German, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, and Spanish.
Something I've noticed is that most of the civilised, sophisticated, and cultivated words in the English vocabulary have a French origin, eg; art, music, ballet, diplomat, government, restaurant, medicine, dance, cuisine, fragrance, perfume, elegant, silhouette, et cetera.
A lot of beautiful terms used in the language of music have Italian origins, such as opera, piano, concerto, largo, moderato, allegro, et cetera.
And a lot of brutal and coarse words in the English vocabulary have either Norse or Germanic origin (the Viking settlers brought 600 words of Norse origin into the English language,) such as 'brute', 'troll', 'blood,' 'knife', etc.
Scientific and medical terms in the English vocabulary all have either sophisticated ancient Greek and Ancient Latin terms and names (introduced to the English language via the Roman Empire.)
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