"When you learn one Romance language, to a considerable extent you learn them all". Discuss.

**Incal** · 10-18-2023, 03:10 PM

Originally Posted by Æðelfriþ

English is kind of an outlier though, I believe other Germanic languages could be closer to one another, even comparing West Germanic no North Germanic ones. Not only vocab but in parts grammar, pronunciation and syntax too.

Indeed. As well as french in the romance family.

**Tooting Carmen** · 10-18-2023, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by Incal

Indeed. As well as french in the romance family.

Romanian is at least equally distant from the other Romance languages, although of course it is far less well-known.

**Blondie** · 10-18-2023, 04:25 PM

Originally Posted by Dandelion

Hungarian is said to be fairly close to Khanty, very far to the East,

I have heard Khanty talk, as a native hungarian speaker, i did not understand anything. The hungarian language is very indoeuropaized. With hungarian, the most understandable foreign language is slovak. I can understand many slovak word.

**Incal** · 10-18-2023, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Romanian is at least equally distant from the other Roamnce languages, although of course it is far less well-known.

Stating the obvious, as usual.

**dviz** · 10-18-2023, 06:19 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Romanian is at least equally distant from the other Roamnce languages, although of course it is far less well-known.

I wouldn't say that. Basic Romanian vocabulary is far closer to Italian than to all other Romance languages.

Romanian neologisms are almost exclusively French words (except for technical jargon, which for the past 50 years has been imported from English).

**Tooting Carmen** · 10-18-2023, 07:25 PM

Originally Posted by dviz

I wouldn't say that. Basic Romanian vocabulary is far closer to Italian than to all other Romance languages.

Romanian neologisms are almost exclusively French words (except for technical jargon, which for the past 50 years has been imported from English).

Doesn't Romanian have a lot of Slavic and Albanian influences? (The word for "yes" is "da", for example).

**dviz** · 10-18-2023, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Doesn't Romanian have a lot of Slavic and Albanian influences? (The word for "yes" is "da", for example).

Romanian has no Albanian influences. They do share some 200 words from a pre-Slavic Balkanite stratum, but these come from pre-Romanian, pre-Albanian times.

Romanian has about 15% Slavic origin words (but less than 10% in the basic vocabulary). However, it's unlikely "da" and "tak", common words for agreement in Slavic languages, are actually of Slavic origin. Most likely these words come from Latin "ita" and "itaque" respectively, meaning "and so" or "therefore".

Old Indo-european languages did not have a word for "yes", they used an idiom to express agreement (this can be seen in the Romance group, where each language chose a different word for "yes": French "oui" comes from "hoc ille", Italian "si" comes from "sic", etc. - all these Latin words are synonyms of "ita" and "itaque"). Words with the meaning of "yes" have spread relatively late (500 AD onwards), with Christendom and the medieval age.

**Andullero** · 10-19-2023, 11:44 AM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

In a way that is much less true for Germanic languages (except perhaps Dutch and German, which are indeed very close). If you learn only one of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or even to a lesser extent French or Romanian, it does help you understand quite a lot of the other Romance languages, whereas the Germanic languages by contrast are much more separate and unique from one another.

Agreed. I find that even with French I can read an entire text and get the gist of it, provided I take my time to do it of course. I agree with Dandelion regarding the closeness between English and Dutch, which is kind of funny in a way, considering that Dutch used to be the language of the Franks before they settled in Gaul.

**Tooting Carmen** · 10-19-2023, 02:32 PM

Originally Posted by Andullero

Agreed. I find that even with French I can read an entire text and get the gist of it, provided I take my time to do it of course. I agree with Dandelion regarding the closeness between English and Dutch, which is kind of funny in a way, considering that Dutch used to be the language of the Franks before they settled in Gaul.

Did you listen to the Celine Dion song I posted earlier - first in French and then in Spanish?

**~~TheForeigner~~** · 10-19-2023, 02:43 PM

I only agree that there is considerable similarity between the Romance languages and it helps you learn the others, if you speak one Romance language already. But it is still pretty hard to learn a new language, even a related Romance one. French seemed especially hard to me in school. I can't even converse in French unfortunately. I found it easier to pick up Spanish and Italian though. More simple grammar and spelling rules. I took to English better than to French in school, maybe because it was on TV all the time.