Which are more similar among Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages?

[Etelfrido]

Which is closer to which?

I don't have much experience with Germanic languages beyond English and neither with Slavic languages but I think I generally feel the second group (except West Slavic languages, probably) has a somewhat more natural pronunciation than the first, despite Slavic languages being Satem and the other two groups being Centum.

Some things that I think make Germanic languages considerably distinct are their necessity of dummy pronouns, V2 word order, and most of them either having merged the masculine and feminine genders into a common gender distinct from neuter (Dutch, Danish, Swedish and to some extent Norwegian) or lacking gender distinctions altogether (Afrikaans and English) whereas Romance and Slavic languages have masculine and feminine genders in addition to a neuter one in the case of Slavic languages and a few words in some of the Romance grou).

[Etelfrido]

Am I crazy for thinking Slavic languages have less alien phonologies to a Romance speaker than Germanic languages?

[#Oda#]

Am I crazy for thinking Slavic languages have less alien phonologies to a Romance speaker than Germanic languages?

yes (EDIT: Or was I wrong? I was quite sure, well...)

[thatoneton]

Am I crazy for thinking Slavic languages have less alien phonologies to a Romance speaker than Germanic languages?

If you're talking about the sounds and somewhat pronounciation, then yes, Slavic languages and Romance/Romanic languages are more similar than any of them with Germanic.
Although you clearly have some that stands out more or less. For example among the Romance/Romanic languages French clearly has some German influence which makes it stands notably apart from say Italian and Spanish.

From among the Slavic languages that I have heard probably Slovenian sounded the most similar to a Romanic language - in this case Italian (or some other regional language of Italy I would guess since I am not at all familiar with them).

Still from a Polish perspective still learning how to pronounce Spanish or Italian is pretty easy. You don't really have to learn the pronounciation, but how to read letters.
Completely different than with a German or English, where you would spend much time before you can pass for a speaker of a language.

[thatoneton]

To add to what I wrote - sometimes as a Pole you think, especially when compared to a more popular English or German, that Italian or Spanish is pronounced exactly the same as Polish (as in, without any need to learn it). You can see it typically with how a Germanic language is pronounced in a way that make you think of a person with a serious speech impairment, as in inability to pronounce "R" for example.
Wheres a Romanic language (just like many Slavic languages) has a clear-cut pronunciation, where you pronounce everything clearly, pronouncing every letter in full - not a "muddy" Germanic-like pronounciation.

Also Polish has many sounds, and thus the Romanic languages (French including) won't normally surprise us with their sounds as much as a Germanic language can with its ae sounds etc.

Basically learning a Germanic language is somewhat like "un-learning" what you have learnt from a child - instead of pronouncing fully and correctly in a beautiful and clear manner you have to suddenly develop serious speaking problems and "move back" to your child's days when you still spoke unclearly, unable to pronounce correctly some sounds.

[thatoneton]

On the other hand Slavic languages are quite conservative and many features that they have are not shared between them and the (modern) Germanic and Romanic languages. Starting with declension which is mostly not found in Germanic and Romanic languages with some exceptions, but is very common in Slavic languages.

[Etelfrido]

To add to what I wrote - sometimes as a Pole you think, especially when compared to a more popular English or German, that Italian or Spanish is pronounced exactly the same as Polish (as in, without any need to learn it). You can see it typically with how a Germanic language is pronounced in a way that make you think of a person with a serious speech impairment, as in inability to pronounce "R" for example.
Wheres a Romanic language (just like many Slavic languages) has a clear-cut, where you pronounce everything clearly, pronouncing every letter in full - not a "muddy" Germanic-like pronounciation.

Also Polish has many sounds, and thus the Romanic languages (French including) won't normally surprise us with their sounds as much as a Germanic language can with its ae sounds etc.

Basically learning a Germanic language is somewhat like "un-learning" what you have learnt from a child - instead of pronouncing fully and correctly in a beautiful and clear manner you have to suddenly develop serious speaking problems and "move back" to your child's days when you still spoke unclearly, unable to pronounce correctly some sounds.

I also think Slavic languages sound "clearer" than Germanic ones, though there are exceptions. I think Polish is one of the least clear ones, haha.

[Voskos]

I found this tree.



https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/11/4/181

[Dušan]

Am I crazy for thinking Slavic languages have less alien phonologies to a Romance speaker than Germanic languages?

I have to say as South Slavic speaker, some of the easiest languages are Spanish and Italian. The hardest are French and German.

[Etelfrido]

I could also be biased for being a native Speaker of Portuguese, a Romance language that many people say sounds Slavic. I don't know if other Romance language speakers share my thoughts.