French sound to you like a Romance/latin language ?

[alfieb]

It bothers me to hear people say that French sounds so much like Italian.

I cannot understand French very well at all. When I am with French-speaking people, they may as well be speaking Turkish or Albanian as far as I am concerned. Spanish, Catalan, Romanian, all sorts of Romance languages are easier for me to understand, both written and spoken.

Perhaps this is partially because I do not speak any Northern Italian languages, but I do not think Standard French and Standard Italian are close at all. The French spoken in Marseille and the Italian spoken in Torino, perhaps... or the French and Italian in Switzerland.

[Ira di Dio]

Yes it does.

[Comte Arnau]

To me Spanish, Italian, Occitan, Catalan, and Romanian all have a general similar "Latin" sound (of course Romanian has some Slavic influence in sound but it still sounds like an odd Italian to me) and French and Portuguese are way out in left field in terms of how they sound.

Italian and Sardinian, yes. But Castilian Spanish, while keeping the clarity of the vowels, has developed two consonant sounds that are more alien than those of French or any other Romance language (the jota and the theta), apart from dropping initial f's and merging b with v.

This is why, for instance, the words for daughter or leaf sound almost the same in all the Romance languages but Spanish.

[ioan assen]

French doesnt sound like the "core" Romance languages: Italian and Spanish. It doesnt sound like German too. I d say its in a cathegory of its own. There is quite alot of French influences on English (historically understandable): the most fucked up English words have French origin.

[Ouistreham]

IMO the most striking feature of French is the freedom of word stress, since you can emphasize at will the beginning or the end of any word.

The good side is that it gives a very rewarding sense of freedom, you can adjust the intonation of any sentence to what you want to say like you improvise a melody.

The bad sides are that French speech often sounds terribly dull and monotonous, and that the speakers tend to believe that word stress is optional also in the other languages, hence their famous habit to randomly stressing foreign words.

This being said, I think that Southern French fully qualifies for sounding typically Romance. Their ancestral Occitan dialects are virtually dead, but they speak French on their own way, with a reduced set of clearly defined vowels, all mute "e"s being pronounced (even where there aren't any), denasalized nasals, less agressive occlusives, sing-song tones that are indeed reminiscent of other Romance languages. (Except that the paroxytons, the distinction between 'parole sdrucciole' (palabras esdrujolas) and 'parole piane', which is fundamental in Romance, has been lost.)

Like they say, "we have forgotten the lyrics but we still remember the music."

The only thing that happens with French is that erosion has gone deeeper than in the other Romance languages

IMH the main consequence of that so-called erosion is that most common words and conjugated verbs were shrunk to single syllables, whereby the notion of word stress became irrelevant. Just compare Italian "CANtano" to French "ils chant(ent)", made of two independant monosyllables.

a word like AQUA has become O in just a few centuries, while Italians say it almost in the same way as Romans did.

In the oldest French texts the word for "eau" was "ew(e)" (as it still is in Walloon), a diphtong that logically evolved to "e-au" and finally to the monophtong "eau", while the Occitan word was "aig(a)".

Note that Piedmontese, that underwent heavy influences from both Occitan and meainstream French, chose a mean term with "eva", while all other Italian dialects use "acqua" or "aqua".

They also changed the typical Romance trilled r for a weird guttural sound a few centuries ago, so that makes them look even more different. But apart from these things and a larger number of words coming from Frankish, French is clearly a Romance language.

This is a recent development, with no structural effect. The uvular/pharyngal 'r' became standard in French (as well as in German and Danish) less than a hundred years ago. The substitution of the old-fashioned rolled 'r' is still in progress in peripheral areas like Quebec and the Pacific Territories for French, and parts of Bavaria and Austria as for German.

French doesnt sound like the "core" Romance languages: Italian and Spanish. It doesnt sound like German too. I d say its in a cathegory of its own.

Agreed.

[rashka]

This is a recent development, with no structural effect. The uvular/pharyngal 'r' became standard in French (as well as in German and Danish) less than a hundred years ago. The substitution of the old-fashioned rolled 'r' is still in progress in peripheral areas like Quebec and the Pacific Territories for French, and parts of Bavaria and Austria as for German.

I don't like the French R either. It actually doesn't sound like an R but like a throaty KH sound. Are you saying that this sound is changing to a rolled R in some languages?

[Sikeliot]

I actually cannot, using the example of the word "leaf", see how the Spanish word evolved from the Latin.

Latin: folium
French: feuille
Italian: foglia
Portuguese: folha
Spanish: hoja

Where did it come from? Or is it a weird evolved form?

[Skrondsze]

I actually cannot, using the example of the word "leaf", see how the Spanish word evolved from the Latin.

Latin: folium
French: feuille
Italian: foglia
Portuguese: folha
Spanish: hoja

Where did it come from? Or is it a weird evolved form?

Legend says that spaniards couldn't pronounce the "f" sound just like in Iron, Hierro (Spanish), Ferro (Portuguese). So it's basically similar when listening but not in writing.

[Comte Arnau]

I don't like the French R either. It actually doesn't sound like an R but like a throaty KH sound. Are you saying that this sound is changing to a rolled R in some languages?

No, he's saying the contrary. That there are still remains of the rolled r in some French-speaking areas.

I actually cannot, using the example of the word "leaf", see how the Spanish word evolved from the Latin.

Latin: folium
French: feuille
Italian: foglia
Portuguese: folha
Spanish: hoja

Where did it come from? Or is it a weird evolved form?

They come from the plural Latin fom, FOLIA.

Old Spanish was FOJA, the j still being pronounced as modern French j. So it sounded similar to the sound of ILL/GLI/LH/LL.

Later F would drop. It is often believed to have been caused by Basque influence, but this isn't clear. It's true that the two typical languages where this has happened, Spanish and Gascon, have been directly in contact with Basque. But so has Aragonese, and it doesn't drop its F's. And apparently a few other isolated areas in the Romance area have also dropped their F's.

H's are being written to remind you that there was an initial F in there which became an aspiration. In some Spanish-speaking areas, the aspiration is still performed.

Later too, the J would evolve into its current harsh sound. It could be due to the fact that it had devoiced and become a sort of SH, and so in many words the sound was too close to S, so Castilians preferred to move it backwards and it became what it is today. In this way, words like OSA and HOJA sound now very distinct.

[exceeder]

No, he's saying the contrary. That there are still remains of the rolled r in some French-speaking areas.

Exactly. Many people in Quebec, especially those who speak "proper" french do not role the 'r's as much as they did 50 years ago. However especially in more 'rural' regions and with typically older people where I live, hearing people role the r is not so uncommon. Its rather more typical of a Quebec accent to do so imo.