2006-10-23 17:29:18 · 9 answers · asked by nickylan 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
English belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, French and Spanish belong to the Romantic branch of Indo-European languages.
Here are some links to illustrate the relationship of these languages in the form of a relation tree, and here is a link that shows how some words in indo-European derived languages are similar.
2006-10-23 18:24:06 · answer #1 · answered by bubbabuddy 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
There is a relationship between Latin and French as they are part of the Romance language family. However, English is a Germanic language and has no essential relationship to the other two. The English language does derive some words from Latin words, but also from Greek.
2006-10-23 17:33:29 · answer #2 · answered by all1g8r 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
All three of them have been at one time considered the universal language. For most of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was a language by which the clergy (educated) people. Later on, French would become the language of diplomacy. People still refer to a universal language as "lingua franca" ("French language," in Latin).
In the modern world, English is the most widely spoken language across the world. There are more speakers of Chinese by population, but Chinese is not as widespread as English.
2006-10-25 07:34:48 · answer #3 · answered by jugghayd 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I would say there are two relationships between English and the other two languages. (The relationship between Latin and French is much more straightforward: Latin is the "parent language" of French, meaning French developed directly from Latin--as did Spanish, Italian, etc.)
First, they are distant cousins, having sprung from two separate branches of the Indo-European family tree. (I think Latin and its decendants are one whole branch; English is from the Germanic branch, related to German and Dutch.) That means they were the same language about (I think) 3 or 4 thousand years ago. This explains why a lot of words in English are SLIGHTLY similar to ones in French, for example pied and foot--in fact a lot of French words that start with p relate to English words that start with f, and the d at the end of pied apparently used to be pronounced.
But Latin and French both also have a, let's say, interfering mother-in-law relationship with English, whereby a whole lot of words from both languages were "adopted" into English. In the case of French, this happened mostly between 1066 and 1200 or so, when the kings of England were (Norman) French and mostly still spoke French, whereas all the people spoke English. This explains the French and English words that sound much closer to each other, and also explains why several food words are like French (beef/boeuf) while their animal equivalents are like German (cow/Kuh), and why some words seem more "elegant"--they were the ones used by the royals and nobles.
In the case of Latin, it happened for the most part later, during the Enlightenment (1700s) when people all of a sudden wanted words for scientific or legal terms they'd never had to think about before. So even though English already had two perfectly good words for "ask": ask (English) and question (French), they added a Latin one to sound more legalistic: interrogate.
2006-10-23 20:14:48 · answer #4 · answered by Goddess of Grammar 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
French and English are classified as Romance Languages: being derived from the ancient Roman tongue which was Latin.
2006-10-23 17:32:29 · answer #5 · answered by Mistress R 1 · 0⤊ 3⤋
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2016-10-02 21:41:41 · answer #6 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They are some of the root words to the english language.
2006-10-23 17:31:03 · answer #7 · answered by Trollhair 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
there is absolutly NO relation;english is anglo saxon and french is latin.french language comes from latin and greque;
2006-10-24 01:23:33 · answer #8 · answered by jean marc l 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
All European languages are rooted in Greek linguistics.
Hence; Its all Greek to me
2006-10-23 17:43:17 · answer #9 · answered by bandaras 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋