I have heard many people saying Italian, but I never find them similar at all, on the other hand English has thousands of exactly similar words, similar spellings and pronounciation - without the "o/a" endings of Italian.
generally speaking France and England are both in north western Europe, very closely related historically, climatically and geographically - contrary to Italy which is a mediterranean warm nation.
2007-10-11 06:36:19 · 19 answers · asked by Europan 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Italian is a 'sister' latin language, while English is Germanic in origin. The French words in English were brought by William the Conqueror and his nobles.
Geographically, France is half northern and half southern, with a long Mediterranean coast, this is where the Romans came in when they invaded Gaul.
2007-10-11 06:50:02 · answer #1 · answered by Cabal 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Romanian is the most related to Italian not the **** Spanish. I hate that language a lot. That's crap for me. When you hear Romanian or Italian language, you don't know which one is. They are too close. But, anyway nobody knows much about Romanian language. It is a Latin language, too. Also, English has many words similar or exactly to Romanian. Because, they come from Latin. Don't think that I will learn Spanish. Actually I know Romanian and English and also I want to learn Italian and French. As I said, no Spanish crap. Goes away from now on.
2016-05-21 22:23:38 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
French is more similar to Italian than it is to English - there's absolutely no doubt about it. Both French and Italian are descended from Latin, whereas English is not descended from Latin - it's a Germanic language descended from proto-Germanic - and this common descent is reflected in the similarity of the basic vocabulary of the two languages, as well as their respective grammars, especially the verbal inflections. You will even find that the verbs that are conjugated with être in the past tense in French are mostly the same as the verbs that are conjugated with essere in the past tense in Italian.
Of course, it is true that English contains thousands of French loanwords, but the vast majority of these are words that are not part of the basic vocabulary.
Whereas the common history of any two given languages does have a bearing on their relationship, geography has little to do with it and climate is totally irrelevant. After all, Italian and Romanian are fairly close, but Italy and Romania don't even have a common border.
2007-10-15 06:35:22 · answer #3 · answered by deedsallan 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Italian and French are from the same language family. They're both Romance languages... which basically means they came from Latin. So they are more closely related.
English and French are kind of similar though, because English has a lot of words that come from French.
However, English is a Germanic language... which means it's related to stuff like German.
2007-10-11 06:45:38 · answer #4 · answered by arsenic sauce 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Italian is definitely more similar to French than English is. Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese are derived from Latin. Middle English was originally a blend of the Norman and Saxon languages. I see many words similar in French and English, but I see just as many words that are similar in German and English.
2007-10-11 08:14:44 · answer #5 · answered by miyuki & kyojin 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Actually many English words derive from Old French: therefore these English words usually are more similiar to their French counterparts than Italian words do.
But:
- other words do exist in English that have no French origin, they are the most used words: to do, to go, to be, to have, pronouns, to sell, to see, to hear etc.
- French grammar and structure is very similar to Italian grammar: eg verbs have almost the same moods and tenses
- Italian and French share many idioms and phrasing patterns that English has not
2007-10-15 00:01:36 · answer #6 · answered by ? 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The reason English shares spellings with French is that French was the official language of England for 200 years. Look up William the Conqueror. The answer to your question about similarities is Italian, hands down. The spelling may be very different but the word order is very close.
2007-10-12 14:18:22 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
You forget that both French and Italian come from Latin, they are "sister languages". I think Italian is much more similar to French than English. If you think about the grammar structure of these languages, Italian is much more close to French than English (which has different root).
2007-10-11 06:41:14 · answer #8 · answered by Beetle 5 · 4⤊ 0⤋
But French and Italian are both Latin-based languages. In fact, if you understand Latin, you can pretty much read French, Spanish or Italian.
I think that the only resemblance between French and English is that English borrows a lot of French words. Russian also borrows a lot of French words, but that doesn't make it a closely related language. They are even in different language families.
2007-10-11 06:41:11 · answer #9 · answered by FUNdie 7 · 3⤊ 1⤋
Italian is more similar to french. Both languages come from Latin and that is the reason why they look very much alike.
The same happens with portuguese and spanish.
I don't think english is similar to italian or to french. English is closer to german (Ex: Water / waser; House / haus).
2007-10-11 06:45:45 · answer #10 · answered by Desir D 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋