What is the closest European language to French?

Answer 1

I'm Italian, i speak French and i can say that they are totally different. actually, french is different from all others European languages....! maybe you can say that Spanish and Italian are similar, but they are very different from French...

Answer 2

The nearest relative of French is Provençal ( now frequently called Occitan). It is spoken in most of southern France and has several dialects. It has been slowly losing ground to Parisian French since the seventeenth century.

After Provençal, the next two nearest relatives of French are considered to be the Romantsch of Switzerland and the Friulian of northeastern Italy near the Austrian border.

A guy I knew from Switzerland once told me that Romantsch was a heartier language than French... that French was more a language for relaxing and drinking wine. I'm not sure that is quite true but it's an interesting take nonetheless.

After Provençal and Romantsch, the Catalán of northeastern Spain is the nearest relative of French.

Many linguists lump French, Provençal , Romantsch and Friulian and possibly Catalán into a "Northern Romance" group and Portuguese, Spanish, Sardinian, Italian and possibly Dalmatian and Romanian into a "Southern Romance" group. However, there are some dissenters, especially regarding the status of Catalán.

There appears to be a pronounced Celtic substratum in all of the proposed northern Romance languages which gives them a different flavor than the southern Romance languages like Spanish and Italian .In these languages, the foreign influences came more from languages like Iberian, Carthaginian, Gothic, Arabic or Dorian Greek.

Some languages which belong to the Celtic family today are Breton, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

Answer 3

In fact, all Romance languages (came from Latin) are close. I think Italian is the closest, but I find Spanish very close too, but most in writing; because the pronunciation is very particular and different to any other language I know.

Answer 4

Provençal but if you judge by using French standards for language names it'd be Québécois:) (Québécois is a joke. In French, you often name dialects instead of languages. For example, French speakers will refer to the language spoken in the US as américain.

Answer 5

French is part of the latin group of languages so it is pretty close to all the languages in this group: Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque and a few others

Answer 6

are not getting me incorrect modern-day Israeli Hebrew is Semitic in foundation like Arabic, yet has exceeded by using some eu effect. As you in all possibility be attentive to, Yiddish became the easy language between Jews in Europe, and so whilst the Ashkenazim including Israel's first presidents, founders, or maybe Theodore Herzl (founding father of Zionism) and Ben-Yehuda (Reviver of Hebrew) began to talk Hebrew, no longer in common terms did they communicate the Sephardic (Spanish/North African) dialect which already became motivated by using Spanish, yet retained some Yiddish constructive aspects. the unique Hebrew letter "Waw" which made a w form sound grew to become a 'v' sound under Germanic/eu effect. (study Arabic wa "and" to Hebrew va "and, so"). the unique Hebrew letter for r "Resh" became reported because of the fact the Yiddish/German/French r somewhat of the unique Aveolar flap. on account that there are not any th, or dh sounds contained in the Romance or Germanic languages, the th and dh sounds the place only reported as t and d or s and d. Futhermore, Hebrew makes use of the Spanish vowels and does no longer maintain it extremely is unique short vowels. lots of guttural letters are additionally mispronounced (i.e. ayin and aleph are silent, hheth is now reported because of the fact the ch in bach, and so on.) yet don't be fallacious, as I reported in the previous, Hebrew remains a Semitic/center jap language spoken by using a people who had lived contained in the Diaspora for extra beneficial than one thousand years, and at the instant are returning to their historic place of foundation.

Answer 7

There is no language that is mutually comprehendible with french. However, in grammar and pronounciation, Romanian is closer to standard french that is portuguese, spanish or italian.

Answer 8

In order of being closest; Portuguese,Italian and Spanish.I put Spanish last because it is most different especially in pronounciation.I use Spanish every day.

Answer 9

among all the latin languages, French is the most different.
But it has a little of Portuguese, a little of Spanish, a lillte of Italian.
I think it is closer to Italian.
but let's see.

Answer 10

That would be Spanish, but Italian is pretty close too. They all evolved from Latin, so many of the words have similar roots.