With ther exception of Spanish, is English the most linguistically close language to French?

Question

There are literally thousands of English words, which have more or less exactly the same translations in French, with maybe a little accent or two.

Answer 1

No. The other Romance languages are:

Italian, Portuguese, Romanian. And Latin, of course.
.

Answer 2

It is true that there are many French words in English as English has been taking in French words since the Norman conquest in 1066. However if you take the words used most often and the grammar you will find that English has more in common with Dutch or German. One big resemblance is all the verbs that change their vowels to show tense, like sink,(present), sank (past) which are much the same in Dutch or German. This is why as other answerers have said Engish is placed with these in the Germanic family while Latin and all the languages which descend from it, French, Spanish, Italian, Rumanian, are put in another family. The modern languages are usually said to be in the Romance family.

Answer 3

Wow, it extremely is dazzling. I communicate 4: Arabic, English, French, Dutch, and a few few SPanish. Hoever i be attentive to a guy who speaks 7 languages as nicely: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and German.

Answer 4

No, linguists define languages as "close" when they have a common ancestor from not very long ago. The only common ancestor of English and French is Proto-Indo-European, dating to about 5000 years ago. French and Spanish, and the other Romance languages, Italian, Portuguese, etc., on the other hand, stem from Latin, and are considered to have branched off of it around the fall of the Roman Empire, so about 1500 years ago. Which "language" is closest to French mostly depends on what you count as a language (as opposed to a dialect)--many would count Provençal as one, so I'd go with that. But my grandmother-in-law would want me to mention Jurassien!

English does have a lot of French vocabulary, but that's because of the process of "borrowing" and doesn't make them closely related. (Just good friends, I guess.)

Answer 5

I would say so. I live in Canada and here there are a lot of people who speak English and french. My first language is French and i learned English when i was really young. I think that they are very similar vocabulary wise, but the grammar isn't at all the same. French grammar i find really close to German grammar (which I'm learning to, just so you know where my answer is coming from)

Although french is originally from Latin, new words are added to the french dictionary each year. Those words that are added are usually anglicisms (words that are English that are now accepted into the french language.)

Answer 6

Absolutely: NOT

To much closer to french tahn english are portuguese, italian and romanian; also the other languages less known as catalán, gallego, sardo, flamenco, romanche, and all the latin languages and dialects. As you said, spanish of course.

In my opinion, english is closer to duth and german, maybe to welsh and gaelic.

Yes, there are common thinks in all european languages.

Answer 7

ACTUALLY , yes english is close to french.
but yes french is more close to italian and spanish

also , french people are mix of celtics(gaul) and germanics (franks)and some latins in the south
so in french there are influences germanic and celtics in french
like er...."chene" a tree of france ,it's comes from celts
or the method to count 70 : soixante dix is celts

or the colour : bleu,gris,rouge,noir,blanc
or the words like "guerre" are germanic

werra= geurre in old franks (germanic language of the ancestry of french)



people who say you "no" are a little bit wrong

by the way
english is a mix

old french+anglo-saxon= english

english is very close to french
:)
because the old english is a "pur" germanic language
when normans conquired england
their language " a french dialect" join to the old english (anglo-saxon) .
this mix make the modern english

its why , a lot of people think that english is a romance language
because 60 /40% of the vocabulary and words of english are from french ,
who is from(itself)based on the latin language

actually the only languages who are the most close
to english
are
frison and french
following by german and dutch

english is base on anglo-saxon , but if you read a text in aglo-saxon you are going to see that is really different to the modern english
english is a germanic language , germanic language are very difficult .
normans language(a old dialect french)
is very close to english modern .
when english people were liberted from the normans
they spoke normans( a lot of duchesses,ducs, lords and gentlemen)
with very very strong anglo-saxon influences( by many people , they were actually, artisans,paysans, the under-classes who were very in their traditions and their aglo-saxon language)
so strong to put english in the germanic group.



*you can see that , english creoles and french creoles are pretty close .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
for people who dont know the story of the english language



by the way germanic and romance languages
are in the common family -indo-european languages

like "do" in english
and "faire" in french
are completly different
but they are from the same origins , the same word.
"fake"in latin and "dheuk" in ancient germanic
are the origins of" faire"and "do"
fake and dheuk are from the same word

Answer 8

The language which is the closer to french is ITALIAN - this is a fact - and 80% of french and italia vocabulary are common - I can read Italian fluently as I never learnt it -

English is a fifty-fifty language which historically adopted the upper layer of franco-latin vocabulary and kept the lower for more daily things -
In many cases, french and saxon co-exist, as they mean very similar things - liberty/freedom - reception/welcome etc
Upper classes in the UK tend to choose the latin word, and lower classes prefer the saxon word -

This question is very classical and very often underhears very nasty prejudices and race-hates - In the UK there are people who clearly do all in order to reduce the cultural english alienation in regard to franco-latin culture, which historically drew them out of barbarism -

French do not care - but anglo-saxons do and very much -
The same in the US where all what belongs to "latin" is too quickly reduced to "latino" -

Answer 9

English is one of the Germanic languages. French is a romance language. French is a descendant of the Latin of the Roman Empire, as are languages such as Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Romanian, and Portuguese. Its development was also influenced by the native Celtic languages of Roman Gaul and by the Germanic language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders.

Answer 10

Italian is similar too



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