French , like Spanish , Portuguese or Romanian , belongs to the Latin language family Romance languages . Due to their common origin , these languages share many similarities .
However, a Spanish speaker will have much more difficulty understanding French than Italian. Example: the word “agua” in Spanish is “acqua” in Italian. In French, it gives… “eau”! What explains this difference? Why is French not like other Romance languages? Answer here!
Celtic influence
To understand the difference between French and other Latin languages, we must go back to the time of the Roman Empire.
During their conquests, the Romans imposed their language in the invaded territories: Latin. However, this vulgar Latin was modified by contact with the languages spoken by the natives. Over time, this mixture of idioms gave birth to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.
The development of French will be influenced in particular by Gaulish, a Celtic language spoken in Gaul.
Even today, French has around a hundred words of Celtic origin, particularly in the following areas:
In the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire
collapsed under the pressure of barbarian invasions
In Gaul, it was the Merovingian Franks, a Germanic tribe, who seized power. To gain the support of the colonized people, King Clovis decided to abandon his language in favor of Latin.
Under the influence of the Franks, the Latin language underwent new transformations in terms of vocabulary, phonetics and syntax.
Moreover, this is why it is said that French brazil whatsapp number data is the most Germanic of the Romance languages. In any case, this explains certain lexical, grammatical and phonetic differences between French and the other Latin languages.
The lexicon of Frankish origin
The Frankish influence was especially felt in the lexicon.
The current French vocabulary contains many words of Germanic origin in the fields of:
All words that begin with an aspirated h eran wajswol owner come from the Frankish language: hache, haine, hêtre, hamac, halte, etc.
Some suffixes in -ard and -aud as well as prefixes like mé- also mark this Frankish origin: bavard, ringard, rustaud, malgré, mégarde, etc.
The pronunciation of words
This partly explains why Spanish speakers can easily
The Germanic people will also introduce a new sound: the [h]. Today, this sound has disappeared in French and has been transformed into the aspirated h. Thus, if we should not make the liaison or the elision with words like “huttes” or “haie”, it is because of the Frankish peoples.
Moreover, the phenomenon of the ao lists aspirated h does not exist in other Romance languages!
The place of the adjective before the noun
Frankish would have had an influence on the place of the adjective epithet in the sentence. In Latin languages, the adjective is generally found after the noun. In Germanic languages, it is the opposite. This influence can be seen among other things in the names of certain places: Neufchâteau, Francheville, Rougemont… The adjective is placed in front!