Questions tagged [romance-languages]
Branch of the Indo-European language family including all languages descended from Latin, such as French, Spanish and Italian.
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Why do the Romance languages use definite articles, when Latin doesn't?
Classical Latin, as I understand things, barely has a definite article at all: ille is the nearest equivalent, and even this word is closer to English that than the. But Spanish, French and Italian ...
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Why is the word "war" in Romance languages predominantly of Germanic origin instead of Latin?
I wonder why in all Romance languages the word "war" ("guerra", with their multiple intonations) is a term that comes from Germanic languages, and that no modern language resembles ...
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Why do so many core Romanian words with Latin roots come from different roots than in the other Romance languages?
Romanian is a romance language like Catalan, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish so much of its core vocabulary is derived from Latin.
Why then even in core vocabulary does Romanian so often ...
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Why is English classified as a Germanic rather than Romance language?
I am not a linguist. I do not know German nor French. The majority of English vocabulary is derived from Romance languages. Given these facts, I ask for a simple and convincing demonstration (using an ...
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Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?
This is something that I think is present in most languages. If I were to present my self in English, I might say:
My name is DisplayName.
Where as in other languages I can both say:
Mitt namn ...
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Which Romance languages have reflexes of the Latin nominative in nouns?
It is generally accepted that the nominal forms in the Romance languages represent reflexes of the Latin accusative rather than the nominative. (This is even true for those languages that have ...
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Did Romance languages evolve in North Africa?
So, I know that the dialects of Vulgar Latin evolved into the Romance languages in the Western Roman Empire, but I've always wondered why they only formed in Europe instead of in North Africa. Does ...
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When and how did French become a non-null-subject language?
First of all, what does "null-subject" mean? Taken from the Wikipedia page for "Null-subject languages":
[…] a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an ...
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Why is it that Latin was more "successful" in the western part of the Empire than in the eastern part?
The Roman empire ruled over the lands around the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, and I imagine imposed its language on its subjects.
But why is it that the western part of the empire (France, ...
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r in Romance names of London
Most Romance languages have an "r" in their renditions of the British capital's name: Londres, Londra etc.
Outside the Romance family, I only found it in Turkish Londra and Breton Londrez, but those ...
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In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
In french, there are many female given names that are derived from male given names. Those names are often obtained by adding "ine", "ette", "e" or "a" at the end of the male name. Examples include
...
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When and where did the guttural 'r' originate?
I have often wondered why French is (almost) unique in the Romance languages in using the guttural 'r' – in particular, the uvular fricative. Apart from Piedmontese / Piedmontese Italian (and even ...
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Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French number words from eleven to nineteen - history of a bizarre, inconsistent construction
Following Sklivvz's advice, I propose here a question I made in Italian Language. Because I am not sure how I should do this, I will just copy/paste the whole lot.
Let's count in Latin from one to ...
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Where did the nasal sound in the Portuguese word "sim" come from?
Among the descendants of the Latin word sic ("thus, so, or just like that"), only the Portuguese word sim ends with a nasal consonant. Actually, in modern Portuguese, it ends with a nasal vowel, [sĩ], ...
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Is there a diagram showing the history of sound changes from Latin to the Romance languages?
We have had a number of questions about sound changes, asking for the history of specific changes. See this one, for example: asking about the change from Latin benedictionem to French beneiçon. Often,...
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Italian past participle ending -uto
Why, in the paradigm for Italian past participles ending in -ere, does the regular past participle end in -uto? Whence the vowel, when the other two paradigms have -ato and -ito?
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Are there ablaut changes in romance languages?
The ablaut system was in Proto-Indo-European. It also is present in some English, German and Greek. Are there ablaut changes in romance languages such as Italian, French and Spanish?
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Is there a form descending from Latin genitive plural somewhere in modern Romance languages?
The Latin genitive plurals in -rum are very noticeable in the paradigm. Be it first declension in -ārum, second in -ōrum, or fifth in -ērum, they are heavyweight, attract accent and basicall stand out ...
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Why does Spanish have so many diphthongs compared to other Romance languages?
I have studied and known Spanish my whole life, and got a job at a University where I am allowed to take some free classes. Over the past three years, I have taken all the Italian classes offered, all ...
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Do the words "angst" and "anxiety" share a common root?
The English word angst, taken from German Angst, seems to ultimately originate from Proto-Germanic *angustiz. This word has descendants in many Germanic languages, including, but not limited to, ...
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How did the same perfect-tense structure become so widespread in Europe?
In many Germanic and Romance languages, the perfect tense is formed with the verb 'to have' or 'to be' plus a past participle. It's easy to find explanations ["I have an arrow (which is) made (by me)"...
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French conjugation, spoken vs written
French verbs are conjugated depending on the subject's person and number (ex. je parle, tu parles, il parle, etc.) However in spoken language most of these sound the same anyway because the end part ...
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Earliest recognition that Germanic and Romance languages are related
A recent question here, Earliest recognition that Romance languages are related asks for when in history it was first noted that individual Romance languages were recognized as ... similar/related/...
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Can the "dialect continuum" phenomenon be recognized from Rome to Lisbon?
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a spread of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighbouring varieties differ only slightly, but the differences accumulate over ...
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Efficient linguistic algorithms for detecting language of a website?
Some browser addons and web-services for website/dictionary translation sometimes offer a "automatic-language-detection" feature. This works more or less in my experience.
There is probably a variety ...
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Where did the use of the two auxiliaries in the Romance languages come from?
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French all have a (compound) perfect tense, which I find curious, given that Latin did not. (You can alternatively perhaps say that it is either united with the ...
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What is the origin of the "redundant" pronouns in the Venetian language?
From the examples taken from Wikipedia:
• Venetian: (Ti) te jèra onto or even Ti te jèri/xeri onto (lit. "(You) you were dirty").
• Venetian: El can el jèra onto (lit. "The dog he was dirty").
It ...
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Where do the spelling rules for French imperatives come from?
French verbs are, for historical reasons, typically grouped into three classes. The loss of final consonants in French has resulted in a serious divergence, wherein the verb conjugation system of the ...
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Italian passato prossimo agrees with subject with 'essere' but not 'avere'. Why?
Another question about Italian grammar aside from this one which has bugged me for ages.
In Italian, when forming the passato prossimo with an intransitive verb, we use forms of the auxiliary verb ...
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Where did Latin and its descendants retain a case system most recently?
So we know that Latin nouns and adjectives inflect for case as well as person, number, and gender.
Also we know that all the major modern Romance languages except Romanian no longer have a case ...
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Why are French, Italian, Spanish etc. listed as SVO languages?
In this Wikipedia article, French, Italian and Spanish are listed as SVO languages, along with English and Chinese. (However, Latin is listed as SOV.)
I am highly confused about such statement. In ...
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What linguistic impact, if any, has the the Roman three name naming system left on modern Romance and European languages?
The ancient Romans had a three name system (tria nomina): praenomen, the birth/given name; the nomen, like a family name but marking the person as belonging to a specific gens; and the cognomen, of ...
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Any other example of "socially stigmatized phoneme" like the "th" sound in some Venetian dialect?
Older people living in some rural areas north of Venice use the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ for many words, like cena "supper" which is pronounced θena, exactly like in Spanish cena (Castilian, not ...
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Why there are no grammatical cases in the French language?
As far as I know, the French language is considered as a Romance language, which is derived, in its turn, from the Latin language. The last one has a rich grammatical cases system.
I am interested to ...
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Is it possible to determine genetic relations without external historical data?
Spanish and Portuguese, for example, are very similar languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin over the past two thousand years or so. We know a great deal about their histories, the occupation of the ...
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Latin -que suffix in romance languages
In Latin the suffix -que can be used to mean "and". For example:
Fames sitisque (Hunger and thirst)
Are there any modern Romance languages that use the suffix -que or something similar to it?
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How did Latin "aqua" became Sardinian "abba" and Romanian "apă"?
The way I believe it happened was by the change of "w" into "v" and the fall of the velar "k". Furthermore, betacism caused the change of "v" to "b" ...
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Why does French "cheveu(x)" have "eu" and not "eau"?
Many French words have lost etymological /l/. I have read that this occured due to a process of l-vocalization around the 10th-12th centuries which turned pre-consonantal l to u after any vowel aside ...
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Explaining the relationship between "short", "kurz" and "curzu"
I've recently noticed something that I can't explain, a link between German and Sardinian. Two languages that, at least apparently for me, are not supposed to be that linked. Also English is included ...
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Catalan assimilation of 's' /s/ → [ʃ] after palatal consonants 'ny' /ɲ/ and 'll' /ʎ/
Question
I've noticed a phenomenon in (Central) Catalan speech that I had seen no mention of when studying the language. In words with a final -nys or -lls, the s is assimilated and becomes palatal [ʃ]...
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Is there something deeper behind the “verb classes swapping” of the subjunctive endings in Romance languages?
I first asked this question in https://spanish.stackexchange.com/q/15929/11155
However the Spanish community has not found any answer yet and the phenomenon is observable in many Romance languages. I ...
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Why are French nouns in -eur feminine when their latin origin in -or is masculine?
The suffix -eur in modern French typically gives feminine nouns: erreur, ferveur, torpeur, fureur. (Confusingly there's also -(a)teur which gives masculine nouns, but it seems etymologically separate)....
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Plural "you" in different language families connoting respect
I recently found out that French has two different words for "you."
From here:
Tu is the familiar "you," which demonstrates a certain closeness and informality. ... Vous is the formal "you." It is ...
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Why has the neuter gender disappeared from almost all the modern Romance languages?
Why has the neuter gender disappeared from almost all the modern Romance languages? It was completely common in Latin.
And when exactly did this happen? Did it happen in Latin itself, or only after ...
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Which Romance Language is the least similar to Latin?
People state that Romanian is closest in some aspects (grammar mainly), and that to learn a romance language studying latin may give you a leg up (which in my opinion just study the language), but for ...
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Why were words for the four cardinal directions in Romance languages borrowed from Old English?
Why were words for the four cardinal directions (east, west, north, south) in Romance languages borrowed from Old English? They could have used their own words derived from Latin because these words ...
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Why are the plural and singular first person forms of the verb "go" so different in the Romance languages?
In many Romance languages, the first person plural and singular forms are completely different:
French (aller): je vais, nous allons
Italian (andare): io vado, noi andiamo
Catalan (anar): jo vaig, ...
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Does a scientific methodology exist for evaluating bilingual dictionaries?
I recently reread What's the difference between the various context dictionaries available for Spanish (e.g., Tatoeba, Reverso, Linguee, …)?. The accepted answer is excellent. But it got me ...
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Earliest recognition that Romance languages are related
I don't know if this is a question for this Stack Exchange or for the History Stack Exchange, but I would like to know when people first understood that the Romance languages were related. I have ...
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Why do many French and Spanish noun cognates have opposing grammatical gender?
While most French/Spanish noun cognates share the same gender (both descending from the same vulgar latin root), there are many exceptions having opposing genders (e.g. la couleur / el color; la ...
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