Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 August 26

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August 26

Closest languages to English and French

Which other language is the closest to English? What about French? --75.10.48.39 (talk) 00:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

They are indeed languages with similar grammar and much shared vocabulary, but there are still lots of languages that are much more similar to English than French is. The first I can think of are English-based creoles (languages which evolved from pidgin English) like Tok Pisin, Singlish, and Norfuk (to see how similar the latter is to English, try reading [1]). There are also English "dialects" such as Geordie which, while not necessarily intelligible to speakers of Standard English, are still very similar; the line between dialect and language is often fuzzy (see our article Dialect#"Dialect" or "language"), meaning that these could also be considered "languages close to English". rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:23, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)English is a rather unique language because it's a Germanic language that has (for various reasons, mostly because of the Norman conquest) about 60% Romance vocabulary. The Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish) essentially share the same grammar but are pronounced very differently. Northern variants of German (especially Plattdüütsch, but also the various Frisian dialects) also share basically the same grammar but have a pronounciation that is much closer to English. None of these languages have the pronounced Romance influence English has so they use mostly Germanic vocabulary, so in practice they sound very, very different from English.

French is also a bit of an odd man out: it's a Romance language and thus shares the same basic grammar features and vocabulary with Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, but while these three languages are so similar that they are almost mutually intelligible, French pronounciation and spelling have changed so much over the centuries that the language today sounds very unlike its closest relatives. -- Ferkelparade π 00:34, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The closest major language to English (excluding ones that are arguably dialects of English) is probably Dutch. Anglophones can pick up a little Dutch just by listening to it. Supposedly linguists claim West Frisian is closer, but meaning offense to no one, I don't really count that as a major language. --Trovatore (talk) 00:36, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Frisian. I note the ambiguity in the question about French. A good candidate for nearest language to French is Occitan; but the precise status and relations of the relevant languages and dialects are pretty arbitrary. As ever. Noetica^Tea? 01:40, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, Frisian, but come on. Where will I ever read a novel, or even see a street sign, in Frisian? People want to know, among languages that I can study in school, that have a literature, that have an army if you like, which is the closest to English? I still say that's Dutch. Does anyone have another candidate? Maybe Danish? I've never tried to listen to Danish and see if I could pick up more or less than Dutch. --Trovatore (talk) 01:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I have seen East Frisian street signs on Sylt. I would be surprised if you couldn't find West Frisian street signs on some Dutch islands. And while it's not exactly a novel, there is a Frisian book with a contentious(!) Wikipedia page: Oera Linda Book. Hans Adler 09:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree Dutch is probably the closest "major" language. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I too agree about Dutch; and we should not confuse genetic similarity with overall similarity brought about by other means: areal effects, other mutual contact, convergence due to common external pressures, and so on. Noetica^Tea? 02:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Dutch does seem to be rather close, even though it started as a German dialect not too long ago. (When German orthography became standardised in the 16th/17th century, they decided to have their own rather than follow it. They could easily have decided differently, in which case the Netherlands would probably be one of four major German-speaking countries today.) I think the fact that Dutch, like English, is strongly influenced by French also helps. But Afrikaans, although very close to Dutch, is even closer to English, at least in its orthography. Our article on the language has two stunning (but exceptional) examples: "My hand is in warm water." and "My pen was in my hand." are both Afrikaans(!) sentences meaning the same as the identical English sentences. Hans Adler 08:26, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that's very interesting; I did not know that. I had thought of Afrikaans as a fairly minor variation on Dutch, given a different name for political reasons. Looks like that's not so. --Trovatore (talk) 08:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the most dramatic differences are in spelling. When spoken by an Afrikaans speaker, the above sentences probably sound very similar to the corresponding Dutch sentences that are spelled differently. You can find samples of Afrikaans on YouTube, e.g. this. I think the language is almost exactly half-way between English and German. Hans Adler 08:51, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has versions in three varieties of Frisian.

• West Frisian language at http://fy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haadside
• Saterland Frisian language at http://stq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haudsiede
• North Frisian language at http://frr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodsid

For comparison, here are versions in three other closely related languages.

• Dutch at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina
• West Flemish at http://vls.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voorblad
• Low Saxon at http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hööftsiet

I invite readers to see how much they can understand in each version.

—Wavelength (talk) 03:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If you're going to compare Wikipedias, I have to recommend that of our friends over at the Scots Wikipædia. I think all English-language Wikipedians of any standing should be obliged to read Dinna bite the newcomers at least once: it says much the same thing as our own version, but in a language that actually makes you think about the meaning of the words: "Mind Hanlon's Razor. Behavior that seems maleecious ti langtime Wikipaedians is mair likelie doun til iggerance o oor expectations an rules. E'en gin ye're 100% siccar that a bodie is a wirthless, orra, scum-soukin Internet trowe, vandal, or waur, conduct yersel gin they're no. Bi bein caum, interestit, an respeckfu, yer deignity is upliftit, an ye further oor project". Wise words, in any language (or dialect, for those that wish to pick nits)...

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AndyTheGrump (talk • contribs) 03:22, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, I was asking two separate questions, one about English and one about French. --75.10.48.39 (talk) 02:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

For French then, the answer is likely Occitan as mentioned above; though nearly all Occitan speakers have a diglossia with standard French, the language in France has a status somewhat akin to Catalan in Spain (a language which is closely related to Occitan). The closest languages to French are categorized as Gallo-Romance languages, and Occitan is the most prominent of these. --Jayron32 04:19, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry but no. The Occitan language has not a status akin to Catalan language. It is not an official language of France (contrary to Catalan in Spain), and people speak french in the south of France. The references in the article point that there is less than 1 million speakers in France, and it is magically transformed into Native speaker in the article. I'm a (bad) speaker of Gallo language, but it is not my native language. I think that one can say that apart from emigrants, all French have french has a native language.... 194.6.163.244 (talk) 06:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't have a reasonable official status, but it's still often considered as a language, and it's not totally extinct yet. The Franco-Provençal language (formerly spoken around Lyon, now still alive in Italy in the Aosta Valley) is another such example. If you want something more major, Catalan might do, as it is very close to Occitan. Hans Adler 08:45, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The suggestion was of a "status somewhat akin to Catalan", right? Not of a "status closely parallel in all respects to Catalan". What differences there are in their statuses are mainly brought about politically. In Barcelona I revelled in the bookshops, and the lovely lucent Catalan language spoken in the streets and coffee shops – and I fell asleep at night to the songs, on any of several radio stations. Over the border in Sète and Montpellier I could find books in Occitan, and bought some of course; but there is far less of a will to promote it.

Noetica^Tea? 09:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

In southern France they are neglecting Occitan, and in Catalonia they are overdoing it with Catalan. I lived in Barcelona for a year, and I found it impossible to learn either Spanish or Catalan because a lot of people can only speak Spanish and a lot of people speak Spanish perfectly but pretend they speak only Catalan. And when you apply for a professorship at Barcelona University you must learn Catalan to a very high level first. Obviously that's to keep the other people from Spain out, but it also prevents international mobility. (Just think of applying simultaneously to universities in Catalonia, Wales, Scotland, Switzerland and Iceland if everybody acted like that. On the academic job market this wouldn't be so unusual.) Hans Adler 09:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The OP's question didn't specify "major" languages, so I don't see why so many answers are dismissing languages that aren't considered "major". If we allow anything with its own ISO 639-3 code to be called a "language", then the closest languages to English are Scots and the extinct Yola, and the closest languages to French are Cajun French, Picard, Walloon, and the extinct Zarphatic (Judeo-French). Pais (talk) 08:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I consider Scots a dialect of English. --Trovatore (talk) 08:32, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Do you now? How intriguing. What do you say to the suggestion that its acceptance as a dialect of English is politically conditioned? Do you think that Serbian and Croatian are distinct languages? Do you think they always have been? (Show all working; points will be deducted for bad handwriting and provincialisms.) Noetica^Tea? 09:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think that the claim that it's a separate language is "politically conditioned", probably related to the push for greater autonomy for Scotland (not saying that's a bad thing; I generally like local autonomy unless it's used to restrict individual freedoms). As for Srpsko-Hrvatski, I don't speak a word of it (wait — krukh means bread, right? OK, maybe one word) so I couldn't say, but my default assumption is that it's one language, with the distinction being made politically.

John Anderson, my jo, John

We clamb the hill thegither

And mony a canty day, John

We've had wi' ane anither

Now we maun toddle down, John

As hand in hand we'll go

And sleep thegither at the foot

John Anderson, my jo

Come on, that's English. --Trovatore (talk) 19:20, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

B-, Trovatore. How exquisite that you picked on a word that is most often used to distinguish Serbian and Croatian: bread is hleb in Serbian and kruh in Croatian (see discussion here). You don't mention the different scripts normally used for Serbian (Cyrillic) and Croatian (Latin-based); you omit phonetics (reka versus rijeka, and all that); you omit the sources traditionally drawn upon by Serbian and Croatian for new words. Compare Hindi (Sanskrit-neologising) and Urdu (Arabic-neologising), roughly. Are Hindi and Urdu one language or two?

As for Scots, the text you present is self-selecting for speakers of English, and consciously adapted to their needs. Compare "john canted the queyns forby" and the like: at a kind of interface, no? (See analysis at the source I link.)

We are dealing not so much with discrete linguistic phenomena as with linguistic continua. Where does one swirl in a whirlpool end and another begin?

If Scots and English are considered separate languages (arbitrarily?), then Scots is surely the closest language to English, yes? But if Scots is a variant of English, then surely Frisian or Dutch or Afrikaans fills the bill instead  – perhaps depending partly on whether Afrikaans is considered a distinct language. If a form intrinsically indistinguishable from modern Afrikaans had evolved in Rotterdam, would we consider it a language separate from Dutch?

Noetica^Tea? 23:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

@Trovatore: You can see Frisian street signs in Frisia: commons:Category:Bilingual city limit signs in the Netherlands. And you can buy Frisian novels in book stores in Frisia or online. To give just one example: [2]. You can study Frisian in schools and it has a rich literature. However it has no army. I wonder what your take is on Icelandic. No army either and even fewer speakers than Frisian...

@194.6.163.244: I think that one can say that apart from emigrants, all French have french has a native language... I'm not from France, but it doesn't need any expertise to tell that this is nonsense. If you tell me that all French citizens have almost-native fluency in French, that would be a claim I cannot refute. But almost-native fluency is different from native fluency. Many people in France have probably spoken their native languages exclusively in early childhood and aquired French only when they went to school where the centralist state forced them to learn it. Centralist education and media succede to make the almost-native fluent in French, but that doesn't change that their native language was different in the first place. --::Slomox:: >< 09:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

See Language_policy_in_France especially Language_policy_in_France#Endangered_languages. Except for emigrants (first or second generation), approximately 99% of French have french as native language. With differents accents and slight change of vocabulary (see endive/chicon edit war on WP fr), but still french. Pleclown (talk) 09:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

What's the source for the 99% number? Or is it a personal guess? My trust in that number is 0%.

The article you linked for example states that in the 1950s Breton with 1 million speakers still was the dominant language in parts of Britanny. Of these 250,000 are left nowadays. Most of them elderly. If someone was born pre-1950 in a predominantly Breton speaking region one's native language is probably Breton. These pre-1950 elderly people not only exist for Breton, but also for Flemish, Alsatian, Corsican, Occitan, Basque, Catalan etc. That's not "all French". --::Slomox:: >< 10:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

[3] <- 82% of all population have french as a native language. 194.6.163.234 (talk) 11:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

And there is a difference between speaker and native language. There weren't any "predominantly Breton speaking region" in the 1940s in France... You may think it's a shame, but it's not the point here. My grand mother was born in Finistère in 1928, and her mother tongue was french... 194.6.163.234 (talk) 11:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The geographical spread of the Oïl languages (other than French) can be seen in shades of green and yellow on this map

Do you guys really think that Dutch and other Germanic languages are the closest to modern English? I think that (neo-)Latin influence in contemporary English is so enormous that there's a much higher degree of mutual intelligibility between English and the Romance languages than with its genetic Germanic relatives...

And to answer OP's question regarding French: the closest to modern standard French —Parisian— are other (today nearly extinct) Oïl languages such as Norman or Picard. --Belchman (talk) 16:51, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, a largish part of the vocabulary of English is from Romance sources. But there are a couple of caveats. First, the most commonly used words mostly have Germanic roots. Secondly, the modern Germanic languages also have significant influx of Romance words. In particular, most of the medieval to enlightenment influx of Latin comes from church and letters culture, and that was shared over much or Europe. Similarly, French cuisine and fashion terms are also widely present in other languages. And finally, grammar and word order is also significant for understanding a language. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

How did mutual intelligibility get into this? The OP didn't say anything about mutual intelligibility. The question is about the closest linguistic relatives of English and French; there's no rule that close linguistic relatives have to have a high degree of intelligibility. Frisian is (apart from Scots) the closest relative of English because English and Frisian diverged from a common ancestor more recently than they diverged from any other languages. That doesn't imply that English speakers should be able to understand Frisian. Pais (talk) 17:25, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Frisian languages#Old Frisian (permanent link here) says that "Frisian is the language most closely related to English and Scots". See also http://web.quipo.it/minola/frysk/language.htm. (When I invited readers to test their comprehension of Wikipedia in other languages, in my post of 03:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC), I possibly misled some of them in regard to the original question.)

—Wavelength (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Apparently a Friesian rhyme goes:

"bûter, brea, en griene tsiis, wa’t dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries".

(Butter, bread, and green cheese, whover cannot say that is no upright Fries).[4]

Pretty close eh?Alansplodge (talk) 10:37, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

modern Germanic languages also have significant influx of Romance words --> significant maybe, but in no way comparable to the huge influence of Norman and Latin in English —huge to the point of clearly overpowering its Germanic substrate—.

The OP didn't say anything about mutual intelligibility. The question is about the closest linguistic relatives of English and French --> OP didn't specify that he meant close in a genetic sense. In that case I agree with you that Dutch is probably the closest major language. --Belchman (talk) 18:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

You think it's possible that by "Which other language is the closest to English?" the OP meant anything other than "Which other language is most closely related to English?"? I don't. If he had meant "Which other language has the highest degree of mutual intelligibility with English?", that's what he would have said. Pais (talk) 19:23, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, what he or she meant to ask is one thing; what was said (or asked) is another: "Which other language is the closest to English?" Close might mean "not far removed in a genetic taxonomy" (like Darwin's finches) or something else (like genuine tigers and Tasmanian tigers, converging in certain ways as they evolved to occupy similar niches; happens all the time). To which are humans "closest": smart talking birds, kangaroos, dolphins, marsupial moles (Notoryctes typhlops, with no functioning eyes), or bats?

Noetica^Tea? 00:01, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Be that as it may, I think Dutch is the most mutually intelligible major language with English (again, with the caveat that I could be missing one of the Scandinavian languages, probably Danish). English has a large neo-Latin presence in its vocabulary, which will help you a lot if, say, you're trying to read a technical paper in French. But take a native English speaker with no outside language experience and put him in a French-speaking or Dutch-speaking environment, and I predict he'll be able to make basic conversation much sooner in the Dutch one. --Trovatore (talk) 19:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Modern English only shares very basic vocabulary with its Germanic cousins —and those words are so frequently encountered that anyone will learn them quickly no matter what... --Belchman (talk) 19:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you're overestimating the importance of vocabulary in intelligibility. Vocabulary is certainly a very big piece, but it's not the only piece. --Trovatore (talk) 20:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I meant major languages. --75.10.48.39 (talk) 20:54, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what your definition of "major language" is, but if we consider only languages with at least 10 million speakers, then the major language most closely genetically related to English (if that indeed is what you meant by "closest to English") is Dutch (being the only other major West Germanic language that didn't undergo any part of the High German consonant shift), and the major language most closely genetically related to French is Catalan, if you count the Occitano-Romance languages among the Gallo-Romance languages. If you don't, then Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese are all equally closely related to French. Pais (talk) 23:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

A thought about machine translation. When I use Google Translate on passages in French, Spanish or German, all languages I have some knowledge of, I usually end up having to refer back to the original language to interpret the translation. I have no such problem with Dutch, which I don't know at all - a Dutch passage put into Google Translate usually produces perfectly comprehensible and grammatically good English. That suggests to me that, leaving aside vocabulary, Dutch grammar and syntax are closer to English than French, Spanish or German. --Nicknack009 (talk) 07:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Very interesting observation. In a quick test it appeared to me that the English Google translation of the Dutch Wikipedia main page is significantly better than the German one, although both are pretty good. Given how Google Translate works (by using a database of text pairs for various language pairings) this doesn't prove that Dutch is closer to English than to German, but it does show it's pretty close to English. Hans Adler 11:07, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Word Referring To An Antique Item's Specific History

The word is used often on Antiques Roadshow, and is often used when the owner has a detailed history of the item's origin and ownership. ΣΑΠΦ (Sapph)^Talk 13:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Provenance. --Jayron32 13:13, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If a girl finds a guy creepy, you tend to think:

1. that he creeps, figuratively, he crawls to reach the girl. 2. he is repulsive 3. he produces anger Quest09 (talk) 21:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

2. is closest, but I would see it more as "weird", or just unattractive for unexplainable reasons. HiLo48 (talk) 21:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe "unsettling". StuRat (talk) 21:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I don't think any of the original three captures the connotation very well. "Creepy" refers to a person's behavior rather than their attractiveness. An otherwise attractive guy can be considered "creepy" for doing things such as, for example, calling a girl too much, "bumping into her" near her home or workplace all the time, etc. (StuRat's suggestion is better.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:01, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's reasonable, although I suspect it's one of those words that swings around a bit in meaning over time, and in different places. The high school girls I hear daily in Australia possibly have a different, though related, meaning to that seen in the USA. I think it can relate to what might otherwise be called nerdiness. (That word probably opens another debate!) HiLo48 (talk) 22:37, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Here in the UK, I'd go with Rjanag and Sturat. If a guy is 'creepy', you generally mean you feel uncomfortable around him based on his behaviour: what he does, what he says, his expressions, the 'vibe' he gives off. There is a general implication that you do not consider him 'safe' to be around, that he is unlikely to treat you like an equal person, that he is probably viewing you in a creepy skewed way. He may very well violate rules of social behaviour in such a way that you fear he will violate other rules, making him more likely to sexually harrass you, stalk you, or even (given the opportunity) rape you.

All of this broad range of reasons to be wary is conveyed with the word 'creepy' when describing a guy. See also Schrodinger's Rapist, for more on the general reasons why. Most adult women have a clutch of stories to tell of guys who repeatedly made them feel threatened, in a situation when they didn't feel able to stand up for themselves. Most adult women have a clutch of stories to tell of narrow escapes and full on sexual harrassment. A frightening percentage have stories to tell of being raped. Identification of 'creepy' guys is one of the few defenses, and even that can give a false sense of control, and lead to vicim blaming. But, as my mother taught me when I was very young, "Better to be rude and safe. It is always okay to remove yourself from a situation that feels unsafe, even if you upset someone". 'Creepy' = 'Likely to be unsafe. Alarms going off. Never be alone with them. Never let them sit close to you.' 109.155.40.210 (talk) 16:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

It's the same usage in the US. LadyofShalott 17:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

As the Wiktionary entry seems to confirm, I believe this use of the word originates from the idea of the person making one's skin creep (i.e. giving an actual or figurative crawling sensation). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:49, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

4. Possible axe murderer.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:05, 27 August 2011 (UTC)