Hi everyone! If you're currently learning French, visit FrenchPod101 ( bit.ly/frenchpod101 ) - one of the best ways to learn French. For Italian, visit ItalianPod101 ( bit.ly/pod101italian ). For 32 other languages check out my review: langfocus.com/pod101/ I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)
Hey Paul, I’d like to give you an advice for double consonant sound in Italian: you have to make it stronger, otherwise the pronunciation can be misleading in some words written the same but with a double consonant, e.g. “fatto” (done) and “fato” (fate). 💪🏼
I’m an Italian mother tongue and I can read French signs or something else and get the meaning without struggling too much, but when it comes to listen to French… Not a word. 😂
Hello. Thanks for this great video. I am studying french for 2 years. I am now around A2 level. I want to learn also italian. If i continue with 2 languages together , this will be bad idea?
As an Italian, I reckon that French has a lot of words that are similar to very old, archaic Italian words For example, "I remember" in French is "Je me suviens", in Italian it is "Mi ricordo" but in poems and up until the 1800s or something, it was also "Mi sovviene".
We can also say in french "je me rappelle" in order to say "I remember", which already is technically closer to both italian and english versions, actually...but french just have much more complex variety in its vocabulary, in fact.
@@798jeremy Italian has a complex vocabulary as well. 'I remember' can be translated in Italian as "Mi ricordo", "Mi sovviene", "Rammento", "Rimembro" and some other expressions
I am italian, and I can guarantee that if we read a normal french book (not a quantistic theory stuff...) we can understand probably 90 % or even more. While we speak, we don't usually understand each other, as the sounds are different. But it's good to know that we are all sons of Rome.
True. BUT if you have a rough idea of each language phonetically, you will be just fine. Speaking slowly to italians we were able to have conversations easier than i thought, and vice versa.
same with Portuguese, we can understand almost everything in written Spanish and sometimes we can understand a little bit of written Italian but nothing of french
Morning gents! I don’t want to be rude but, hell no, here in Normandy we are certainly NOT sons of Rome...!!! PS: I've been a couple of times in Italy though and it’s a wonderful country for most of what I‘ve seen!
Ludwig JACQUIER Were not sons of Rome but we are more or less grandsons, and Italians are our cousins (grandsons because we also come from the Gaulois, Franks, and Danish (or Norwegians, I forget if it was east or west Normans who gave us our name)
As a spanish speaker (i'm from Colombia) i consider that it´s easier to learn Italian instead of French, more than anything for the pronunciation, i´m learning Italian and it´s a very beautyful language, i hope in future i can learn and speak french. Greetings for all. I'll be in Italy in a couple of years. God bless you.
@Jack O'Jack You obviously lack French vocabulary to state that (no offense ;) ) Actually it's the other way around, English is a very poor language, there is a lot lot less words than in French, therefore French language is a lot richer and things can be a lot more precise when you explain, describe, relate things etc...
@Jack O'Jack I like the way as an English speaker who has only ever taken one French class (one hour) I could understand what you just wrote. (Not word for word but I got the meaning)
@@CartmanVlaams disagree. english has many more commonly used words than french, italian, etc etc. that is a reason why it is so well suited for poetry. one needs to learn more words to speak english fluently
It is true in Italian we use the "Lei" in formal situations but, especially in the south, there are still a lot of people using the "Voi". Exactly like in French :)
***** Singular Formal way: Lei parla Italiano or Voi parlate Italiano (the first one is more correct) Informal way: Tu parli Italiano About the plural i didn't quite got the question, those 2 phrases you wrote after "Ci sono 2 signori" mean 2 different things Voi parlate Italiano = you (plural) speak Italian Loro parlano italiano = they speak Italian
Maybe i got it. If the question was about a formal way in plural it's "Loro" but is seen as too much formal and basically no one use it, except maybe in really high class restaurants, beetwen nobilty and sometimes in bureaucracy
Oh yeah, the letter L should be capitalized! Loro, not loro :-) Yes, the question was about the formal plural. So, the formal way in plural is the same as the informal one: voi? The only difference is that the capital V is used? Voi = Lei in plural voi = tu in plural Comfirm or correct me :-)
No, I think i didn't explain it good enough, i'll try to make it more schematic :) Example: How are you? (Singular) Formal singular: Lei come sta? or Voi come state? Informal singular: tu come stai? Example: How are you? (Plural) Formal plural: Loro come stanno? Informal plural: voi come state? And as i said the formal plural isn't used by almost anyone. Let me know if something is not clear :)
A lot of French words that don't look similar to their modern Italian counterparts are in fact similar to OLD ITALIAN words, and by old I mean language that was in use until the end of the XIX century. For example, as you pointed out, the verb "to forget" in Italian is "dimenticare" and in French it's "oublier." BUT...the old Italian verb, often used in poetry, is "obliare", which is very similar to the French "oublier." Not to mention that the word "oblio" (oblivion) is still in use in modern Italian. Also, from the same example you made, "magazzino" (similar to the French "magasin") was often used in old Italian in place of "negozio" (shop/store.) You can see a remnant of that in the Italian word "grandi magazzini" (department store.) In modern Italian, "magazzino" means warehouse.
Since they are the descendants of Vulgar Latin, I ,a Latin learner, can point out that the word for shop in Latin is "negotium" and that the french word "oublier" is from Latin "obliviscor" while Italian word "dimenticare" is from Latin "demento".
For your "magasin" example, it's not a word from Latin but from Arabic, the similarity between the language being here more a coincidence (or the influence of the Arabic world at the time when it came to trading). en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magasin
In the middle ages, Southern Italian coasts were constantly raided by pirates from north Africa. There's a ton of Arabic influence in the Italian language and culture, but particularly in the south. Most words with Arabic roots got to France by way of Italy. At least in the pre-colonial era.
Italian and French culture was always seem like two sides of one coin for me. Love them both. I’m B1 French speaker and I look forward to start Italian as well
Italian is by far the easiest foreign language to learn for French people. But it remains a foreign language, and you do have to learn the basics. Only few French people actually speak fluent Italian.
@@Kanal7Indonesia no. Go fuck urself pandejo. Try not to use Google translate. French is going to die because the french people are lazy and can't create or use their own words for things. Soon french will degenerate into messy English. I'm excited for spanish's future. It isn't taking alot of English words, make their own words for new things and is getting globalised by music, film industry and social media
@Thracian One of the reasons English is so common is how easy it is to learn. The pronunciation is awful but the rest is fairly easy. No gender, no cases, few conjugations, etc. And especially with the internet, pronunciation is less important than reading/writing (unless you live in an English-speaking country). For speakers of Romance languages, Spanish is easier to learn. But for almost everyone else, English is easier, and that’s why it will remain the international language imo.
Dutch is way easier that English, and there are less tenses. In English, they are numerous, and should not be used incorrectly. The reason why English is widespread is 1. England was the first colonial power. 2. It has many Latin words, actually one third of its words are French, while France was the second colonial power. Then comes Spain, Portugal, etc. As to Italian, it is spoken only in Italy and in a part of Switzerland. Italy wasn't a colonial power, since it exists (has be unified) only for only a little more than a century.
I am French and unfortunatly never learned Italian. But living close to the italian border, i was able to understand Italian when they speak slowly... When you speak Occitan language, it's much more easier I should say...
I speak catalán and l should say that is in between because catalán is very close to occitane,l think occitane is the key,especially Eastern occitane,provençal
When I was an American college student in Italy, I was almost fluent in Italian. I had studied French for only about six months in high school. So, when I was in France, I usually just converted the Italian word into French by just changing the pronunciation. For example, I would just change treno (train in Italian) to train (train in French). This can sometimes lead to disastrous misunderstandings, though. Let me give you one example: toilet paper in Italian is carta igienica. I was staying in a very inexpensive hotel in Paris that had a common bathroom for each floor. When I arrived, there was some toilet paper on a shelf in my small room. During the course of my stay, I used it all. When I needed more, I approached the French hotelkeeper and asked for more "carte" (changing the pronunciation from the Italian "carta" to the French "carte") hygienique (changing the pronunciation from the Italian "igienica"). Well, I got the igienica to hygienique right, but no so the "carta" to "carte." Turns out, of course, that I was asking for a hygienic map. From that hysterical experience of misunderstanding, I learned that among the Romance languages, what appears to be a cognate may actually have a slightly different meaning like carta and carte. Howard
then the hotelkeeper hand you a very clean map, the hygienique give of f the clean part nah scherzo ma in spagno would undertand you ask for a "carta higienica" what means a "hygenic letter".
Where are Moldova, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Vatican City, Wallonia, Italian & French Switzerland, French Luxembourg, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Sao Tome Principe, Angola, Mozambique, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti, Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Vanuatu, East Timor?
Yes but not for all, for example as italian speaker i can’t understand well portuguese speaker, i suppose it’s for pronunciation or something like that.
I speak Spanish , and I learned Italian very quickly. But French is kicking my butt. I think it's easier for French speakers to learn Spanish or Italian than the opposite.
El problema está en la pronunciación. Los franceses no pronuncian las palabras como las escriben, los sonidos nasales están presentes en mucho de su vocabulario y, además, diferentes palabras pueden escribirse de manera diferente pero suenan exactamente igual. Estudié francés por 4 años, y a pesar de que consigo comunicarme a un buen nivel, aún cometo errores. jaja
I am French native speaker, I was able to understand everything you said without translating :) I love romance languages, it feels like a connexion to me...instead of learning English in schools we should *all* learn the most spoken romance languages! Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish etc
Poni de Cthulhu Chapeau! Tu te débrouille bien ;) Juste pour t'aider, tu as fait 2 petites erreurs : * d'apprendre * similaires (celle la est minime) Je te félicite 👍
Hey man, i just came here to say that you deserve alot more views and subs than what you have right now. Your content is rich and is very entertaining. You seem to work on investing alot of time on researching the topics. You give reviews with an unbiased opinion. Thank you so much for creating this chanel and uploading these videos. Cheers from Saudi Arabia :)
I’m italian and i studied french Once i went to france with my parents who didn’t know french, but in this case there is a great tecnique you can use “Frenchlize” all the word you don’t know and 90% of the times you get it
i had an Italian girl come to France for an exchange between our schools. I was the only one talking italian, but my mom used to understand her with what she remembered from latin classes :')
@@roninjolin7687 I mean both Italian and French are related to Spanish.Italian in terms of pronunciation,French in terms of vocabulary.Must be because France is right next to Spain.
I am French and I have studied Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. There is no doubt in my mind that Italian is the easiest language to learn for a French speaker. The use of verb tenses is the same in both languages (except to express a future in the past: we use a conditional present in French and a past conditional in Italian). I've also noticed that the use of prepositions (always a problem when learning a language because always very idiomatic) is much more similar in French and Italian than in Spanish (Je suis à Rome, Sono a Roma, Estoy IN Roma). The only reason people tend to think Spanish and Italian are closer than French and Italian is the phonology. It cannot be disputed that Italian and Spanish pronunciation and accentuation are very similar.
There is one French sound that definitely is a problem for an Italian or Spanish speaking French: the nasal vowels (on, in, un, en). That sound doesn't exist in Italian and Spanish, but it does exist in Portuguese (ã, õ,...). Beside the nasal vowels (very frequent in Portuguese and French), I don't think Portuguese have an advantage over the Italian and Spanish to pronounce French.
@JL D: the real problem is not the nasalization, but the loss of phonemes, very extreme in French. They even have a especial character "^" for such a loss in written form, for example "Rhône" (from Rodanus, still Rodano in both Spanish and Italian). Paul suggested it's Celtic substrate influence but to me it's quite Germanic in fact, also the R sound is just like the German one.
Luis Aldamiz Quite right French is a roman language spoken by german tribes . After reading those comments i'll say French is very very difficult to write :rules are illogical grammatical is hard. As french and italian from Venice i can tell that italian is not difficult reading but speaking because of the accent:if you don't manage, it means nothing. French is a written language meanwhile italian is a spoken language. Tutte due lingue sono belle mais celle que je prefere c'est l'allemand.
Because French was codified by the elite (academy) and cultivated as a language of prestige (language of diplomacy, nobility) which excluded non-nobles and non-clergy people from speaking it since it required education. This is not the case of many other european languages and explains the unnecessary complicated grammar and orthography rules in french (designed by academicians). Most French people were speaking their local dialects (patois) and occasionally Latin until the 1880's and the emergence of the compulsory republican schools. The majority of French people could not read or write the french language until the late 19th century, cause it required being able to afford a school (which were mostly in cities aside from being expensive)
This is an updated version of this video which fixes a number of mistakes and clarifies a couple of things. The original video will soon be unlisted, but it will remain online so that you can continue responding to comments left on the original video. It is accessible here: th-cam.com/video/pF6sHB_wTAw/w-d-xo.html
Oublier in french (forget) also has a connection to italian, we say "oblio" (noun) but it's a litterature word, not used everyday. Also "magazin" (store): we say magazzino to tell a place where you store a lot of stuff. Etc... So the words actually are cousins
magazzino is more used in south italy, no? i know the verb "to buy" in sicilian is "accatare" , similar to a dialect in North France "accater" or in metropolitan french "acheter". Did the verb "accatare" exists in Italian?
You're super right! I'm a native French speaker, and this helps me so much in formulating sentences in Italian. I think in French and use almost the same sentence structure, et voila! I formulate a 'complex' Italian sentence correctly and people hardly believe it. So yes, these two languages are thankfully so close, allowing a native to learn the other language easily. However, I do believe that going from French to Italian is easier than the other way round! Good luck everyone in learning a second (or more) language! And thank you @Langfocus for your great videos :)
Vous avez raison. À mon avis, c'est difficile de comprendre l'italien parlé, mais c'est plus facile de comprendre quelques phrases. L'anglais est ma langue maternelle, mais quand je lis en une langue romance, je pense en français. Donc, je compare cette langue romance avec le français, même si c'est beaucoup plus loin de la racine latine.
I've always wondered why French and Italian music sound almost similar too but thanks for teaching us this, I do want to learn to speak both languages---I love both the French and Italian life! 🇫🇷🇮🇹
Je suis italien et je comprends bien le français meme si la prononciation au Nord de la France est trop "celtique". Le pronom formal italien est usuellement "Lei" (Vous en français) mais "Voi" est utilisé aussi particulierement dans le Sud. Le verbe oublier en italien c'est usuellement dimenticare mais aussi "obliare". Beacoup de mots français ont un mot pareil en italien mais poetique Par exemple: "tot" presto en italien mais aussi "tosto" en italien poetique. Souvent, spesso en italian mais aussi "sovente" en italien poetique. Donc, quindi en italien mais aussi "dunque" en italien poetique.
"vergogna" se traduit habituellement en français par "honte" qui est le terme le plus utilisé à l'oral. Mais on peut trouver aussi dans la littérature le terme "vergogne". Un des nombreux exemples de lien entre le vieux français et l'italien actuel. Il y a beaucoup de similitudes. Siamo cugini
Nonostante = Nonobstant (mais c'est assez soutenu) Qui vivra vedra = Qui vivra verra (ressemblance frappante) Malato = Malade È = Est (même prononciation orale, cependant) Bisogno = Besoin Spagnole = Espagnol Alcuno = Aucun (signification différente, sauf dans certains rares cas, et altération du "l" vers "u" par spirantisation) À propos d'Espagnol, l'expression "à partir de" se dit "a partir de"... Entre latinistes, des expressions se sont conservées. Comme "gravissime", où le suffixe -issime donne -issimo en Italien. Il y en a même qui sont apparues plus tard sous l'influence de cette langue: _à priori_, _a fortiori_, etc. Mais concernant "avec", ça vient du latin vulgaire "Ad hoppo huec", déformé en "avuec" puis "avec". Une idiosyncrasie assez rare. Tout comme le "pas" qui indique la négation, en réalité cette particule vient de la phrase "Je ne marche pas", où "pas" signifie réellement "ne marcher aucun pas". À l'époque, le français utilisait des tournures plus proches du Latin. Tout comme on disait "Je ne vois personne" (It: "Io non vedo nessuno"), "Je ne vois rien" ("Io non vedo niente"), "Je ne bois goutte". "Pas" est devenu une particule indépendante et "Ne" a MÊME tendance à disparaître dans certains cas. À l'oral, c'est tout-à-fait acceptable de dire "Je vois pas", mais il est impossible de dire "Pas bouger", sauf pour être très ferme et très impératif. On dit "Ne pas bouger" ou "Ne rien faire". Le "ne" reste indispensable. C'est le cycle de Jespersen : Apparition du "ne" (qui provient de "no"), apparition du "pas" (qui vient du nom commun. En Italien ça se dit "un passo"), puis disparition du "ne". Voilà voilà. :)
c'est Alberto Sordi qui m' a fait comprendre le sens du mot vergogne le terme est toujours sans vergogne sans scrupules sans complexe sans honte , je ne parle pas italien mais je le comprend quand il est parlé par un piémontais ou un milanais voire un génois et puis une partie du vocabulaire ostrogoth et lombards est entré dans les deux langues et les mêmes mots sont devenus communs aux deux langues il n' y avait pas le net sous l' empire romain ce sont les distances qui font les différences ; mais déjà Jules César parlait le Gaulois parfaitement le latin a dû piocher dans le vocabulaire cisalpin le gaulois faisait partie des langues italiques
Le gaulois (plutôt les dialectes gaulois) était une langue celtique. Comme le sont le breton , le gaélique, le gallois. Le gaulois était aussi parlé an nord de l'Italie actuelle c'est à dire en gaule cisalpine (par opposition à la gaule transalpine). Mais je ne sais pas si l'on peut dire qu'il faisait parie des langues italiques. Peut-être en effet, car c'était aussi une langue qui était parlée en Italie. En France, il y a beaucoup de lieux dont le nom est d'origine celtique.
pour les noms de lieux toute les villes se terminant en Y et il y a Boulogne et Bologne qui ont la même origine Jules césar a appris le gaulois en moins de 3 mois et il n'avait pas de dictionnaire le gaulois et le latin devaient déjà être très proche
As a native English-speaker, I can see that knowing *both* French and Spanish would be very helpful in learning Italian, because so often where Italian is different from French, it is similar to Spanish, and where it is different from Spanish it is similar to French.
Uno studioso ha detto che l'italiano ed il francese sono la stessa lingua ma pronunciata in modo diverso. Per noi italiani è molto facile imparare il francese, soprattutto per chi è di alcune regioni del Nord Italia abitate un tempo dai Galli Cisalpini e dove si parlano i dialetti gallo-italici (Lombardia, Emilia Romagna) oltre al Piemonte dove il dialetto locale è molto francesizzato ("madama" per "signora"; "mesò" per casa). Molte parole francesi diverse dall'italiano sono di origine gallica o derivate dal latino dialettale delle Gallie ("maison" viene dal latino "mansio", che in Gallia sostituiva "domus"). Oltretutto, sia il francese che l'italiano hanno assimilato quasi tutte le parole di origine germanica portate dai Barbari nella stessa forma: "bianco" e "bianco"; "birra" e "bière" oltre ai reciproci scambi successivi, basti pensare ai termini architettonici, militari e musicali
Per la cronaca Enna e provincia hanno anche un dialetto Gallico. dialetti galloitalici di Sicilia, anche detti dialetti altoitaliani della Sicilia o siculo-lombardo. I comuni dove si è mantenuta la parlata galloitalica sono: Nicosia, Sperlinga, Piazza Armerina e Aidone in provincia di Enna; San Fratello e Novara di Sicilia in provincia di Messina.
Official Memes Tv Even thought my first language is English and I am learning French I’d say English is very different even though we have French words I would say it can still be difficult.
I'm a French speaker and I did a trip to Europe a couple months ago and before going to Italy I visited countries like Hungary and Croatia. The languages that were spoken in these countries had nothing to do with French at all. So eventually I arrived in Italy and oh boy was it a relief. I could practically understand everything that was written. But as you said, the prononciation is quite different so it was harder to understand the spoken part. Either way, it felt good to be able to understand the signs and menus and all of that, even though I never learned anything about Italian.
French Respelling Project: Peau -> Po Faire -> Fēr Pas -> Pâ Je suis en train de manjer -> Jë suî ã trã dë mãjē. Elle voulais qu’il a fasse -> El vùlē qu’īl a fàç.
@@seid3366 Mais on prononce le s de pas quand il y a un mot suivant qui commence avec une voyelle, et pas juste pour le mot "pas", beaucoup de consonants silencieux sont prononcés quant à la liaison, comme "pas_à pas" ou "c'est_à moi". L'enlever ne fait que créer plus de confusion et à mon avis ça détruit aussi la beauté et élégance de l'orthographe française qui ressemble beaucoup au latin.
Wow Langfocus! I have been familiar with French for years since School days when and where I really enjoyed it! Now, from you Video, I realize that it would be so easy for me and folks like me, to learn Italian! Thanks so much! Also great job on the Arabic Video! Excellent! I have put in a bit of a long comment on that!
I learned French and Latin in school for many years and this is why Italian is very easy for me to learn. I was surprised how similar grammar and vocabulary of both languages are. They are even more similar to each other than Italian and Spanish.
When Mussolini was in charge he strongly encouraged Italians to use "voi" rather than "lei". My grandmother hated everyone who addressed her using "voi", because she hated Mussolini.. but it is true that in some regions, they still use "voi". My father surprisingly used "voi" as kid with his very old professors, thinking that "lei" was not showing enough respect.
Daniela sono d’accordo miei nonni per esempio ancora usano Voi ma tutti gli altri usano Lei quando vogliono essere più formale. Anch’io sono dalla Basilicata (però alcuni anziani ancora si chiamano la nostra regione “Lucania”, se hanno 80 anni o più
c'est vrai que l'italien s'apprend très facilement pour un français. c'est la langue la plus simple pour moi. peut-être encore plus que l'espagnol, même si j'avais que commencé à apprendre l'espagnol sans poursuivre
I'm French and I live in Italy. It took me about 3 months to learn Italian well enough to speak it fluently, and I agree with everything you say. Some words / syntax rules are a bit weird to me but overall it is very easy to write / speak Italian for a French person once you know it a bit. The pronounciation can be a bit trickier, especially the rolled "r" which I have still no idea how to pronounce even after several years in Italy, and more generally the italian tonic accents (or word stress ?) which are quite difficult to remember because French is a flat language with no tonic accent. Every Italian word has a different rule for the tonic accent and even if I pronounce a word the right way, if I fail at the tonic accent people who are not used to hearing foreigners speak can have trouble understanding. Also, I have never learnt spanish but now that I know Italian I can a rough idea of what is said in a spanish conversation even if I can't speak.
I'm a native French speaker. I learned to speak Italian without any major difficulties (the most difficult part was the subjunctive). I noticed that many Italian words are very similar to "rare" French words (almost archaic). For instance, you chose the word "negozio" (shop). Like you said, the translation in French is "magasin", so it seems that a French speaker can't understand this word.... but there is a "'rare" French word that can help us to understand the meaning of this word : "négoce" (which means "trade, trading, business"). So, it is not that difficult to understand that "negozio" means "magasin".
The corresponding words in English are "negotiate", " negotiation"-presumably the Italian usage relates to when in the past you bartered ,haggled or 'negotiated' your purchases or sales in a marketplace. Magasin it seems, originated in Arabic.Originally meaning storehouse it came into English as "magazine"-a place of storage for military ammunition,shells,gunpowder etc.In more modern parlance it usually relates to the detachable chamber that stores the bullets in an automatic firearm.Use of the word " magazine" for a printed periodical possibly relates to the thing being a "storehouse" of information or a storehouse of different topics.
89% lexical similarity with Italian vs. 75% with Spanish, proves my point: people often say “French and Spanish are so close,” but the truth is French and Italian are much closer! They are my two favorite countries with the two most delicious cultures, architecture, art, cuisines, wine (French wines are vastly superior and more overpriced!), and young/youthful men. They are the “langues d’amour”/“lingue d’amore”! ❤️❤️
I have Italian lessons right now and find it quite easy to learn as a French speaker. What I do find hard though is the similarities Italian also has with Spanish: reading is especially hard when you're used to Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation!! Thanks for your channel, I always enjoy watching your videos!
When I visited Milano a couple of years ago, I was so surprised to discover that Italians think that French people hate them. Where did you get that ridiculous idea? Ask anyone in France what they think about Italy and Italians, and 9 times out of 10 you'll have nothing but compliments and admiration. The worst thing you'll hear is "ce sont des dragueurs" (they're always chasing after girls). We don't hate each other. The hatred comes from you guys only.
2:59 oubliez sounds like oblio in italian. It has a meaning of forgetting something deeply. In italian we use negozio but we have "magazzino" (magasin in french). A native speaker could see more and more similarities.
A little used English word, (taken from French hundreds of years ago) oubliette- a dungeon a person was thrown into, to be forgotten about,entrance via the roof.
When I was learning Italian at university, I took my notes in French (I'm a native English speaker). I'm currently learning Spanish and trying to use both French & Italian to nail down Spanish. They help but of course there are differences.
Great video! I'm French, studying translation both from fr to ita and from ita to fr and I can tell you it is way harder than it seems. Latin languages and especially italian and french seem very similar at first but they have many different little details that make it harder to translate correctly. Plus you are tempted to use a similar word while it is not always the exact equivalent. Being french I find it easier to translate from english for example because you are allowed to, and you often should change the sentence's structure while with italian you have to keep it very close except for some particular moments and thus you never really know if you'd better stay very close or make something a bit more french but that risks being a bit too far from the text...
If we agreed with our lovely Italian neighbours to speak really slow, we would understand each other perfectly. But slow-speaking Italians are most likely mythical creatures.
Mon père dit que les français parlent extrêmement vite et que parfois les mots sont "flous", qu'ils sont beaucoup moins "clairs" qu'en italien du moins (et de mon point de vue, même si je maitrise le français aussi bien que l'italien, je concorde). ça fait un moment qu'il est en France et il ne s'y est toujours pas habitué. Il a encore beaucoup de difficultés à comprendre les français ^^'
My family is partly of Italian origin and partly of French origin, as a result I learned both languages as a child and I am almost perfectly bilingual. I want to thank Paul because I never thought about the differences he pointed out.
Paaaaul, I'm still dreaming of that "how similar are italian and portuguese"!!! You'll have many views, lots of Brazilian with Italian heritage!! come oooon
I’m from Brazil and I speak italian. The words are close each other but the verb tenses in Italian are so difficult to understand. Ex: Eu fiz mal a alguém (pt-Br) Io ho fatto male a qualcuno (it) Eu me fiz mal (pt-Br) Mi sono fatto male (it) Past tense verbs are the worst
I am French, have never learned Italian, and always have understood the language, both oral and written very easily. I once spent 1 month in Rome, and I could speak Italian quite fluently. I am quite surprised at what I read here. Too me, Italian and French are mutually intelligible, all you need is to listen carefully, that's all.
You are probably one of those gifted geniuses with an excellent ear for languages. You should also try Spanish and Portuguese and other Romance languages, they will be probably easy for you as well.
@@golden.lights.twinkle2329 that isn't impossible, you're thinking as an american perspective mate, remind you french and italian are mutually intelligible because they're from the same linguistic family
I'm french, and I never learn italian, but when I went to Italy for holidays, I was surprised about how much I can understand written italian. But you're right, spoken italian is pretty inintelligible for us !
As a native French speaker who is learning Italian, this is very useful! I feel like Italian is the closest language to French, closer than Spanish, Portugese or Romanian. When I was just starting to learn Italian, when I was travelling to Italy, I was just "italianizing" my French (adding "a", "o", "e" and "i" at the end of words, shifting the accent to the second to last syllabe, etc), and locals would understand me 😁
je parle les trois langues (italien; espagnol et français) et en tant qu'italien je peux dire que les langues plus proches sont italien et espagnol, qui peuvent même former des phrases intières pratiquement identiques, ce qui est impossible avec le français
It depends where in Italy you go. Usually in the North they tend to use vocabulary and grammar in a way that's closer to French (except in the Veneto region in which they sound more "Spanish" but the influence on the pronunciation is really Greek). In the South (except for Naples) they tend to use vocabulary and grammar closer to Spanish. Also pronunciation could have French influences in Piedmont and Emilia and they understand French better than other Italians. As rule of the thumb, written Italian and generally its grammar appears to be closer to French, but spoken Italian is closer to Spanish. Has to be said that Italian is changing: up to the 70s standard Italian was easier for French people that it is now, because standard Italian is now getting more influenced by southern dialects.
I agree that Spanish that is more similar to Italian than French is. A friend in Mexico City showed me his Spanish/Italian dictionary, and the vocabulary was almost identical - more so than French, I think. I learned both Spanish and French before learning Italian, and Spanish was much more helpful.
Lars Theoderik Verbally yes but it seems a lot more vocabulary came from Italian into French. Like comer for eating is very different from mangiare/manger? I'd say writing wise Portuguese is very close to Castillian but pronunciation wise forget about it.
15-20% of _italian_ words are directly Germanic, post-roman empire (Goths, Lombards, Normans,..). Example: "bicchiere" (drinking glass) comes from the germanic for "beak", as in "beaker" in English, and "Becher" in German. "Verre" in French comes from the Latin for the vitreous substance 'glass', as it still is in the italian 'vetro'. Not to mention the constant mutual influence between the two language areas: langue d'oc, the troubadours, Petrarch, provençal, the Renaissance, Francois Ier, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine de Medici and Mazarin, the house of Savoy, Nice, banking terminology, military, architecture, art, trade, textiles, agriculture and cuisine... I think it would be fair to say that Italy exported terminology until the 1400s, when it lost it's economic and commercial hegemony, from then on Italy and the rest of Europe imported French terms.
Im lebanese, and we learn french and english at school, then when i wanted to learn italian like a year ago it was a very easy language for me, and now i can speak both french and italian fluently, they are really similar in writing a little bit more different in speaking but however i learned them both💙
as a spanish and french speaker who is learning italian, what i love is that italian grammar and vocabulary will resemble one of the two, in almost every case imaginable
Paul, I've seen a number of your videos already. Lots of interesting knowledge, good pace (not a second lost), always straight to the point. JUST GREAT!
@@arthurhistder1156 It used to be the most beautiful language back before the fifties when most places at least outside Paris had the rolled r's instead of the modern weird French r.
Italian and French are the most similar than any other Latin language. Lexicon similarities are 90% or higher also the two most beautiful languages in the world. 🇮🇹🇫🇷
Yes, but not 100% true. While French and Italian do share the most lexical similarity than compared to other major Romance languages, the cognates are not always so obvious. Take for instance the following words: Water (English) = Eau (French) = Acqua (Italian) = Aqua (Latin) Goat (English) = Chèvre (French) = Capra (Italian) = Capra (Latin) Hair (English) = Cheveux (French) = Capelli (Italian) = Capillum (Latin) Bald (English) = Chauve (French) = Calvo (Italian) = Calvus (Latin) Cat (English) = Chat (French) = Gatto (Italian) = Cattus (Latin) Snow (English) = Niege (French) = Neve (Italian) = Nix (Latin) Winter (English) = Hiver (French) = Inverno (Italian) = Hiems (Latin) Spring (English) = Printemps (French) = Primavera (Italian) = Fons (Latin) Thing (English) = Chose (French) = Cosa (Italian) = Rem (Latin) Fish (English) = Poisson (French) = Pesce (Italian) = Piscis (Latin) An Italian would not be able to know right away wtf eau, chèvre, cheveux, chauve, niege, hiver, printemps, chose, or poisson means, while a French person may be able to know what acqua and capelli mean since the words aquatique and capillaire exist in the French language (French adjectives seem to be more conservative to the original spelling and sound of the Latin word, but that applies to almost every Romance language). On the other hand, when the same cognates are also shared with other Romance languages, like say Spanish and Portuguese, they tend to look and sound closer to Italian than to French, as you can see, Agua (Spanish) = Água (Portuguese) = Acqua (Italian) = Eau (French) = Aqua (Latin) Cabra (Spanish) = Cabra (Portuguese) = Capra (Italian) = Chèvre (French) = Capra (Latin) Cabello (Spanish) = Cabelo (Portuguese) = Capelli (Italian) = Cheveux (French) = Capillum (Latin) Calvo (Spanish) = Calvo (Portuguese) = Calvo (Italian) = Chauve (French) = Calvus (Latin) Gato (Spanish) = Gato (Portuguese) = Gatto (Italian) = Chat (French) = Cattus (Latin) Nieve (Spanish) = Neve (Portuguese) = Neve (Italian) = Niege (French) = Nix (Latin) Invierno (Spanish) = Inverno (Portuguese) = Inverno (Italian) = Hiver (French) = Hiems (Latin) Primavera (Spanish) = Primavera (Portuguese) = Primavera (Italian) = Printemps (French) = Fons (Latin) Cosa (Spanish) = Coisa (Portuguese) = Cosa (Italian) = Chose (French) = Rem (Latin) Pez (Spanish) = Peixe (Portuguese) = Pesce (Italian) = Poisson (French) = Piscis (Latin) Clearly, one can see that French has undergone a more drastic change and reduction in consonants and vowels compared to the other Romance languages when looking at the original Latin word. Not only the spelling, but the pronunciation varies a lot from the original Latin pronunciation, as French phonetics have diverged significantly due to Germanic and Celtic influence, becoming more complex (Portuguese too, but to a lesser extent than French). The e, s and t in French, for example, are always silent at the end of a word, and that may throw off another speaker of a Romance language. French words tend to be pronounced with less syllables, and the vowel sounds tend to be rather divergent, like the word me (moi). Not to mention, a lot of vowel sounds are approximants. Really, French would not be terrible to read for an Italian, and vice versa, but when it comes down to talking, it is almost impossible without prior knowledge of each other's languages. In this case, Spanish has a much better advantage, because like Italian, it has conserved a lot of the similar phonetics to Latin, and the spelling of the Latin words don't vary as much when they share the same meaning of a cognate. That's why an Italian has much easier time talking to a Spanish speaker than a French speaker. So in paper French may look closer to Italian, but in practicality, it is probably a lot easier for an Italian to pick up Spanish, and even have improvised conversations.
@@psq6214 It depends really. Most French and Italian words that share the same meaning tend to be straight up cognates, whereas, Spanish and Portuguese don't share as many cognates to Italian. I mean, they may have had those words back in the day, but they went out of style, being replaced by words. For example, Day (English) = Giorno (Italian) = Journée (French) = Día (Spanish) = Dia (Portuguese) Butter (English) = Burro (Italian) = Beurre (French) = Mantequilla (Spanish) = Manteiga (Portuguese) Beer (English) = Birra (Italian) = Bière (French) = Cerveza (Spanish) = Cerveja (Portuguese) Window (English) = Finestra (Italian) = Fenêtre (French) = Ventana (Spanish) = Janela (Portuguese) Son (English) = Figlio (Italian) = Fils (French) = Hijo (Spanish) = Filho (Portuguese) Daughter (English) = Figlia (Italian) = Fille (French) = Hija (Spanish) = Filha (Portuguese) Brother (English) = Fratello (Italian) = Frère (French) = Hermano (Spanish) = Irmão (Portuguese) Sister (English) = Sorella (Italian) = Sœur (French) = Hermana (Spanish) = Irmã (Portuguese) Carrot (English) = Carota (Italian) = Carotte (French) = Zanahoria (Spanish) = Cenoura (Portuguese) Dog (English) = Cane (Italian) = Chien (French) = Perro (Spanish) = Cachorro (Portuguese, lol, this is puppy in Spanish) Sheet (English) = Foglio (Italian) = Feuille (French) = Hoja (Spanish) = Folha (Portuguese) Oil (English) = Olio (Italian) = Huile (French) = Aceite (Spanish) = Óleo (Portuguese) To Want (English) = Volere (Italian) = Vouloir (French) = Querer (Spanish) = Querer (Portuguese) To Talk (English) = Parlare (Italian) = Parler (French) = Hablar (Spanish) = Falar (Portuguese) To Eat (English) = Mangiare (Italian) = Manger (French) = Comer (Spanish) = Comer (Portuguese) To Take (English) = Prendere (Italian) = Prendre (French) = Tomar (Spanish) = Tomar (Portuguese) To Search (English) = Cercare (Italian) = Chercher (French) = Buscar (Spanish) = Procurar (Portuguese) To Lift (English) = Sollevare (Italian) = Soulever (French) = Levantar (Spanish) = Levantar (Portuguese) To Look (English) = Guardare (Italian) = Regarder (French) = Mirar (Spanish) = Ohlar (Portuguese) To Find (English) = Trovare (Italian) = Trouver (French) = Encontrar (Spanish) = Encontrar (Portuguese) To Hold (English) = Tenere (Italian) = Tenir (French) = Sostener (Spanish) = Segurar (Portuguese) To Have (English) = Avere (Italian) = Avoir (French) = Tener (Spanish) = Ter (Portuguese) To Need (English) = Avere Bisogno (Italian) = Avoir Besoin (French) = Necesitar (Spanish) = Precisar (Portuguese) (though Necessitare and Nécessiter exist in Italian and French respectively, though less commonly used) I know that Spanish has the words Manjar, Travar, Acercar, Prender, Guardar, Tener, Haber, Jornada, Parlante/Parlamento, Fraterno/Fraternal, Filial, Follaje, Canino, Oliva and in Argentina the word Birra is commonly used for Beer and the expression ¡Guarda! for Watch out! (this is due to the Italian immigration though), but these cognates are not necessarily used synonymously, as in the case of Spanish and Portuguese, it is to describe a more specific situation, whereas in French and Italian, these words are more commonly used as basic everyday words.
Podes crê irmão!!!Tô estudando esse idioma lindo e relativamente fácil pra nós falantes da lingua portuguêsa!!!T aconselho a fazer o mesmo,não vai s arrepender!!!Have a good luck man!!!
The most weird thing is that... We're always fighting with them (I'm Italian and I'm talking about French people) BUT at the end of the day I'd rather spend my life fighting with them about culture, food and art than anybody else. I think many Italians will agree with me on this. If Spanish are our brothers and we don't really fight a lot, French are our cousins and I respect them. We may fight, but I have respect for them and their language. I was watching a video that had nothing to do with France (It was about Québec) but it was about the French language, and this English Canadian was saying how "useless" the French language is compared to English, and I felt offended even if I'm Italian. I can't listen to an English speaker disrespect French calling it "a useless language". It made me feel angry. I disliked the video and unsubscribed from that channel. He surely didn't know what he was talking about.
The main difference between France and Italy is France is an old unified country, Italy has been unified in 1860 (once before under Napoleon as the first president of Italy then king of Italy) but still has a problem about the north and the south. In this aspect France inherited from the Romans and took the place the italians should have taken if they could have unite early. Except that we share everything, arts, philosophy, cuisine (most of the french food comes from Italy originally and has been developped later by french cooks by creating new recipes), wines, tastes, way of thinking, mentality... I don't see many differences between the french and the italian peoples.
@@Brumairevideo Many Italians forget the fact: Italy was created by the sacrifice of french soldiers against Austo Hungaric empire. No other european nation helped Italy like France in his history. Ungratelfulness.
@@afrocyberdelia We still have Spanish (another romance language) with a lot of native speakers. French, Italian and Portuguese may disappear in the future but as I said we still have Spanish, I don't think any Germanic language (English included) can make Spanish disappear, and that makes me happy.
AS an Italian I have to say you are right,I have no issues,as a rule,understanding written French,however the pronunciation is very different,but we do share words and verbs,Indeed as an Italian speaker French is very easy to pick uo,more so than Spanish,which a lot of people think are more similar.
Hello, everyone! I'm portuguese and I've just started watching your videos, but I have to tell you: they are amazing! I study French in college (and I studied English until I was in high school). I'd love to learn Italian and, since I'm a native speaker of portuguese and I also speak French, it would be easier for me to learn. I think you could do a video comparing Portuguese and French or Portuguese and Italian. There would be some similarities too (and the portuguese culture has been quite influenced by the french culture and a little bit by the italian too). Thank you for this video and I also have to say that I enjoyed the one you made about my native language, even though the pronunciation was not very good in one or two words. Anyway, that's not a big deal - Portuguese phonetics is quite tricky! The video about English being a germanic language was also cool and I'm quite a fan of English too. Thank you again and keep doing these amazing videos!
My mother language is probabily right at half way between french and italian. It's called friulian (standardized language). Here the examples you gave in the video: 2:03 Mêt achì la to valîs e ven cun me in cusine, (jo) o ti prepari un cafè. 2:47 E no dismenteaitsi di jentrâ intune buteghe di ceramichis. 3:38 (Jo) o ai un gjornâl pal viaç. 3:58 (Jo) o cjacari/feveli inglês. This example is pretty nice in friulian, cus we have an atonic pronoun (jo o, tu tu, lui al/je e...) 4:42 (Jo) lu voi comprâ./ (Jo) o voi comprâlu. 4:53 (Jo) no cjacari/feveli inglês. 5:18 (Tu) tu as mangjât alc/ cualchi cjosse. 6:16 Al fa frêt. 6:26 Vin Blanc :D 7:25 Cuai sono i vuestris plâts preferîts? (note: son-o is the union between 3rd plural person of "be" and subject. In friulian we've got VSO order in questions, like in german, italian always SVO) 8:32 I nestris amîs a finissin di gustâ.
This is VERY close to the old savoyard language that was spoken in the French alps 2 centuries ago. I suppose however that the pronunciation would be more Latin than Gallic in Friuli, am I correct?
@スパイダーマン Catalan pronunciation is very difficult to understand for an italian and it's very different from any italian dialects, but beyond pronunciation, catalan is very similar to the occitan and the last is very similar to northern italian romance languages. So when we read catalan, we understand it very well (except for arab loans not existing in italian romance languages). This is "furlan": th-cam.com/video/o3MkyP4iuQI/w-d-xo.html
no its not actually half french half italian , its independent languages. because gaulish langauge is also spoken in northern part of italian in past time thats why it seems similar like French
As a French native and spanish speaker, French and Spanish are really easily intelligible, maybe less than French - Italian (because French and Italian verbs are closer), but still very close. And speaking the two language i can understand Catalan which is basicaly an intermediary between the two. :)
Lissandra Freljord Occitan is probably similar to Catalan... all those languages result from Vulgar Latin but some were spoken in capital cities and became the main dialect and then the national language but each region has originally its own dialect from Latin .
Having studied french, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (in that order) to a good C1 level, I had the feeling that knowledge of one language provided something of a base for the next one. I loved the similarities and differences in culture as well, all in the context of our European culture. Thank you for all your informative videos which we, language lovers, enjoy !!!😄😄
wow you're amazing, that's what i want to do, im learning italian and starting to learn french, and english and spanish are my native languages, which is yours??
Vaya... sos increíble, ni siquiera yo, que tengo al español como mi lengua madre, he logrado dominar la gramática del todo, pase 7 años en la escuela sólo para aprender a escribir correctamente.
+lady Marianne As I see, something suggest me that you are "probably" interested in "Latin Culture"... Are you ? :-) I am Italian (therefore "Latin") and I am interested in "Germanic Culture". So I am doing the same thing that you did but my Languages are German, Dutch and Afrikaans. The Scandinavian Languages are "Germanic" but not "West Germanic" as German, Dutch and Afrikaans are... So I am not interested in them... "English" is too much a mixture with words of French Origin... So, I speak it but I don't love it... I find that by studying more Languages that are similar to each other, one Language help the other... Expecially as far as the memorizing of the words is concerned... For example you may ask yourself: "what's the Italian word for "Good" ?" And then you reply to yourself: "Oh, I got it: it is like the Spanish "Bueno" ! It is "Buono" !" As far as your Language is concerned (Greek) I have always asked to myself why Greek - unlike the Latin Languages, the Germanic Languages, the Slavic Languages, etc - has not a similar Language ? The only "Greek Language" is Greek. Period.
+maksim5078 yes you are right my friend! Greek is one of a kind! perhaps one day you will get the chance to study it and combine the studying with a trip to our beautiful Aegean islands! I wish you the best!
I'm Italian and do speak French as well. Both languages are extremely similar according to their grammar, and once you know how to pronounce French words - or you know how spoken French words are written, you just really need a few important different vocabularies and endings to understand huge parts of what someone is saying in French. Of course, learning the language in terms of being able to speak it, still takes a bit time. But (in my opinion) it's pretty easy for a native Italian speaker to learn French.
I'm Canadian like paul. I speak English as well as French. English and French are very similar. I think out of all the latin languages, French is the one that's the most similar to English.
I learn french before i learn italian,the thing i notice is in french u have “etre” and “avoir” and in italian u have “essere” and “avere”..some words also is quite same for example manger in french and mangiare in italian..also demain and domani..yeah its quite same but sadly my italian is better than my french,ma non sono italiano sono malesiano..❤️
I think there are some examples that you could have used to show the similarity of French and Italian grammar as opposed to Spanish. For example: essere/avere and etre/avoir. You sometimes use "be" and sometimes use "have" depending on the verb, unlike Spanish (and English). This is drilled into learners of both languages from the start. "Noi SIAMO arrivati"/"Nous SOMMES arrives" (We ARE arrived). These two languages are unlike Spanish and English, in which you can only use "have" (haber). "Nosotros HEMOS llegado." "We HAVE arrived." In addition to not using the "be" verb as in Italian and French, in Spanish, "arrive" (llegar) is not pluralized, the way it is in Italian and French with "arrivati/arrives." Same thing with a sentence such as this: "Los he invitadO." (invited remains singular, even though THEY (plural) have been invited. But in Italian and French, it must be plural: "Li ho invitatI"/"Les ai inviteS." Or this... Spanish: "Los he vistO" (visto-- singular), Italian/French: "Li ho vistI"/Les ai vuS" (plural in both languages)
Interesting: I was not aware of the direct-object-ruled plural verb conjugation in French and Italian (and still seems quite weird, I tend to think that the subject is higher ranking than any object and should rule, but seems it's not always that way). Another thing that Spanish has and no other major Romance does is the distinction between "ser" and "estar", both "to be" but used for different notions: "estar" is for transitional situations, often locative, while to be is for essential ones. So "estoy alegre" and "soy alegre" both mean "I'm happy" but the former is "I'm feeling happy now" and the latter is "I'm generally/always/naturally happy". This is a clear Basque influence in Castilian/Spanish.
italian and french are really really similar. They actually share 89 per cent of their vocabulary. the main difference is in pronounciation but as an italian once you learn the basic tricks and changing you can learn to understand French pretty fast. Another thing is that if they don't have the same word, you may find a synonim somewhere that is less likely or never used. Finally, you may find some words in one language and in a dialect of the other
The similarities in the vocabulary are many more if you consider synonyms or the root of the world. In the example at 2:40 the verb "dimenticare" is clearly different from "oublier", but in Italian there is a noun, "oblio", which sounds like "oublier" and has a similar meaning. The same is true for "in/dans", in Italian the word "dentro" (=inside) is similar to "dans" than "in". Finally, "negozio/magasin", in Italian a "magazzino" may be a warehouse but also a kind of store. Another example is the French for hello, "salut". In Italian you say "ciao", but the verb "salutare" means to greet or to say hello.
And likewise in french, for a shop, you can also say "un négoce". But "négoce" has usually more the meaning of commercialization / commercial exchange.
Maybe someone said this already, but in French, we write "ne" but it is often omitted when we speak. So it would be "je sais pas" or "je parle pas anglais"
Beside the Celtic influence French has quite some Germanic influence too through the language of the Franks. For instance French being a non-prodrop language(subject pronouns are obligatory) is attributed to that Germanic influence.
Maybe, but it's also the fact that in French 4 out of 6 conjugated verb forms in the present tense sound the same. One needs the pronouns in the spoken language to figure out numerus and person. You don't need that in Spanish, Portuguese or Italian.
It's difficult to say which is a result of which (or maybe someone with a better understanding of the historical evolution of French would know, I'm a native speaker but I don't have much special knowledge on that). If most verb forms already differ based on the person/pronoun, then it's a logical step for everyday speakers to drop the pronoun since it conveys no new information. But in the same way, if pronouns are used consistently then it's more likely that similar-sounding verb forms would remain in use by everyday speakers. Because French consistently uses pronouns, many verb forms French speakers learn in school are fairly rarely used in everyday speech: it's much easier to use forms that remain the same.
Stefan Reichenberger The Frankish language changed immensely the phonology of the forming Old French, especially through stress patterns, that contributed to the emergence of so many homophones and irregular verbs. The fact that the Germanic languages are non-prodrop is not the only argument for the influence on this feature of the Modern French language. It's rather that their phonology changed in a similar way to French. If you compare Modern French to other modern French languages like Occitan, which had a lot less Germanic, but equally as much Celtic influence and remained a pro-drop language, it becomes more obvious.
As a French Canadian, reading Italian and speaking it is entirely different. I can have a basic understanding if I read it. I can't understand a basic sentence in Italian if it is spoken to me.
@@amrdel2730 italian as 90% vocabulary shared with french as spanish about 80% so yes italian is the closest to french but the accent are more closer between spanish and italian. as said in the video
@@amrdel2730 je n'ai besoin du parler en français depuis plus de personnes parler en anglaise. À Mois que je visiterait Québec. Je ne comprends beaucoup d'Espagnol parce-que je l'avais oublié, et je n'ai pas besoin de le parler, especialment au Canada.
5:23 Corresponding to the French "quelque chose" (some-thing) there is not only the Italian common "qualcosa" but also the less common "qualche cosa" which is exactly the two words not joined.
How different are Canadian/Quebec French and French? Might be an interesting topic for a video since most people only know Canada as an English-speaking country and information on Canadian/Quebecois is rather scarce.
It would be interesting! I live in Quebec and the thing is even here we have many regional accents. But we do have "joual" which is like the hillbilly southern of Quebec. But it's mostly the same idea as American English vs British English, Brazilian Portuguese vs Portuguese from Portugal etc etc (the latter being the more "refined" "high class" variant)
Canadian French hasn't evolved has much (and not in the same direction) as the one in Europe, and has US influences. That's why, whilst they do share much vocab, there are a few differences. (and the slang is really different). e.g. "gosse" means "child" in France, but "testicle" in Québec.
I'm French and every time I hear a Quebecois speak I understand. Few exceptions : some franglish and some slang, not all but still some :) PS : Never been there
+Carpe Diem ils étaient probablement de la ville parce que les québécois de région peuvent être vraiment dur à comprendre même pour nous dans les régions urbaines. Ma gérante au travail m'a dit que quand son chum de Montréal est allé avec elle visiter sa région natale en Gaspésie ils parlaient tellement vite qu'il a absolument rien compris alors qu'ils avaient l'impression qu'il était malheureux avec eux parce qu'il disait pas grand chose.
Theodore Stathopoulos Pas que de la ville non. Mais c'est surtout via des vidéos que j'entends parler québécois. J'ai en tête un reportage où un français faisait le tour du Québec et même dans les villages ont comprend bien les francophones. Mais je me souviens plus si la Gaspésie était une des étapes. Et peut-être que les Québécois font un effort pour être compris des Français aussi, c'est possible. Par contre, en regardant le film Mommy par exemple, là c'est compliqué. Sans sous titres au 1er visionnage j'aurais pas tout compris
Another great video, a very accurate summary of the situation, good job. :) I think there's an interesting kind of linguistic "trinity" between standard Italian, standard French and standard Spanish. From the Italian-speaker's point of view, most of us will feel like we can understand and get involved (in a limited way) in a spoken conversation in Spanish - even better if we are talking one on one with a Spanish speaker and carefully trying to make each other understand. The grammar and lexicon might be more distant between Spanish and Italian than between Italian and French, but the style of phonology between the two languages sounds more similar, which makes it easier for Spaniards and Italians to identify individual words in a sentence and therefore be able to start to make sense of what's being said. The same thing applies to say, watching a movie in Spanish or vice versa. Between French and Italian though, if you are a speaker of one of these and have never ever learned or been exposed to the other, it can feel very difficult indeed to catch what the words are in a spoken sentence. But the written language is a very different story. I live in Paris , and when a cousin of mine from Rome was staying at my place for a week, he couldn't really understand any spoken French except very basic things. I could see him trying hard to catch on to spoken French but it was clearly very difficult for him to pick out the words. However, in the mornings he would go out and buy Le Monde and was able to read the paper in French with his morning coffee and could make sense of pretty much everything, with much less effort. From my personal point of view I speak both French and Italian, and it's a curious relationship. Once you're fluent in both, you become very keenly aware of just how similar they are. You find yourself forming sentences in a way that feels very familiar when you are speaking either language, and you notice the similarities all the time. For me it's to the point that I find it difficult to switch between Italian and French now. When I go to Italy, it takes me at least a week to "shake off" French and to get back into Italian. Up until that point I often find myself starting a sentence in Italian and accidentally ending it in French, much to the amusement of my cousins and friends in Italy.... :)
I was fluent in French when I started studying Italian. Years later, I added Spanish, and could read Spanish immediately, but Italian interfered when I spoke. I think Italian and Spanish are closer than French is to either one. Many words sound the same, but are spelled differently with the same grammatical function. Both Italian and Spanish add an object to the end of an infinitive, where as French keeps them separate and in front or attached with a hyphen in the case of a command. Truthfully, knowing any one of the three (plus Portuguese) makes it very easy to add the next one.
Some of the word you showed have cognates in italian as well. For example "oublier" is a direct cognate of "oblìo", which it means "forgettance", nowadays literary; "dans" is a direct cognate of "dentro", inside, or "magasin" is cognate of "magazzino", which means "storage" or "mall" if preceded by "grande" (grandi magazzini)
Bonjour! I am a native French and studied Italian and Spanish as well as Latin and romance linguistic in the course of my studies. Your video is really great but I have some remarks to do: You never spoke of the German influence on French, which is much more important than the Celtic influence: 1/ The pronunciation : French has been highly influenced by the germanic way of speaking. The name France comes directly from the Frankish tribes who came from what is nowadays the Netherlands and Northern Germany. Frankish eventually gave birth to Dutch and when you look at it, we French and Dutch have a lot in common in the pronunciation (but not the vocabulary). For instance we have the sounds : eu/ oe (ö in German), as in peu (few), the guttural "r" is common in Dutch and German, we also have the sound u like in "dur" (hard) (ü in German). That added to the fact that we don't pronunce every letters of a word, explains why is it so difficult for an Italian or a Spanish to understand and pronunce French, but the contrary is not true: to French people, Italian and Spanish sound very familiar in the vocabulary : ex: château : castello (in french we speak of castellologie for the study of castles) and the pronunciation apart from the thrilled r is very easy to us. If they do not speak too fast, we are even able to understand the global meaning of a sentence, which is not true for a Spanish or an Italian hearing French for the first time. 2/The vocabulary : Many words can be traced back from our Frankish ancestors especially words related to war : guerre (werra, war in english) for example. 3/ The grammar : The influence is not very strong but we have some traces of it : We say : "Un gros homme" (A fat man) which would be said "un uomo grosso" in Italian. This works for some words like : autre, beau, bon, grand, gros, haut, jeune, mauvais, nouveau, petit, vieux, vilain... So, these adjectives must be placed before the name they qualify like in German or English. Then, just two little things : In "Il fait froid" we do not pronunce the "t" of "fait" either. And in the end, déjeuner must be written with an accent ;-). Sorry for all those remarks, but you know how we Frenchies, are touchy for what regards our own language, :-D nevertheless your vids are very good and interesting! Bonne continuation et à bientôt!
Well, French is not the only romance language which is influenced by German. Look the Italian, 10% of the word come from german: guerra (war), bicchiere (from german Becher, which means glass in italian), alt (halt), lista (from Liste, means list), schiena (from old german: schena, which means back/body backside), etc....
I'm a Belgian french-speaker and I'm learning Dutch ; you're right. Counter many languages having much vocabulary in common with French, Dutch is the only tongue having a lot of the pronounciation very similar with french. (the guttural r, the u sound, the a sound and some others). But the vocabulary is very different.
Please note that pre-60 singers used to roll their "r" while singing (think Tino Rossi). Also, the way words are written in French is a mix of history and of arbitrary non-sense (Linguisticae has a video about it). For some reason, it seems to me that the French academy has decided that writers of French had to be etymologists too to be considered seriously.
I'm French and study Italian, and find it very easy to learn while Spanish seems more difficult to learn because of the differences in vocabulary. Nice video, you surely cleared some minds in the Anglo-Saxon world. Well done!
For Northern Italians I think French is easier than Spanish as the phonology with the local dialects is very similar. For Central and Southern Italians, Spanish would be easier.
North West Italy has phonology similar to French, while North East has many similarity with Spanish an Venetian for me is very close to Catalan even more than Castillian, while central and south Italy is similar to Spanish Castilian.
The Venetian isn't an Italian dialect, it's a minority romance language that Italy calls dialect just because it isn't its official language. It's both similar to Italian and Spanish, and it doesn't sound like a Spanish dialect. Unfortunately is very similar to Italian, so people think that it's its dialect.
I started learning French in middle school and continued through high school. I became quite fluent after working in a French restaurant as the only non-native speaker. French was the working language and by the end of the summer, all of those years of grammar study + constant immersion at work made me quite fluent. I then started university. In my first semester I took Italian 101. In my second semester, I took Italian 302 (advanced grammar and composition). I did study a lot on my own, and being of Italian heritage (but never being able to speak or understand it at home), I had a strong motivation to master Italian. Knowing French before starting Italian was a tremendous advantage.
I'm French and I learned Italian during High School as a third language after English and Spanish. Italian is indeed quite similar to French and therefore I found it comfortable to understand and learn, even if sometimes this sensation of confort led to some (many?!) mistakes. The hard thing was that my italian teacher was constantly accusing me of speaking with Spanish words.. and vice versa. And I was not the only one in that case. To french speakers, Spanish and Italian at least sounds alike (but they are very differents languages, of course).
When I went to Italy in 2011, I kept starting to speak Spanish. This was especially surprising to me, since I had learned Spanish in high school and had not spoken it, except a few times, since about 1966 (yes, I'm old!). There was just something about Italy and hearing Italian (which I don't speak at all) that made Spanish enter my head! In a hotel, I heard another woman do the same thing and we laughed about this weird phenomenon.
I had the same problem with Portuguese. I tried to learn it since it's so similar to Spanish. Even more so than Spanish is to Italian. However, that similarity became my biggest obstacle since I would often mix the Spanish pronunciation into the Portuguese. I found it a difficult habit to break especially when trying to speed up my speech. Well, I wasn't seriously dedicated to studying the language either. Only experimenting on what to learn after Mandarin.
gangstapranksta French and Italian share 89% of common lexicon. Spanish and Italian share 82% of common lexicon. But French among the Roman languages has a unique pronunciation.
Andrew De Haro. All the romance languages have Celtic and Germanic influences. After the fall of Rome. Germans made up the poltical elite of spain, Gaul amd Italy. Romans were only in charge of the Catholic Church were it's Pope was appointed by a Greek speaking emperor in Constantinople. Example. Like French. Portuguese is very Nasal. Why? Because Celtic that live in Western Spain. Greeks colonized Spain and Italy. Therefore kept plenty of greek phonetics when speaking Latin. Spanisb word for war is Guerra which is a German word vs Latin bellus. French has more Latin words than Spanish. Especially since Spanish is influenced by Arabic.
I'm Italian and I studied French in middle school. It isn't very easy for most Italians if compared to Spanish (which I never studied, but at least sounds way easier), but some dialects of the north-west are very similar or can help in learning French.
Excellent explanation. I think that not even studying a language degree in my country would have learned the things that I have learned with your videos. I love all the Romance languages, they are the most beautiful, without a doubt, there are Regards my friend From Colombia
I’m French and when I used to be a student, I was learning Spanish for years, then I took Italian. The problem is that I had a real struggle with Italian because I was mixing it up with Spanish, while having bits of French into there. It was so difficult mixing them up that I had to stop learning Italian.
I'm french and i think italian is funny because many common words look to very formal or old-fashioned french words. For example : Vergogna ----> vergogne (shame) Genitori ----> géniteurs (parents) Lavoro ----> labeur (work) Goloso ----> goulu (greedy) I love this language so much 😊
Is it just me or is Italian the best sounding of the Romance languages? It's much easier for me to speak. Even more so than Spanish which is so widespread where I live in USA.
Maybe it's because of the sounds. French and Spanish have few "particular" phonetic expressions compared to Italian that is quite clear and natural to pronunce and also includes so many intonations (I think). That's why most actors say Italian is the best language to dub movies. All of them have a wide grammar and native English speakers can find it quite difficult to learn. Just think about the tenses and the verbal entries. The one you like the most is the one that sound the best :-)
Italian is a more complicated language to learn . We only use the verb haber to describe something in the past he visto, he ido, in Italian it would be ho visto and sono andato with the verb essere so you gotta memorize which verbs use avere or essere in Spanish we only use one . Also to describe possession we only use mi , mi bicicleta , mi abuelo in Italian they have mia bicicleta and mío nono , it’s just more Stuff to memeorize . I think Americans get more excited about italain though because Spanish is so common in the us that it’s basically as big a deal as hearing English
Thats subjective opinion, which you are allowed to feel that way. But i love the way french sounds, well i like all the romance languages. I prefer Brasilian portuguese over european though.
I am an Italian guy living near the French border and I think that French is easier than Italian: no twisty R pronounciation (my friends fool me because I can't say that) , no random plural forms (or at least many less), it shares several words with my dialect (with a slightly different accent)
But, Skarux, your native language is probably not "an Italian dialect" but an Occitan one: Provenzal and Arpitan (both Occitan dialects) extend beyond the Alps into what is now Italy. They are not French anyhow but closer to Catalan in fact but they do share some traits with French.
Actually I think that the easiest language to learn for french people(It's also my native language) is esperanto, but It's probably the easiest for everyone xD And if french is easier than italian, I don't imagine how italian would be hard :p
actually there are even more relations, like the verb "oublier" isn't indeed similar to "dimenticare" but it's similar to "obliare", a very uncommon and old fashioned word wich means, in fact, to forget.
yes, "demenza" is precisely when you loose your mind, stop reasoning and start forgetting things, usually due to age in which case is referred to as "demenza senile". it all comes from the latin "mens" that means "mind".
You are doing great videos Paul. Thank you for those very good explanations. I am native speaker of French and I understand quite a lot of Italian probably thanks to the French language but also because I speak fluently Spanish.
I'm studying Italian and am getting near intermediate level. I want to learn French next. Do you think it will be easy as a English speaker to to learn French since we're used to the silent letters in words? I can already tell knowing Italian will help a lot.
It will take some work to get the phonology down. I recommend you try the FSI French phonology course (it's public domain) because it helps make the pronunciation fairly intuitive. It won't give you a native accent, but you'll know when to use a nasal sound, when letters are silent, etc.
+EvanesEmperor Yeah, I think that it's hard to learn French after learning another romance language and vice-versa because they're spelled very similarly but are pronounced completely differently. I assure you, though, that although French has a really bad reputation for being impossible to pronounce, you just need to practice to learn the pronunciation rules.
I did the opposite, moving from French to Italian, and while I found it to be extremely challenging at first, at times literally making my head hurt, it got much easier after a lot of focused study. Now I find I have the opposite problem, of having to push down my Italian and do mental gymnastics to hold a conversation in French... all aboard the polyglot train!
I started learning French a couple of months ago. I’m still very much a beginner. However I was watching a TH-cam video of someone’s Italian language progress and when they were speaking Italian I could actually understand some of the context. The words are actually very similar even for a beginner to see. The subtitles definitely helped me to make the connection from my French knowledge to Italian. But I thought that was pretty cool.
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@Mattia Cola you forgot to mention that spanish, french, portugese and romanian are also "vulgar itself evolved over time."
Wow one reply
Wait...
Hey Paul, I’d like to give you an advice for double consonant sound in Italian: you have to make it stronger, otherwise the pronunciation can be misleading in some words written the same but with a double consonant, e.g. “fatto” (done) and “fato” (fate). 💪🏼
I’m an Italian mother tongue and I can read French signs or something else and get the meaning without struggling too much, but when it comes to listen to French… Not a word. 😂
Hello. Thanks for this great video. I am studying french for 2 years. I am now around A2 level. I want to learn also italian. If i continue with 2 languages together , this will be bad idea?
As an Italian, I reckon that French has a lot of words that are similar to very old, archaic Italian words For example, "I remember" in French is "Je me suviens", in Italian it is "Mi ricordo" but in poems and up until the 1800s or something, it was also "Mi sovviene".
Im Spanish it’s me recuerdo ;p
sOuviens*
We can also say in french "je me rappelle" in order to say "I remember", which already is technically closer to both italian and english versions, actually...but french just have much more complex variety in its vocabulary, in fact.
"Comprendere" , parola ricercata per "capire".
@@798jeremy Italian has a complex vocabulary as well. 'I remember' can be translated in Italian as "Mi ricordo", "Mi sovviene", "Rammento", "Rimembro" and some other expressions
I am italian, and I can guarantee that if we read a normal french book (not a quantistic theory stuff...) we can understand probably 90 % or even more.
While we speak, we don't usually understand each other, as the sounds are different.
But it's good to know that we are all sons of Rome.
True. BUT if you have a rough idea of each language phonetically, you will be just fine. Speaking slowly to italians we were able to have conversations easier than i thought, and vice versa.
Rickusty I’m French, and I completely agree. Reading is quite easy but I can’t understand spoken Italian unless they speak very clearly and slowly
same with Portuguese, we can understand almost everything in written Spanish and sometimes we can understand a little bit of written Italian but nothing of french
Morning gents! I don’t want to be rude but, hell no, here in Normandy we are certainly NOT sons of Rome...!!!
PS: I've been a couple of times in Italy though and it’s a wonderful country for most of what I‘ve seen!
Ludwig JACQUIER Were not sons of Rome but we are more or less grandsons, and Italians are our cousins (grandsons because we also come from the Gaulois, Franks, and Danish (or Norwegians, I forget if it was east or west Normans who gave us our name)
As a spanish speaker (i'm from Colombia) i consider that it´s easier to learn Italian instead of French, more than anything for the pronunciation, i´m learning Italian and it´s a very beautyful language, i hope in future i can learn and speak french. Greetings for all. I'll be in Italy in a couple of years. God bless you.
Es que los franceses no pronuncian todas las letras
Benvenuto
Don't give up, french is a more useful language
Ciao amico:)
Thank you
Written Italian is very easy to understand for French speakers.
When it comes to SPOKEN Italian, well...thet's a different matter X)
As italian I totally agree in the opposite sense. Writing french is simple, speaking French no for the pronounce 😫💔
@Jack O'Jack You obviously lack French vocabulary to state that (no offense ;) ) Actually it's the other way around, English is a very poor language, there is a lot lot less words than in French, therefore French language is a lot richer and things can be a lot more precise when you explain, describe, relate things etc...
@Jack O'Jack I like the way as an English speaker who has only ever taken one French class (one hour) I could understand what you just wrote. (Not word for word but I got the meaning)
@@CartmanVlaams disagree. english has many more commonly used words than french, italian, etc etc. that is a reason why it is so well suited for poetry. one needs to learn more words to speak english fluently
@Jack O'Jack probably because in English you could have a germanic word and a latin/French word with the same meaning.
It is true in Italian we use the "Lei" in formal situations but, especially in the south, there are still a lot of people using the "Voi". Exactly like in French :)
Giorgio Fabietti
And what's about "loro"?
C'è 1 signoro -> Lei
Ci sono 2 signori -> voi o loro? o
*****
Singular
Formal way: Lei parla Italiano or Voi parlate Italiano (the first one is more correct)
Informal way: Tu parli Italiano
About the plural i didn't quite got the question, those 2 phrases you wrote after "Ci sono 2 signori" mean 2 different things
Voi parlate Italiano = you (plural) speak Italian Loro parlano italiano = they speak Italian
Maybe i got it. If the question was about a formal way in plural it's "Loro" but is seen as too much formal and basically no one use it, except maybe in really high class restaurants, beetwen nobilty and sometimes in bureaucracy
Oh yeah, the letter L should be capitalized! Loro, not loro :-)
Yes, the question was about the formal plural.
So, the formal way in plural is the same as the informal one: voi?
The only difference is that the capital V is used?
Voi = Lei in plural
voi = tu in plural
Comfirm or correct me :-)
No, I think i didn't explain it good enough, i'll try to make it more schematic :)
Example: How are you? (Singular)
Formal singular: Lei come sta? or Voi come state?
Informal singular: tu come stai?
Example: How are you? (Plural)
Formal plural: Loro come stanno?
Informal plural: voi come state?
And as i said the formal plural isn't used by almost anyone.
Let me know if something is not clear :)
In france we say that if you wanna speak italian just put a 'i' or an 'a' at the end of words
Filthy Frank FR in Spain we say the same lol
And in Italy we say that to speak french you have to make refined sounds pretending to say actual words 😂
And in Italy we also say that to speak Spanish you just have to put an “s” at the end of every word
martina stylinson Yup.
E ci rimasto quando ho scoperto che in realtà molti spagnoli manco le dicono le s.
Noi vi imitiamo solo con l'accento finale tronco
A lot of French words that don't look similar to their modern Italian counterparts are in fact similar to OLD ITALIAN words, and by old I mean language that was in use until the end of the XIX century. For example, as you pointed out, the verb "to forget" in Italian is "dimenticare" and in French it's "oublier." BUT...the old Italian verb, often used in poetry, is "obliare", which is very similar to the French "oublier." Not to mention that the word "oblio" (oblivion) is still in use in modern Italian. Also, from the same example you made, "magazzino" (similar to the French "magasin") was often used in old Italian in place of "negozio" (shop/store.) You can see a remnant of that in the Italian word "grandi magazzini" (department store.) In modern Italian, "magazzino" means warehouse.
in portuguese you could use "negócio" for "store", quite similar to "negozio" in Italian.
Since they are the descendants of Vulgar Latin, I ,a Latin learner, can point out that the word for shop in Latin is "negotium" and that the french word "oublier" is from Latin "obliviscor" while Italian word "dimenticare" is from Latin "demento".
I have never heard of that. Could you provide an example sentence?
For your "magasin" example, it's not a word from Latin but from Arabic, the similarity between the language being here more a coincidence (or the influence of the Arabic world at the time when it came to trading). en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magasin
In the middle ages, Southern Italian coasts were constantly raided by pirates from north Africa. There's a ton of Arabic influence in the Italian language and culture, but particularly in the south. Most words with Arabic roots got to France by way of Italy. At least in the pre-colonial era.
Italian and French culture was always seem like two sides of one coin for me. Love them both. I’m B1 French speaker and I look forward to start Italian as well
Moi aussi, quand j'ai fini avec la langue française. Je vais commencer apprendre l'italien parceque ce facile et très proche de la langue française.
French 🇨🇵 is cold ❄
Italian 🇮🇹 is hot 🔥
I'm italian and I really do love Franch 😍
@スパイダーマン I just don't know. Hate Is a silly thing for me
@@billydanaunia9865 We love U too Veronica.
Italian is by far the easiest foreign language to learn for French people.
But it remains a foreign language, and you do have to learn the basics.
Only few French people actually speak fluent Italian.
In France the learning of Latin languages should be pushed. English is taking over the world. Sad such beautiful languages are not being learnt more
@@lukethomeret-duran5273 english is the de facto international language, deal with it.
@@Kanal7Indonesia no. Go fuck urself pandejo. Try not to use Google translate. French is going to die because the french people are lazy and can't create or use their own words for things. Soon french will degenerate into messy English. I'm excited for spanish's future. It isn't taking alot of English words, make their own words for new things and is getting globalised by music, film industry and social media
@Thracian
One of the reasons English is so common is how easy it is to learn. The pronunciation is awful but the rest is fairly easy. No gender, no cases, few conjugations, etc.
And especially with the internet, pronunciation is less important than reading/writing (unless you live in an English-speaking country).
For speakers of Romance languages, Spanish is easier to learn. But for almost everyone else, English is easier, and that’s why it will remain the international language imo.
Dutch is way easier that English, and there are less tenses. In English, they are numerous, and should not be used incorrectly. The reason why English is widespread is 1. England was the first colonial power. 2. It has many Latin words, actually one third of its words are French, while France was the second colonial power. Then comes Spain, Portugal, etc.
As to Italian, it is spoken only in Italy and in a part of Switzerland. Italy wasn't a colonial power, since it exists (has be unified) only for only a little more than a century.
I am French and unfortunatly never learned Italian. But living close to the italian border, i was able to understand Italian when they speak slowly... When you speak Occitan language, it's much more easier I should say...
Vivez-vous à Menton ?
Spit-Shine Tommy that means “Vives tu en...” or “you live in....” right?
@@marcosmedina6987 yes but it's better to say "Habitez-vous?" Instead 🙂
C'est facile. E' facile.
I speak catalán and l should say that is in between because catalán is very close to occitane,l think occitane is the key,especially Eastern occitane,provençal
When I was an American college student in Italy, I was almost fluent in Italian. I had studied French for only about six months in high school. So, when I was in France, I usually just converted the Italian word into French by just changing the pronunciation. For example, I would just change treno (train in Italian) to train (train in French). This can sometimes lead to disastrous misunderstandings, though. Let me give you one example: toilet paper in Italian is carta igienica. I was staying in a very inexpensive hotel in Paris that had a common bathroom for each floor. When I arrived, there was some toilet paper on a shelf in my small room. During the course of my stay, I used it all. When I needed more, I approached the French hotelkeeper and asked for more "carte" (changing the pronunciation from the Italian "carta" to the French "carte") hygienique (changing the pronunciation from the Italian "igienica"). Well, I got the igienica to hygienique right, but no so the "carta" to "carte." Turns out, of course, that I was asking for a hygienic map. From that hysterical experience of misunderstanding, I learned that among the Romance languages, what appears to be a cognate may actually have a slightly different meaning like carta and carte.
Howard
French train is from English train, itself from Old French train (cf. French trainer), the Italian word is from French or directly from English.
I just ate lots of pasta with tomato sauce it helps. For Canadian I just ate lots of croissants and seduced a bride and the groom.
The usual translation of toilet paper in French is papier toilette.
then the hotelkeeper hand you a very clean map, the hygienique give of f the clean part nah scherzo ma in spagno would undertand you ask for a "carta higienica" what means a "hygenic letter".
If you order a carta higiénica in Spanish, you will get a hygienic letter. In Spanish, toilet paper is papel higiénico.
Latin brothers 🇮🇹🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇷🇴❤️❤️❤️
Without forgeting the "Little" Brother (Non-Official, but still a real language) : Corsican, Sardignian, Sicilian, Catalan, Occitan, Provençal, etc...
Where are Moldova, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Vatican City, Wallonia, Italian & French Switzerland, French Luxembourg, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Sao Tome Principe, Angola, Mozambique, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Djibouti, Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Vanuatu, East Timor?
Don't forget the creole brothers. Chabacano, Chamorro, Palenquero etc.
You forget romaninan
Yes but not for all, for example as italian speaker i can’t understand well portuguese speaker, i suppose it’s for pronunciation or something like that.
I speak Spanish , and I learned Italian very quickly. But French is kicking my butt. I think it's easier for French speakers to learn Spanish or Italian than the opposite.
El problema está en la pronunciación. Los franceses no pronuncian las palabras como las escriben, los sonidos nasales están presentes en mucho de su vocabulario y, además, diferentes palabras pueden escribirse de manera diferente pero suenan exactamente igual. Estudié francés por 4 años, y a pesar de que consigo comunicarme a un buen nivel, aún cometo errores. jaja
Once you know the rules for the French pronunciation, everything is easy.
I am French native speaker, I was able to understand everything you said without translating :)
I love romance languages, it feels like a connexion to me...instead of learning English in schools we should *all* learn the most spoken romance languages! Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish etc
*Vive le Québec Libre*
John Servellon I feel like if you are Spanish and if you speak Spanish and if you learned Italian. Then, French shouldn't be hard.
Je suis mexicaine mais j'étudie le français, et c'est très facile pour moi apprendre l'italien en même temps! Ils sont très similaire.
Poni de Cthulhu
Chapeau! Tu te débrouille bien ;)
Juste pour t'aider, tu as fait 2 petites erreurs :
* d'apprendre
* similaires (celle la est minime)
Je te félicite 👍
Merci beaucoup!:D
Poni de Cthulhu
De rien ;)
Wilbur Walsh
C'est youtube mec, pas un site de rencontre ;)
bien dis m'a couille
Hey man, i just came here to say that you deserve alot more views and subs than what you have right now. Your content is rich and is very entertaining. You seem to work on investing alot of time on researching the topics. You give reviews with an unbiased opinion. Thank you so much for creating this chanel and uploading these videos. Cheers from Saudi Arabia :)
Thank you, I appreciate that! :)
I’m italian and i studied french
Once i went to france with my parents who didn’t know french, but in this case there is a great tecnique you can use
“Frenchlize” all the word you don’t know and 90% of the times you get it
We do the same to "speak" italian 😁
i had an Italian girl come to France for an exchange between our schools. I was the only one talking italian, but my mom used to understand her with what she remembered from latin classes :')
Im a Spanish speaker. Im just reading comments out of curiosity
@@roninjolin7687 I mean both Italian and French are related to Spanish.Italian in terms of pronunciation,French in terms of vocabulary.Must be because France is right next to Spain.
right word is "Francoize"
I am French and I have studied Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. There is no doubt in my mind that Italian is the easiest language to learn for a French speaker. The use of verb tenses is the same in both languages (except to express a future in the past: we use a conditional present in French and a past conditional in Italian). I've also noticed that the use of prepositions (always a problem when learning a language because always very idiomatic) is much more similar in French and Italian than in Spanish (Je suis à Rome, Sono a Roma, Estoy IN Roma). The only reason people tend to think Spanish and Italian are closer than French and Italian is the phonology. It cannot be disputed that Italian and Spanish pronunciation and accentuation are very similar.
Do you think it's easier for Portuguese speakers to pronounce French better than Italian and Spanish speakers?
There is one French sound that definitely is a problem for an Italian or Spanish speaking French: the nasal vowels (on, in, un, en). That sound doesn't exist in Italian and Spanish, but it does exist in Portuguese (ã, õ,...). Beside the nasal vowels (very frequent in Portuguese and French), I don't think Portuguese have an advantage over the Italian and Spanish to pronounce French.
@JL D: the real problem is not the nasalization, but the loss of phonemes, very extreme in French. They even have a especial character "^" for such a loss in written form, for example "Rhône" (from Rodanus, still Rodano in both Spanish and Italian). Paul suggested it's Celtic substrate influence but to me it's quite Germanic in fact, also the R sound is just like the German one.
Luis Aldamiz
Quite right
French is a roman language spoken by german tribes .
After reading those comments i'll say French is very very difficult to write :rules are illogical grammatical is hard.
As french and italian from Venice i can tell that italian is not difficult reading but speaking because of the accent:if you don't manage, it means nothing.
French is a written language meanwhile italian is a spoken language.
Tutte due lingue sono belle mais celle que je prefere c'est l'allemand.
Because French was codified by the elite (academy) and cultivated as a language of prestige (language of diplomacy, nobility) which excluded non-nobles and non-clergy people from speaking it since it required education. This is not the case of many other european languages and explains the unnecessary complicated grammar and orthography rules in french (designed by academicians). Most French people were speaking their local dialects (patois) and occasionally Latin until the 1880's and the emergence of the compulsory republican schools. The majority of French people could not read or write the french language until the late 19th century, cause it required being able to afford a school (which were mostly in cities aside from being expensive)
This is an updated version of this video which fixes a number of mistakes and clarifies a couple of things. The original video will soon be unlisted, but it will remain online so that you can continue responding to comments left on the original video. It is accessible here: th-cam.com/video/pF6sHB_wTAw/w-d-xo.html
+John Croway That would be great!! :)
I can't find the differences/updates between both videos, haha
@Guled Hussain, he talks quite a bit about that in the Scandinavian languages video
Now do Spanish and Italian.
no,italian and romanian
Oublier in french (forget) also has a connection to italian, we say "oblio" (noun) but it's a litterature word, not used everyday. Also "magazin" (store): we say magazzino to tell a place where you store a lot of stuff. Etc... So the words actually are cousins
"Négoce" is a French word that can mean the same, but rarely used nowadays except to refer to commodity trading (e.g. "négoce de pierres précieuses")
@@nictamer Interestingly, "negozio" with the same meaning (a verb meaning "commerce") IS archaic/literary Italian. It's just not used anymore.
magazzino is more used in south italy, no?
i know the verb "to buy" in sicilian is "accatare" , similar to a dialect in North France "accater" or in metropolitan french "acheter".
Did the verb "accatare" exists in Italian?
@@ianou1000 nope, but it exist in a lot of dialects. Ex "accattâ" in genoese.
"Magazine" significa rivista, (giornale) non magazzino.
You're super right! I'm a native French speaker, and this helps me so much in formulating sentences in Italian. I think in French and use almost the same sentence structure, et voila! I formulate a 'complex' Italian sentence correctly and people hardly believe it. So yes, these two languages are thankfully so close, allowing a native to learn the other language easily. However, I do believe that going from French to Italian is easier than the other way round! Good luck everyone in learning a second (or more) language! And thank you @Langfocus for your great videos :)
Vous avez raison. À mon avis, c'est difficile de comprendre l'italien parlé, mais c'est plus facile de comprendre quelques phrases. L'anglais est ma langue maternelle, mais quand je lis en une langue romance, je pense en français. Donc, je compare cette langue romance avec le français, même si c'est beaucoup plus loin de la racine latine.
i remember it was quite easy learn french at school for italian
I've always wondered why French and Italian music sound almost similar too but thanks for teaching us this, I do want to learn to speak both languages---I love both the French and Italian life! 🇫🇷🇮🇹
I did know in music it was similar
música italiana y francesa?? nada que ver!!
Two of the most beautiful languages !
Oh thank you 🙏
The Italian is better
@@antoniomariani7297 and that, my sir, is a true fact
@My name is Earth 😅😅😂😂
@My name is Earth it looks like german that got partly dipped in latin than just roll it in french and top it of with spanish and Portuguese.
Je suis italien et je comprends bien le français meme si la prononciation au Nord de la France est trop "celtique". Le pronom formal italien est usuellement "Lei" (Vous en français) mais "Voi" est utilisé aussi particulierement dans le Sud.
Le verbe oublier en italien c'est usuellement dimenticare mais aussi "obliare". Beacoup de mots français ont un mot pareil en italien mais poetique
Par exemple: "tot" presto en italien mais aussi "tosto" en italien poetique.
Souvent, spesso en italian mais aussi "sovente" en italien poetique.
Donc, quindi en italien mais aussi "dunque" en italien poetique.
"vergogna" se traduit habituellement en français par "honte" qui est le terme le plus utilisé à l'oral.
Mais on peut trouver aussi dans la littérature le terme "vergogne". Un des nombreux exemples de lien entre le vieux français et l'italien actuel. Il y a beaucoup de similitudes. Siamo cugini
Nonostante = Nonobstant (mais c'est assez soutenu)
Qui vivra vedra = Qui vivra verra (ressemblance frappante)
Malato = Malade
È = Est (même prononciation orale, cependant)
Bisogno = Besoin
Spagnole = Espagnol
Alcuno = Aucun (signification différente, sauf dans certains rares cas, et altération du "l" vers "u" par spirantisation)
À propos d'Espagnol, l'expression "à partir de" se dit "a partir de"... Entre latinistes, des expressions se sont conservées. Comme "gravissime", où le suffixe -issime donne -issimo en Italien. Il y en a même qui sont apparues plus tard sous l'influence de cette langue: _à priori_, _a fortiori_, etc. Mais concernant "avec", ça vient du latin vulgaire "Ad hoppo huec", déformé en "avuec" puis "avec". Une idiosyncrasie assez rare.
Tout comme le "pas" qui indique la négation, en réalité cette particule vient de la phrase "Je ne marche pas", où "pas" signifie réellement "ne marcher aucun pas". À l'époque, le français utilisait des tournures plus proches du Latin. Tout comme on disait "Je ne vois personne" (It: "Io non vedo nessuno"), "Je ne vois rien" ("Io non vedo niente"), "Je ne bois goutte". "Pas" est devenu une particule indépendante et "Ne" a MÊME tendance à disparaître dans certains cas. À l'oral, c'est tout-à-fait acceptable de dire "Je vois pas", mais il est impossible de dire "Pas bouger", sauf pour être très ferme et très impératif. On dit "Ne pas bouger" ou "Ne rien faire". Le "ne" reste indispensable. C'est le cycle de Jespersen : Apparition du "ne" (qui provient de "no"), apparition du "pas" (qui vient du nom commun. En Italien ça se dit "un passo"), puis disparition du "ne". Voilà voilà. :)
c'est Alberto Sordi qui m' a fait comprendre le sens du mot vergogne le terme est toujours sans vergogne sans scrupules sans complexe sans honte , je ne parle pas italien mais je le comprend quand il est parlé par un piémontais ou un milanais voire un génois et puis une partie du vocabulaire ostrogoth et lombards est entré dans les deux langues et les mêmes mots sont devenus communs aux deux langues il n' y avait pas le net sous l' empire romain ce sont les distances qui font les différences ; mais déjà Jules César parlait le Gaulois parfaitement le latin a dû piocher dans le vocabulaire cisalpin le gaulois faisait partie des langues italiques
Le gaulois (plutôt les dialectes gaulois) était une langue celtique. Comme le sont le breton , le gaélique, le gallois. Le gaulois était aussi parlé an nord de l'Italie actuelle c'est à dire en gaule cisalpine (par opposition à la gaule transalpine). Mais je ne sais pas si l'on peut dire qu'il faisait parie des langues italiques. Peut-être en effet, car c'était aussi une langue qui était parlée en Italie. En France, il y a beaucoup de lieux dont le nom est d'origine celtique.
pour les noms de lieux toute les villes se terminant en Y et il y a Boulogne et Bologne qui ont la même origine Jules césar a appris le gaulois en moins de 3 mois et il n'avait pas de dictionnaire le gaulois et le latin devaient déjà être très proche
As a native English-speaker, I can see that knowing *both* French and Spanish would be very helpful in learning Italian, because so often where Italian is different from French, it is similar to Spanish, and where it is different from Spanish it is similar to French.
Uno studioso ha detto che l'italiano ed il francese sono la stessa lingua ma pronunciata in modo diverso. Per noi italiani è molto facile imparare il francese, soprattutto per chi è di alcune regioni del Nord Italia abitate un tempo dai Galli Cisalpini e dove si parlano i dialetti gallo-italici (Lombardia, Emilia Romagna) oltre al Piemonte dove il dialetto locale è molto francesizzato ("madama" per "signora"; "mesò" per casa).
Molte parole francesi diverse dall'italiano sono di origine gallica o derivate dal latino dialettale delle Gallie ("maison" viene dal latino "mansio", che in Gallia sostituiva "domus").
Oltretutto, sia il francese che l'italiano hanno assimilato quasi tutte le parole di origine germanica portate dai Barbari nella stessa forma: "bianco" e "bianco"; "birra" e "bière" oltre ai reciproci scambi successivi, basti pensare ai termini architettonici, militari e musicali
francecampi ahahahahhahahahahshah per me è più semplice imperare il tedesco quindi mi se che e una cavolata assurda
Per la cronaca Enna e provincia hanno anche un dialetto Gallico. dialetti galloitalici di Sicilia, anche detti dialetti altoitaliani della Sicilia o siculo-lombardo.
I comuni dove si è mantenuta la parlata galloitalica sono: Nicosia, Sperlinga, Piazza Armerina e Aidone in provincia di Enna; San Fratello e Novara di Sicilia in provincia di Messina.
Being italian it's very easy to learn french
Sono Italiano. Ma il Francese lo comprendo meglio in Forma Scritta.
@@bigfriend4338 was English easy to learn
@@bigfriend4338 d'accordissimo. Nella forma orale la ritengo una delle lingue più difficili da comprendere
Official Memes Tv Even thought my first language is English and I am learning French I’d say English is very different even though we have French words I would say it can still be difficult.
RaffeToffe non mentire
I'm a French speaker and I did a trip to Europe a couple months ago and before going to Italy I visited countries like Hungary and Croatia. The languages that were spoken in these countries had nothing to do with French at all. So eventually I arrived in Italy and oh boy was it a relief. I could practically understand everything that was written. But as you said, the prononciation is quite different so it was harder to understand the spoken part. Either way, it felt good to be able to understand the signs and menus and all of that, even though I never learned anything about Italian.
All those "silent" end letters and forms in French are artifacts from the past, they were pronounced in ancient spoken French.
French Respelling Project:
Peau -> Po
Faire -> Fēr
Pas -> Pâ
Je suis en train de manjer -> Jë suî ã trã dë mãjē.
Elle voulais qu’il a fasse -> El vùlē qu’īl a fàç.
@H Sh Which part?
And of course the circonflexe accent indicates a missing 's' that once used to be present.
@@golden.lights.twinkle2329 Not only an s, but most of the time. It indicates generally that a letter has been dropped.
@@seid3366 Mais on prononce le s de pas quand il y a un mot suivant qui commence avec une voyelle, et pas juste pour le mot "pas", beaucoup de consonants silencieux sont prononcés quant à la liaison, comme "pas_à pas" ou "c'est_à moi". L'enlever ne fait que créer plus de confusion et à mon avis ça détruit aussi la beauté et élégance de l'orthographe française qui ressemble beaucoup au latin.
Wow Langfocus! I have been familiar with French for years since School days when and where I really enjoyed it! Now, from you Video, I realize that it would be so easy for me and folks like me, to learn Italian! Thanks so much! Also great job on the Arabic Video! Excellent! I have put in a bit of a long comment on that!
I learned French and Latin in school for many years and this is why Italian is very easy for me to learn. I was surprised how similar grammar and vocabulary of both languages are. They are even more similar to each other than Italian and Spanish.
When Mussolini was in charge he strongly encouraged Italians to use "voi" rather than "lei". My grandmother hated everyone who addressed her using "voi", because she hated Mussolini.. but it is true that in some regions, they still use "voi". My father surprisingly used "voi" as kid with his very old professors, thinking that "lei" was not showing enough respect.
In the XIXth century, in Piedmont too, old people used the dialectal corrispondent for "voi" and not "lei", that's an innovation coming from Tuscany.
Wow, this is so interesting.. :)
Chi usa ancora il Voi?. Da me, in Basilicata, solo alcuni anziani.
Daniela sono d’accordo miei nonni per esempio ancora usano Voi ma tutti gli altri usano Lei quando vogliono essere più formale. Anch’io sono dalla Basilicata (però alcuni anziani ancora si chiamano la nostra regione “Lucania”, se hanno 80 anni o più
Galileo Galivoi
As a french speaker, I needed ~4 times less Italian study time to get the same level than in English.
c'est vrai que l'italien s'apprend très facilement pour un français. c'est la langue la plus simple pour moi. peut-être encore plus que l'espagnol, même si j'avais que commencé à apprendre l'espagnol sans poursuivre
I'm French and I live in Italy. It took me about 3 months to learn Italian well enough to speak it fluently, and I agree with everything you say. Some words / syntax rules are a bit weird to me but overall it is very easy to write / speak Italian for a French person once you know it a bit. The pronounciation can be a bit trickier, especially the rolled "r" which I have still no idea how to pronounce even after several years in Italy, and more generally the italian tonic accents (or word stress ?) which are quite difficult to remember because French is a flat language with no tonic accent. Every Italian word has a different rule for the tonic accent and even if I pronounce a word the right way, if I fail at the tonic accent people who are not used to hearing foreigners speak can have trouble understanding. Also, I have never learnt spanish but now that I know Italian I can a rough idea of what is said in a spanish conversation even if I can't speak.
I'm a native French speaker. I learned to speak Italian without any major difficulties (the most difficult part was the subjunctive). I noticed that many Italian words are very similar to "rare" French words (almost archaic). For instance, you chose the word "negozio" (shop). Like you said, the translation in French is "magasin", so it seems that a French speaker can't understand this word.... but there is a "'rare" French word that can help us to understand the meaning of this word : "négoce" (which means "trade, trading, business"). So, it is not that difficult to understand that "negozio" means "magasin".
Is "négocier" still used as a verb in french?
Oh yes, it's still used as a verb. I can't say that I use it everyday (because I'm not a business man), but it's definitely not a "rare" verb.
EuropaPhoenix in my language shop is 'magazi'
The corresponding words in English are "negotiate", " negotiation"-presumably the Italian usage relates to when in the past you bartered ,haggled or 'negotiated' your purchases or sales in a marketplace.
Magasin it seems, originated in Arabic.Originally meaning storehouse it came into English as "magazine"-a place of storage for military ammunition,shells,gunpowder etc.In more modern parlance it usually relates to the detachable chamber that stores the bullets in an automatic firearm.Use of the word " magazine" for a printed periodical possibly relates to the thing being a "storehouse" of information or a storehouse of different topics.
and anyway magazzino means store, intended not like a shop but where we store things, but can be for commercial or for private use.
89% lexical similarity with Italian vs. 75% with Spanish, proves my point: people often say “French and Spanish are so close,” but the truth is French and Italian are much closer!
They are my two favorite countries with the two most delicious cultures, architecture, art, cuisines, wine (French wines are vastly superior and more overpriced!), and young/youthful men. They are the “langues d’amour”/“lingue d’amore”! ❤️❤️
at most it says that Italian and Spanish, honestly I've never heard anyone say that French and Spanish are very similar
People actually ask "Is Despacito French?"
I have Italian lessons right now and find it quite easy to learn as a French speaker. What I do find hard though is the similarities Italian also has with Spanish: reading is especially hard when you're used to Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation!! Thanks for your channel, I always enjoy watching your videos!
yup, we hate each other but at the same time deep in our hearts we know that we love each other! see u french cousins!
Wtf 53 years ago?
@@thesoniccdproject yup, u have been trolled brother
Hey yo broooo 53 years ago 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@josephgachuho5034 you have been trolled my fried
When I visited Milano a couple of years ago, I was so surprised to discover that Italians think that French people hate them. Where did you get that ridiculous idea? Ask anyone in France what they think about Italy and Italians, and 9 times out of 10 you'll have nothing but compliments and admiration. The worst thing you'll hear is "ce sont des dragueurs" (they're always chasing after girls). We don't hate each other. The hatred comes from you guys only.
2:59 oubliez sounds like oblio in italian. It has a meaning of forgetting something deeply. In italian we use negozio but we have "magazzino" (magasin in french). A native speaker could see more and more similarities.
And in French we use "magasin" but we also have "négoce" which means "business".
***** Cool. This does not surprise me. Indeed, for italian the French are "cousins beyond the Alps". :)
Also notice that in old Italian was used "obliare" as a synonym for "dimenticare" (to forget)
A little used English word, (taken from French hundreds of years ago) oubliette- a dungeon a person was thrown into, to be forgotten about,entrance via the roof.
When I was learning Italian at university, I took my notes in French (I'm a native English speaker). I'm currently learning Spanish and trying to use both French & Italian to nail down Spanish. They help but of course there are differences.
Great video! I'm French, studying translation both from fr to ita and from ita to fr and I can tell you it is way harder than it seems. Latin languages and especially italian and french seem very similar at first but they have many different little details that make it harder to translate correctly. Plus you are tempted to use a similar word while it is not always the exact equivalent. Being french I find it easier to translate from english for example because you are allowed to, and you often should change the sentence's structure while with italian you have to keep it very close except for some particular moments and thus you never really know if you'd better stay very close or make something a bit more french but that risks being a bit too far from the text...
If we agreed with our lovely Italian neighbours to speak really slow, we would understand each other perfectly. But slow-speaking Italians are most likely mythical creatures.
D'ailleurs, c'est la meme chose avec les Français qui parlens toujours trop vite.
@@a._.a5692 Just imagine the possibilities. We could dunk on every other nations' cuisine all day long.
Can u speak slowly?
ok.
Ero in treno di risponderti a cavallo di quattro venti capelli di madre al mare ma non so scrivere come Craxi
Mon père dit que les français parlent extrêmement vite et que parfois les mots sont "flous", qu'ils sont beaucoup moins "clairs" qu'en italien du moins (et de mon point de vue, même si je maitrise le français aussi bien que l'italien, je concorde). ça fait un moment qu'il est en France et il ne s'y est toujours pas habitué. Il a encore beaucoup de difficultés à comprendre les français ^^'
My family is partly of Italian origin and partly of French origin, as a result I learned both languages as a child and I am almost perfectly bilingual.
I want to thank Paul because I never thought about the differences he pointed out.
Paaaaul, I'm still dreaming of that "how similar are italian and portuguese"!!!
You'll have many views, lots of Brazilian with Italian heritage!! come oooon
Brazilian portuguese has nothing to do with italian.
@@marciojoserodrigues458 See the difference with European portuguese, you'll notice its
I’m from Brazil and I speak italian.
The words are close each other but the verb tenses in Italian are so difficult to understand.
Ex:
Eu fiz mal a alguém (pt-Br)
Io ho fatto male a qualcuno (it)
Eu me fiz mal (pt-Br)
Mi sono fatto male (it)
Past tense verbs are the worst
@@erikscaranello4568 Portuguese - French (je me suis fait mal) (rua / rue ... calle, strada, carriera)
Marcio Jose Rodrigues what? Of course the two are related
I am French, have never learned Italian, and always have understood the language, both oral and written very easily. I once spent 1 month in Rome, and I could speak Italian quite fluently. I am quite surprised at what I read here. Too me, Italian and French are mutually intelligible, all you need is to listen carefully, that's all.
You could speak Italian fluently in 1 month? Sorry, that is impossible!
You are probably one of those gifted geniuses with an excellent ear for languages. You should also try Spanish and Portuguese and other Romance languages, they will be probably easy for you as well.
@@golden.lights.twinkle2329 that isn't impossible, you're thinking as an american perspective mate, remind you french and italian are mutually intelligible because they're from the same linguistic family
@@golden.lights.twinkle2329 he said quite fluently
Which means that he could speak and understand but not perfectly
les italiens ne comprennent pas aussi aisément les français
I'm french, and I never learn italian, but when I went to Italy for holidays, I was surprised about how much I can understand written italian. But you're right, spoken italian is pretty inintelligible for us !
As a native French speaker who is learning Italian, this is very useful! I feel like Italian is the closest language to French, closer than Spanish, Portugese or Romanian. When I was just starting to learn Italian, when I was travelling to Italy, I was just "italianizing" my French (adding "a", "o", "e" and "i" at the end of words, shifting the accent to the second to last syllabe, etc), and locals would understand me 😁
I think the same. it has been much easier to me to learn french rather than Spanish. I'm Italian
@@ladycarlotta0 ma quando mai? la lingua più vicina all'italiano è lo spagnolo!!
je parle les trois langues (italien; espagnol et français) et en tant qu'italien je peux dire que les langues plus proches sont italien et espagnol, qui peuvent même former des phrases intières pratiquement identiques, ce qui est impossible avec le français
@@rickygonzan4703 è il francese
It depends where in Italy you go. Usually in the North they tend to use vocabulary and grammar in a way that's closer to French (except in the Veneto region in which they sound more "Spanish" but the influence on the pronunciation is really Greek). In the South (except for Naples) they tend to use vocabulary and grammar closer to Spanish. Also pronunciation could have French influences in Piedmont and Emilia and they understand French better than other Italians. As rule of the thumb, written Italian and generally its grammar appears to be closer to French, but spoken Italian is closer to Spanish. Has to be said that Italian is changing: up to the 70s standard Italian was easier for French people that it is now, because standard Italian is now getting more influenced by southern dialects.
As a native Spanish speaker, I think Italian is easier (less complicated) to learn than French.
Pronunciation wise Spaniards have an easier time but when you look at the writing Italian resembles French.
I agree that Spanish that is more similar to Italian than French is. A friend in Mexico City showed me his Spanish/Italian dictionary, and the vocabulary was almost identical - more so than French, I think. I learned both Spanish and French before learning Italian, and Spanish was much more helpful.
Lars Theoderik Verbally yes but it seems a lot more vocabulary came from Italian into French. Like comer for eating is very different from mangiare/manger?
I'd say writing wise Portuguese is very close to Castillian but pronunciation wise forget about it.
I think it's useless for spanish learn italian or for italians learn spanish we can understand each other speaking two different languages.
15-20% of _italian_ words are directly Germanic, post-roman empire (Goths, Lombards, Normans,..).
Example: "bicchiere" (drinking glass) comes from the germanic for "beak", as in "beaker" in English, and "Becher" in German. "Verre" in French comes from the Latin for the vitreous substance 'glass', as it still is in the italian 'vetro'.
Not to mention the constant mutual influence between the two language areas: langue d'oc, the troubadours, Petrarch, provençal, the Renaissance, Francois Ier, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine de Medici and Mazarin, the house of Savoy, Nice, banking terminology, military, architecture, art, trade, textiles, agriculture and cuisine...
I think it would be fair to say that Italy exported terminology until the 1400s, when it lost it's economic and commercial hegemony, from then on Italy and the rest of Europe imported French terms.
Im lebanese, and we learn french and english at school, then when i wanted to learn italian like a year ago it was a very easy language for me, and now i can speak both french and italian fluently, they are really similar in writing a little bit more different in speaking but however i learned them both💙
as a spanish and french speaker who is learning italian, what i love is that italian grammar and vocabulary will resemble one of the two, in almost every case imaginable
My god, what an interesting video! Well done man!
Paul, I've seen a number of your videos already. Lots of interesting knowledge, good pace (not a second lost), always straight to the point. JUST GREAT!
French is so beautiful, I just love the sound of french!
*bonjour*
_oui oui je parle baguette_
oui oui baguette omelette du fromage, tartiflette, raclette,
I dont like it
@@arthurhistder1156 It used to be the most beautiful language back before the fifties when most places at least outside Paris had the rolled r's instead of the modern weird French r.
Italian and French are the most similar than any other Latin language. Lexicon similarities are 90% or higher also the two most beautiful languages in the world. 🇮🇹🇫🇷
Alfred Vinciguerra Spanish and Italian are way more similar
Yes, but not 100% true. While French and Italian do share the most lexical similarity than compared to other major Romance languages, the cognates are not always so obvious. Take for instance the following words:
Water (English) = Eau (French) = Acqua (Italian) = Aqua (Latin)
Goat (English) = Chèvre (French) = Capra (Italian) = Capra (Latin)
Hair (English) = Cheveux (French) = Capelli (Italian) = Capillum (Latin)
Bald (English) = Chauve (French) = Calvo (Italian) = Calvus (Latin)
Cat (English) = Chat (French) = Gatto (Italian) = Cattus (Latin)
Snow (English) = Niege (French) = Neve (Italian) = Nix (Latin)
Winter (English) = Hiver (French) = Inverno (Italian) = Hiems (Latin)
Spring (English) = Printemps (French) = Primavera (Italian) = Fons (Latin)
Thing (English) = Chose (French) = Cosa (Italian) = Rem (Latin)
Fish (English) = Poisson (French) = Pesce (Italian) = Piscis (Latin)
An Italian would not be able to know right away wtf eau, chèvre, cheveux, chauve, niege, hiver, printemps, chose, or poisson means, while a French person may be able to know what acqua and capelli mean since the words aquatique and capillaire exist in the French language (French adjectives seem to be more conservative to the original spelling and sound of the Latin word, but that applies to almost every Romance language). On the other hand, when the same cognates are also shared with other Romance languages, like say Spanish and Portuguese, they tend to look and sound closer to Italian than to French, as you can see,
Agua (Spanish) = Água (Portuguese) = Acqua (Italian) = Eau (French) = Aqua (Latin)
Cabra (Spanish) = Cabra (Portuguese) = Capra (Italian) = Chèvre (French) = Capra (Latin)
Cabello (Spanish) = Cabelo (Portuguese) = Capelli (Italian) = Cheveux (French) = Capillum (Latin)
Calvo (Spanish) = Calvo (Portuguese) = Calvo (Italian) = Chauve (French) = Calvus (Latin)
Gato (Spanish) = Gato (Portuguese) = Gatto (Italian) = Chat (French) = Cattus (Latin)
Nieve (Spanish) = Neve (Portuguese) = Neve (Italian) = Niege (French) = Nix (Latin)
Invierno (Spanish) = Inverno (Portuguese) = Inverno (Italian) = Hiver (French) = Hiems (Latin)
Primavera (Spanish) = Primavera (Portuguese) = Primavera (Italian) = Printemps (French) = Fons (Latin)
Cosa (Spanish) = Coisa (Portuguese) = Cosa (Italian) = Chose (French) = Rem (Latin)
Pez (Spanish) = Peixe (Portuguese) = Pesce (Italian) = Poisson (French) = Piscis (Latin)
Clearly, one can see that French has undergone a more drastic change and reduction in consonants and vowels compared to the other Romance languages when looking at the original Latin word. Not only the spelling, but the pronunciation varies a lot from the original Latin pronunciation, as French phonetics have diverged significantly due to Germanic and Celtic influence, becoming more complex (Portuguese too, but to a lesser extent than French). The e, s and t in French, for example, are always silent at the end of a word, and that may throw off another speaker of a Romance language. French words tend to be pronounced with less syllables, and the vowel sounds tend to be rather divergent, like the word me (moi). Not to mention, a lot of vowel sounds are approximants. Really, French would not be terrible to read for an Italian, and vice versa, but when it comes down to talking, it is almost impossible without prior knowledge of each other's languages. In this case, Spanish has a much better advantage, because like Italian, it has conserved a lot of the similar phonetics to Latin, and the spelling of the Latin words don't vary as much when they share the same meaning of a cognate. That's why an Italian has much easier time talking to a Spanish speaker than a French speaker. So in paper French may look closer to Italian, but in practicality, it is probably a lot easier for an Italian to pick up Spanish, and even have improvised conversations.
@@psq6214 It depends really. Most French and Italian words that share the same meaning tend to be straight up cognates, whereas, Spanish and Portuguese don't share as many cognates to Italian. I mean, they may have had those words back in the day, but they went out of style, being replaced by words. For example,
Day (English) = Giorno (Italian) = Journée (French) = Día
(Spanish) = Dia (Portuguese)
Butter (English) = Burro (Italian) = Beurre (French) = Mantequilla (Spanish) = Manteiga (Portuguese)
Beer (English) = Birra (Italian) = Bière (French) = Cerveza (Spanish) = Cerveja (Portuguese)
Window (English) = Finestra (Italian) = Fenêtre (French) = Ventana (Spanish) = Janela (Portuguese)
Son (English) = Figlio (Italian) = Fils (French) = Hijo (Spanish) = Filho (Portuguese)
Daughter (English) = Figlia (Italian) = Fille (French) = Hija (Spanish) = Filha (Portuguese)
Brother (English) = Fratello (Italian) = Frère (French) = Hermano (Spanish) = Irmão (Portuguese)
Sister (English) = Sorella (Italian) = Sœur (French) = Hermana (Spanish) = Irmã (Portuguese)
Carrot (English) = Carota (Italian) = Carotte (French) = Zanahoria (Spanish) = Cenoura (Portuguese)
Dog (English) = Cane (Italian) = Chien (French) = Perro (Spanish) = Cachorro (Portuguese, lol, this is puppy in Spanish)
Sheet (English) = Foglio (Italian) = Feuille (French) = Hoja (Spanish) = Folha (Portuguese)
Oil (English) = Olio (Italian) = Huile (French) = Aceite (Spanish) = Óleo (Portuguese)
To Want (English) = Volere (Italian) = Vouloir (French) = Querer (Spanish) = Querer (Portuguese)
To Talk (English) = Parlare (Italian) = Parler (French) = Hablar (Spanish) = Falar (Portuguese)
To Eat (English) = Mangiare (Italian) = Manger (French) = Comer (Spanish) = Comer (Portuguese)
To Take (English) = Prendere (Italian) = Prendre (French) = Tomar (Spanish) = Tomar (Portuguese)
To Search (English) = Cercare (Italian) = Chercher (French) = Buscar (Spanish) = Procurar (Portuguese)
To Lift (English) = Sollevare (Italian) = Soulever (French) = Levantar (Spanish) = Levantar (Portuguese)
To Look (English) = Guardare (Italian) = Regarder (French) = Mirar (Spanish) = Ohlar (Portuguese)
To Find (English) = Trovare (Italian) = Trouver (French) = Encontrar (Spanish) = Encontrar (Portuguese)
To Hold (English) = Tenere (Italian) = Tenir (French) = Sostener (Spanish) = Segurar (Portuguese)
To Have (English) = Avere (Italian) = Avoir (French) = Tener (Spanish) = Ter (Portuguese)
To Need (English) = Avere Bisogno (Italian) = Avoir Besoin (French) = Necesitar (Spanish) = Precisar (Portuguese) (though Necessitare and Nécessiter exist in Italian and French respectively, though less commonly used)
I know that Spanish has the words Manjar, Travar, Acercar, Prender, Guardar, Tener, Haber, Jornada, Parlante/Parlamento, Fraterno/Fraternal, Filial, Follaje, Canino, Oliva and in Argentina the word Birra is commonly used for Beer and the expression ¡Guarda! for Watch out! (this is due to the Italian immigration though), but these cognates are not necessarily used synonymously, as in the case of Spanish and Portuguese, it is to describe a more specific situation, whereas in French and Italian, these words are more commonly used as basic everyday words.
Please
@@lissandrafreljord7913 In French we use the word "cheveu" for hair but we also use the word "capillaire" in certain sentences
Italian seems to be an amazing and beautiful language. Cheers from Brazil.
Podes crê irmão!!!Tô estudando esse idioma lindo e relativamente fácil pra nós falantes da lingua portuguêsa!!!T aconselho a fazer o mesmo,não vai s arrepender!!!Have a good luck man!!!
Thank you and yes...It Is 🙏😍
@@gargalhadasinsanas1308 solo un consiglio: per apprezzare e capire totalmente l’italiano dovresti leggere qualche opera letteraria
7 years of French immersion as a kid definitely has been helping me with my Italian in duolingo!
Je suis Française et j'aime entendre parler l'italien je trouve cette langue belle à l'oreille.
The most weird thing is that... We're always fighting with them (I'm Italian and I'm talking about French people) BUT at the end of the day I'd rather spend my life fighting with them about culture, food and art than anybody else. I think many Italians will agree with me on this. If Spanish are our brothers and we don't really fight a lot, French are our cousins and I respect them. We may fight, but I have respect for them and their language. I was watching a video that had nothing to do with France (It was about Québec) but it was about the French language, and this English Canadian was saying how "useless" the French language is compared to English, and I felt offended even if I'm Italian. I can't listen to an English speaker disrespect French calling it "a useless language". It made me feel angry. I disliked the video and unsubscribed from that channel. He surely didn't know what he was talking about.
The main difference between France and Italy is France is an old unified country, Italy has been unified in 1860 (once before under Napoleon as the first president of Italy then king of Italy) but still has a problem about the north and the south. In this aspect France inherited from the Romans and took the place the italians should have taken if they could have unite early. Except that we share everything, arts, philosophy, cuisine (most of the french food comes from Italy originally and has been developped later by french cooks by creating new recipes), wines, tastes, way of thinking, mentality... I don't see many differences between the french and the italian peoples.
Was it JJ McCullough?
@@Brumairevideo Many Italians forget the fact: Italy was created by the sacrifice of french soldiers against Austo Hungaric empire. No other european nation helped Italy like France in his history. Ungratelfulness.
@@afrocyberdelia We still have Spanish (another romance language) with a lot of native speakers. French, Italian and Portuguese may disappear in the future but as I said we still have Spanish, I don't think any Germanic language (English included) can make Spanish disappear, and that makes me happy.
@@afrocyberdelia Yeah, I was unsure about Brazil the moment I wrote that tbh.
AS an Italian I have to say you are right,I have no issues,as a rule,understanding written French,however the pronunciation is very different,but we do share words and verbs,Indeed as an Italian speaker French is very easy to pick uo,more so than Spanish,which a lot of people think are more similar.
Hello, everyone! I'm portuguese and I've just started watching your videos, but I have to tell you: they are amazing! I study French in college (and I studied English until I was in high school). I'd love to learn Italian and, since I'm a native speaker of portuguese and I also speak French, it would be easier for me to learn. I think you could do a video comparing Portuguese and French or Portuguese and Italian. There would be some similarities too (and the portuguese culture has been quite influenced by the french culture and a little bit by the italian too). Thank you for this video and I also have to say that I enjoyed the one you made about my native language, even though the pronunciation was not very good in one or two words. Anyway, that's not a big deal - Portuguese phonetics is quite tricky! The video about English being a germanic language was also cool and I'm quite a fan of English too. Thank you again and keep doing these amazing videos!
My mother language is probabily right at half way between french and italian. It's called friulian (standardized language). Here the examples you gave in the video:
2:03 Mêt achì la to valîs e ven cun me in cusine, (jo) o ti prepari un cafè.
2:47 E no dismenteaitsi di jentrâ intune buteghe di ceramichis.
3:38 (Jo) o ai un gjornâl pal viaç.
3:58 (Jo) o cjacari/feveli inglês. This example is pretty nice in friulian, cus we have an atonic pronoun (jo o, tu tu, lui al/je e...)
4:42 (Jo) lu voi comprâ./ (Jo) o voi comprâlu.
4:53 (Jo) no cjacari/feveli inglês.
5:18 (Tu) tu as mangjât alc/ cualchi cjosse.
6:16 Al fa frêt.
6:26 Vin Blanc :D
7:25 Cuai sono i vuestris plâts preferîts? (note: son-o is the union between 3rd plural person of "be" and subject. In friulian we've got VSO order in questions, like in german, italian always SVO)
8:32 I nestris amîs a finissin di gustâ.
This is VERY close to the old savoyard language that was spoken in the French alps 2 centuries ago. I suppose however that the pronunciation would be more Latin than Gallic in Friuli, am I correct?
@@invock Are you savoyard?
@スパイダーマン Catalan pronunciation is very difficult to understand for an italian and it's very different from any italian dialects, but beyond pronunciation, catalan is very similar to the occitan and the last is very similar to northern italian romance languages. So when we read catalan, we understand it very well (except for arab loans not existing in italian romance languages).
This is "furlan":
th-cam.com/video/o3MkyP4iuQI/w-d-xo.html
no its not actually half french half italian , its independent languages. because gaulish langauge is also spoken in northern part of italian in past time thats why it seems similar like French
Très intéressant ! Où parle-t-on cette langue ?
Do a French & Spanish one please.
As a French native and spanish speaker, French and Spanish are really easily intelligible, maybe less than French - Italian (because French and Italian verbs are closer), but still very close. And speaking the two language i can understand Catalan which is basicaly an intermediary between the two. :)
For real! Do a french and spanish one!
I would like to See that one.
Boulangiste i thought Occitane was an intermediary between French and Spanish
Lissandra Freljord Occitan is probably similar to Catalan... all those languages result from Vulgar Latin but some were spoken in capital cities and became the main dialect and then the national language but each region has originally its own dialect from Latin .
Having studied french, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (in that order) to a good C1 level, I had the feeling that knowledge of one language provided something of a base for the next one. I loved the similarities and differences in culture as well, all in the context of our European culture. Thank you for all your informative videos which we, language lovers, enjoy !!!😄😄
wow you're amazing, that's what i want to do, im learning italian and starting to learn french, and english and spanish are my native languages, which is yours??
+Sophi XRU i am greek! I wish you all the best I hope you enjoy your "journey" as a language learner! it can be fascinating! 😄
Vaya... sos increíble, ni siquiera yo, que tengo al español como mi lengua madre, he logrado dominar la gramática del todo, pase 7 años en la escuela sólo para aprender a escribir correctamente.
+lady Marianne As I see, something suggest me that you are "probably" interested in "Latin Culture"... Are you ? :-) I am Italian (therefore "Latin") and I am interested in "Germanic Culture". So I am doing the same thing that you did but my Languages are German, Dutch and Afrikaans. The Scandinavian Languages are "Germanic" but not "West Germanic" as German, Dutch and Afrikaans are... So I am not interested in them... "English" is too much a mixture with words of French Origin... So, I speak it but I don't love it... I find that by studying more Languages that are similar to each other, one Language help the other... Expecially as far as the memorizing of the words is concerned... For example you may ask yourself: "what's the Italian word for "Good" ?" And then you reply to yourself: "Oh, I got it: it is like the Spanish "Bueno" ! It is "Buono" !" As far as your Language is concerned (Greek) I have always asked to myself why Greek - unlike the Latin Languages, the Germanic Languages, the Slavic Languages, etc - has not a similar Language ? The only "Greek Language" is Greek. Period.
+maksim5078 yes you are right my friend! Greek is one of a kind! perhaps one day you will get the chance to study it and combine the studying with a trip to our beautiful Aegean islands! I wish you the best!
I'm Italian and do speak French as well. Both languages are extremely similar according to their grammar, and once you know how to pronounce French words - or you know how spoken French words are written, you just really need a few important different vocabularies and endings to understand huge parts of what someone is saying in French. Of course, learning the language in terms of being able to speak it, still takes a bit time. But (in my opinion) it's pretty easy for a native Italian speaker to learn French.
I'm Canadian like paul. I speak English as well as French. English and French are very similar. I think out of all the latin languages, French is the one that's the most similar to English.
I learn french before i learn italian,the thing i notice is in french u have “etre” and “avoir” and in italian u have “essere” and “avere”..some words also is quite same for example manger in french and mangiare in italian..also demain and domani..yeah its quite same but sadly my italian is better than my french,ma non sono italiano sono malesiano..❤️
It's spelled "être"
I think there are some examples that you could have used to show the similarity of French and Italian grammar as opposed to Spanish. For example: essere/avere and etre/avoir. You sometimes use "be" and sometimes use "have" depending on the verb, unlike Spanish (and English). This is drilled into learners of both languages from the start. "Noi SIAMO arrivati"/"Nous SOMMES arrives" (We ARE arrived). These two languages are unlike Spanish and English, in which you can only use "have" (haber). "Nosotros HEMOS llegado." "We HAVE arrived." In addition to not using the "be" verb as in Italian and French, in Spanish, "arrive" (llegar) is not pluralized, the way it is in Italian and French with "arrivati/arrives." Same thing with a sentence such as this: "Los he invitadO." (invited remains singular, even though THEY (plural) have been invited. But in Italian and French, it must be plural: "Li ho invitatI"/"Les ai inviteS." Or this... Spanish: "Los he vistO" (visto-- singular), Italian/French: "Li ho vistI"/Les ai vuS" (plural in both languages)
Interesting: I was not aware of the direct-object-ruled plural verb conjugation in French and Italian (and still seems quite weird, I tend to think that the subject is higher ranking than any object and should rule, but seems it's not always that way). Another thing that Spanish has and no other major Romance does is the distinction between "ser" and "estar", both "to be" but used for different notions: "estar" is for transitional situations, often locative, while to be is for essential ones. So "estoy alegre" and "soy alegre" both mean "I'm happy" but the former is "I'm feeling happy now" and the latter is "I'm generally/always/naturally happy". This is a clear Basque influence in Castilian/Spanish.
EXACTLY. IT'S THE CLEAREST EXAMPLE OF GRAMMAR SIMILARITY BETWEEN ITALIAN AND FRENCH MORE THAN WITH SPANISH
Luis Aldamiz I think Portuguese has a distinction between ser and estar too
Majd Kajan Yes, it does too.
Majd Kajan It is extremely similar to Spanish
italian and french are really really similar. They actually share 89 per cent of their vocabulary. the main difference is in pronounciation but as an italian once you learn the basic tricks and changing you can learn to understand French pretty fast. Another thing is that if they don't have the same word, you may find a synonim somewhere that is less likely or never used. Finally, you may find some words in one language and in a dialect of the other
Paul is a brilliant communicator... I love these short quick summaries... More interesting than other language-nerd stuff👍
The similarities in the vocabulary are many more if you consider synonyms or the root of the world.
In the example at 2:40 the verb "dimenticare" is clearly different from "oublier", but in Italian there is a noun, "oblio", which sounds like "oublier" and has a similar meaning. The same is true for "in/dans", in Italian the word "dentro" (=inside) is similar to "dans" than "in". Finally, "negozio/magasin", in Italian a "magazzino" may be a warehouse but also a kind of store.
Another example is the French for hello, "salut". In Italian you say "ciao", but the verb "salutare" means to greet or to say hello.
And likewise in french, for a shop, you can also say "un négoce". But "négoce" has usually more the meaning of commercialization / commercial exchange.
In English "oblivion"-probably nearer the original Latin parent word.
You are an expert of so many languages.......amazing!
+阮熙峰 No, I'm not really an expert, I'm just very interested in language and languages. But thanks!
Maybe someone said this already, but in French, we write "ne" but it is often omitted when we speak. So it would be "je sais pas" or "je parle pas anglais"
It's not "je parle pas d'anglais" but "je parle pas anglais" 😉
It's "je ne parle pas l'anglais".
Thank you. I like how concise, clear and precise your videos are.
In italiano si può dire "io voglio comprarlo" oppure "io lo voglio comprare" ; )
O "vorrei comprarlo"
Fetz Deretz oppure “desidero acquistare codesto bene materiale”
Just Monika avrei la necessità di usufruire di codesto oggetto fisico con una gravità difatti DAMMI QUEL CAZZO DI COSO
Meme Expert 92 minuti di applausi
Lo stesso in spagnolo "yo quiero comprarlo" o "yo lo quiero comprar"
Beside the Celtic influence French has quite some Germanic influence too through the language of the Franks. For instance French being a non-prodrop language(subject pronouns are obligatory) is attributed to that Germanic influence.
I didn't know that, very interesting, thanks :)
me neither, thanks
Maybe, but it's also the fact that in French 4 out of 6 conjugated verb forms in the present tense sound the same. One needs the pronouns in the spoken language to figure out numerus and person. You don't need that in Spanish, Portuguese or Italian.
It's difficult to say which is a result of which (or maybe someone with a better understanding of the historical evolution of French would know, I'm a native speaker but I don't have much special knowledge on that). If most verb forms already differ based on the person/pronoun, then it's a logical step for everyday speakers to drop the pronoun since it conveys no new information. But in the same way, if pronouns are used consistently then it's more likely that similar-sounding verb forms would remain in use by everyday speakers. Because French consistently uses pronouns, many verb forms French speakers learn in school are fairly rarely used in everyday speech: it's much easier to use forms that remain the same.
Stefan Reichenberger The Frankish language changed immensely the phonology of the forming Old French, especially through stress patterns, that contributed to the emergence of so many homophones and irregular verbs. The fact that the Germanic languages are non-prodrop is not the only argument for the influence on this feature of the Modern French language. It's rather that their phonology changed in a similar way to French. If you compare Modern French to other modern French languages like Occitan, which had a lot less Germanic, but equally as much Celtic influence and remained a pro-drop language, it becomes more obvious.
As a French Canadian, reading Italian and speaking it is entirely different. I can have a basic understanding if I read it. I can't understand a basic sentence in Italian if it is spoken to me.
same here. meme chose
But as an Algerian french speaker i find italian more understandable for me than spanish ? Is it my case or its for u also ??
@@amrdel2730 italian as 90% vocabulary shared with french as spanish about 80% so yes italian is the closest to french but the accent are more closer between spanish and italian. as said in the video
@@amrdel2730 je n'ai besoin du parler en français depuis plus de personnes parler en anglaise. À Mois que je visiterait Québec. Je ne comprends beaucoup d'Espagnol parce-que je l'avais oublié, et je n'ai pas besoin de le parler, especialment au Canada.
@@chiclett french from france yes but as a canadian french speaker i quickly picked up english and spanish
5:23 Corresponding to the French "quelque chose" (some-thing) there is not only the Italian common "qualcosa" but also the less common "qualche cosa" which is exactly the two words not joined.
How different are Canadian/Quebec French and French? Might be an interesting topic for a video since most people only know Canada as an English-speaking country and information on Canadian/Quebecois is rather scarce.
It would be interesting! I live in Quebec and the thing is even here we have many regional accents. But we do have "joual" which is like the hillbilly southern of Quebec. But it's mostly the same idea as American English vs British English, Brazilian Portuguese vs Portuguese from Portugal etc etc (the latter being the more "refined" "high class" variant)
Canadian French hasn't evolved has much (and not in the same direction) as the one in Europe, and has US influences. That's why, whilst they do share much vocab, there are a few differences. (and the slang is really different). e.g. "gosse" means "child" in France, but "testicle" in Québec.
I'm French and every time I hear a Quebecois speak I understand.
Few exceptions : some franglish and some slang, not all but still some :)
PS : Never been there
+Carpe Diem ils étaient probablement de la ville parce que les québécois de région peuvent être vraiment dur à comprendre même pour nous dans les régions urbaines. Ma gérante au travail m'a dit que quand son chum de Montréal est allé avec elle visiter sa région natale en Gaspésie ils parlaient tellement vite qu'il a absolument rien compris alors qu'ils avaient l'impression qu'il était malheureux avec eux parce qu'il disait pas grand chose.
Theodore Stathopoulos
Pas que de la ville non.
Mais c'est surtout via des vidéos que j'entends parler québécois. J'ai en tête un reportage où un français faisait le tour du Québec et même dans les villages ont comprend bien les francophones.
Mais je me souviens plus si la Gaspésie était une des étapes.
Et peut-être que les Québécois font un effort pour être compris des Français aussi, c'est possible.
Par contre, en regardant le film Mommy par exemple, là c'est compliqué. Sans sous titres au 1er visionnage j'aurais pas tout compris
Another great video, a very accurate summary of the situation, good job. :)
I think there's an interesting kind of linguistic "trinity" between standard Italian, standard French and standard Spanish. From the Italian-speaker's point of view, most of us will feel like we can understand and get involved (in a limited way) in a spoken conversation in Spanish - even better if we are talking one on one with a Spanish speaker and carefully trying to make each other understand. The grammar and lexicon might be more distant between Spanish and Italian than between Italian and French, but the style of phonology between the two languages sounds more similar, which makes it easier for Spaniards and Italians to identify individual words in a sentence and therefore be able to start to make sense of what's being said. The same thing applies to say, watching a movie in Spanish or vice versa.
Between French and Italian though, if you are a speaker of one of these and have never ever learned or been exposed to the other, it can feel very difficult indeed to catch what the words are in a spoken sentence. But the written language is a very different story. I live in Paris , and when a cousin of mine from Rome was staying at my place for a week, he couldn't really understand any spoken French except very basic things. I could see him trying hard to catch on to spoken French but it was clearly very difficult for him to pick out the words. However, in the mornings he would go out and buy Le Monde and was able to read the paper in French with his morning coffee and could make sense of pretty much everything, with much less effort.
From my personal point of view I speak both French and Italian, and it's a curious relationship. Once you're fluent in both, you become very keenly aware of just how similar they are. You find yourself forming sentences in a way that feels very familiar when you are speaking either language, and you notice the similarities all the time. For me it's to the point that I find it difficult to switch between Italian and French now. When I go to Italy, it takes me at least a week to "shake off" French and to get back into Italian. Up until that point I often find myself starting a sentence in Italian and accidentally ending it in French, much to the amusement of my cousins and friends in Italy.... :)
I was fluent in French when I started studying Italian. Years later, I added Spanish, and could read Spanish immediately, but Italian interfered when I spoke. I think Italian and Spanish are closer than French is to either one. Many words sound the same, but are spelled differently with the same grammatical function. Both Italian and Spanish add an object to the end of an infinitive, where as French keeps them separate and in front or attached with a hyphen in the case of a command. Truthfully, knowing any one of the three (plus Portuguese) makes it very easy to add the next one.
Some of the word you showed have cognates in italian as well. For example "oublier" is a direct cognate of "oblìo", which it means "forgettance", nowadays literary; "dans" is a direct cognate of "dentro", inside, or "magasin" is cognate of "magazzino", which means "storage" or "mall" if preceded by "grande" (grandi magazzini)
Bonjour!
I am a native French and studied Italian and Spanish as well as Latin and romance linguistic in the course of my studies. Your video is really great but I have some remarks to do:
You never spoke of the German influence on French, which is much more important than the Celtic influence:
1/ The pronunciation : French has been highly influenced by the germanic way of speaking. The name France comes directly from the Frankish tribes who came from what is nowadays the Netherlands and Northern Germany. Frankish eventually gave birth to Dutch and when you look at it, we French and Dutch have a lot in common in the pronunciation (but not the vocabulary). For instance we have the sounds : eu/ oe (ö in German), as in peu (few), the guttural "r" is common in Dutch and German, we also have the sound u like in "dur" (hard) (ü in German).
That added to the fact that we don't pronunce every letters of a word, explains why is it so difficult for an Italian or a Spanish to understand and pronunce French, but the contrary is not true: to French people, Italian and Spanish sound very familiar in the vocabulary : ex: château : castello (in french we speak of castellologie for the study of castles) and the pronunciation apart from the thrilled r is very easy to us. If they do not speak too fast, we are even able to understand the global meaning of a sentence, which is not true for a Spanish or an Italian hearing French for the first time.
2/The vocabulary : Many words can be traced back from our Frankish ancestors especially words related to war : guerre (werra, war in english) for example.
3/ The grammar : The influence is not very strong but we have some traces of it : We say : "Un gros homme" (A fat man) which would be said "un uomo grosso" in Italian. This works for some words like : autre, beau, bon, grand, gros, haut, jeune, mauvais, nouveau, petit, vieux, vilain... So, these adjectives must be placed before the name they qualify like in German or English.
Then, just two little things : In "Il fait froid" we do not pronunce the "t" of "fait" either. And in the end, déjeuner must be written with an accent ;-).
Sorry for all those remarks, but you know how we Frenchies, are touchy for what regards our own language, :-D nevertheless your vids are very good and interesting!
Bonne continuation et à bientôt!
Well, French is not the only romance language which is influenced by German.
Look the Italian, 10% of the word come from german: guerra (war), bicchiere (from german Becher, which means glass in italian), alt (halt), lista (from Liste, means list), schiena
(from old german: schena, which means back/body backside), etc....
I'm a Belgian french-speaker and I'm learning Dutch ; you're right. Counter many languages having much vocabulary in common with French, Dutch is the only tongue having a lot of the pronounciation very similar with french. (the guttural r, the u sound, the a sound and some others). But the vocabulary is very different.
Please note that pre-60 singers used to roll their "r" while singing (think Tino Rossi). Also, the way words are written in French is a mix of history and of arbitrary non-sense (Linguisticae has a video about it). For some reason, it seems to me that the French academy has decided that writers of French had to be etymologists too to be considered seriously.
@@cdemr Some flemish/dutch accents have a rolled "r". Maybe that is due to a foreign influence (celtic or latin).
déjà ça ne se dit pas "un gros homme" , en bon français, on dit " un homme gros"
I'm French and study Italian, and find it very easy to learn while Spanish seems more difficult to learn because of the differences in vocabulary. Nice video, you surely cleared some minds in the Anglo-Saxon world. Well done!
For Northern Italians I think French is easier than Spanish as the phonology with the local dialects is very similar. For Central and Southern Italians, Spanish would be easier.
What about Venetian? I think it's closer to Castilian
noooo lool
Andrea Agosti its true, im from north italy and our dialect sounds like french
North West Italy has phonology similar to French, while North East has many similarity with Spanish an Venetian for me is very close to Catalan even more than Castillian, while central and south Italy is similar to Spanish Castilian.
The Venetian isn't an Italian dialect, it's a minority romance language that Italy calls dialect just because it isn't its official language. It's both similar to Italian and Spanish, and it doesn't sound like a Spanish dialect. Unfortunately is very similar to Italian, so people think that it's its dialect.
I started learning French in middle school and continued through high school. I became quite fluent after working in a French restaurant as the only non-native speaker. French was the working language and by the end of the summer, all of those years of grammar study + constant immersion at work made me quite fluent.
I then started university. In my first semester I took Italian 101. In my second semester, I took Italian 302 (advanced grammar and composition). I did study a lot on my own, and being of Italian heritage (but never being able to speak or understand it at home), I had a strong motivation to master Italian.
Knowing French before starting Italian was a tremendous advantage.
I'm French and I learned Italian during High School as a third language after English and Spanish.
Italian is indeed quite similar to French and therefore I found it comfortable to understand and learn, even if sometimes this sensation of confort led to some (many?!) mistakes.
The hard thing was that my italian teacher was constantly accusing me of speaking with Spanish words.. and vice versa. And I was not the only one in that case.
To french speakers, Spanish and Italian at least sounds alike (but they are very differents languages, of course).
When I went to Italy in 2011, I kept starting to speak Spanish. This was especially surprising to me, since I had learned Spanish in high school and had not spoken it, except a few times, since about 1966 (yes, I'm old!). There was just something about Italy and hearing Italian (which I don't speak at all) that made Spanish enter my head! In a hotel, I heard another woman do the same thing and we laughed about this weird phenomenon.
I had the same problem with Portuguese. I tried to learn it since it's so similar to Spanish. Even more so than Spanish is to Italian. However, that similarity became my biggest obstacle since I would often mix the Spanish pronunciation into the Portuguese. I found it a difficult habit to break especially when trying to speed up my speech. Well, I wasn't seriously dedicated to studying the language either. Only experimenting on what to learn after Mandarin.
spanish-italian
gangstapranksta
French and Italian share 89% of common lexicon. Spanish and Italian share 82% of common lexicon.
But French among the Roman languages has a unique pronunciation.
Andrew De Haro. All the romance languages have Celtic and Germanic influences. After the fall of Rome. Germans made up the poltical elite of spain, Gaul amd Italy. Romans were only in charge of the Catholic Church were it's Pope was appointed by a Greek speaking emperor in Constantinople. Example. Like French. Portuguese is very Nasal. Why? Because Celtic that live in Western Spain. Greeks colonized Spain and Italy. Therefore kept plenty of greek phonetics when speaking Latin. Spanisb word for war is Guerra which is a German word vs Latin bellus. French has more Latin words than Spanish. Especially since Spanish is influenced by Arabic.
Being a learner of French, it certainly makes things clearer when reading Italian.
I'm Italian and I studied French in middle school. It isn't very easy for most Italians if compared to Spanish (which I never studied, but at least sounds way easier), but some dialects of the north-west are very similar or can help in learning French.
Excellent explanation. I think that not even studying a language degree in my country would have learned the things that I have learned with your videos. I love all the Romance languages, they are the most beautiful, without a doubt, there are Regards my friend From Colombia
I’m French and when I used to be a student, I was learning Spanish for years, then I took Italian. The problem is that I had a real struggle with Italian because I was mixing it up with Spanish, while having bits of French into there. It was so difficult mixing them up that I had to stop learning Italian.
I'm french and i think italian is funny because many common words look to very formal or old-fashioned french words. For example :
Vergogna ----> vergogne (shame)
Genitori ----> géniteurs (parents)
Lavoro ----> labeur (work)
Goloso ----> goulu (greedy)
I love this language so much 😊
Is it just me or is Italian the best sounding of the Romance languages? It's much easier for me to speak. Even more so than Spanish which is so widespread where I live in USA.
Maybe it's because of the sounds. French and Spanish have few "particular" phonetic expressions compared to Italian that is quite clear and natural to pronunce and also includes so many intonations (I think). That's why most actors say Italian is the best language to dub movies. All of them have a wide grammar and native English speakers can find it quite difficult to learn. Just think about the tenses and the verbal entries. The one you like the most is the one that sound the best :-)
It's definitely easier to pronounce, as it is a phonetic language :)
Italian is a more complicated language to learn . We only use the verb haber to describe something in the past he visto, he ido, in Italian it would be ho visto and sono andato with the verb essere so you gotta memorize which verbs use avere or essere in Spanish we only use one . Also to describe possession we only use mi , mi bicicleta , mi abuelo in Italian they have mia bicicleta and mío nono , it’s just more
Stuff to memeorize . I think Americans get more excited about italain though because Spanish is so common in the us that it’s basically as big a deal as hearing English
Thats subjective opinion, which you are allowed to feel that way. But i love the way french sounds, well i like all the romance languages. I prefer Brasilian portuguese over european though.
@Ellerzc ALL languages are phonetic languages lmao
I am learning Italian, and the fact that I previously learnt French (and Latin) is of great help!
French speaker I think Italian is the easiest language a frenchman can learn.
What about Spanish?
I am French native, and I speak Italian an Spanih, but I think Spanish easier.
I am an Italian guy living near the French border and I think that French is easier than Italian: no twisty R pronounciation (my friends fool me because I can't say that) , no random plural forms (or at least many less), it shares several words with my dialect (with a slightly different accent)
But, Skarux, your native language is probably not "an Italian dialect" but an Occitan one: Provenzal and Arpitan (both Occitan dialects) extend beyond the Alps into what is now Italy. They are not French anyhow but closer to Catalan in fact but they do share some traits with French.
Actually I think that the easiest language to learn for french people(It's also my native language) is esperanto, but It's probably the easiest for everyone xD And if french is easier than italian, I don't imagine how italian would be hard :p
I remember reading in a French travel book that said “French is Latin spoken with a Celtic accent.”
Pretty close to the truth! I read somewhere that French is the most Germanic of the Romance languages.
actually there are even more relations, like the verb "oublier" isn't indeed similar to "dimenticare" but it's similar to "obliare", a very uncommon and old fashioned word wich means, in fact, to forget.
and in spanish to forget is olvidar
does "negozio" has the same origin as "négocier" ?
+minirop i think so, "negoziare" in italian means bargain
maybe dementicare has the same roots than "démence", a form of madness.
"dementia" in english comes from that.
yes, "demenza" is precisely when you loose your mind, stop reasoning and start forgetting things, usually due to age in which case is referred to as "demenza senile". it all comes from the latin "mens" that means "mind".
You are doing great videos Paul. Thank you for those very good explanations. I am native speaker of French and I understand quite a lot of Italian probably thanks to the French language but also because I speak fluently Spanish.
I'm studying Italian and am getting near intermediate level. I want to learn French next. Do you think it will be easy as a English speaker to to learn French since we're used to the silent letters in words? I can already tell knowing Italian will help a lot.
It will take some work to get the phonology down. I recommend you try the FSI French phonology course (it's public domain) because it helps make the pronunciation fairly intuitive. It won't give you a native accent, but you'll know when to use a nasal sound, when letters are silent, etc.
Langfocus OK great. Thanks!
+EvanesEmperor Yeah, I think that it's hard to learn French after learning another romance language and vice-versa because they're spelled very similarly but are pronounced completely differently. I assure you, though, that although French has a really bad reputation for being impossible to pronounce, you just need to practice to learn the pronunciation rules.
Isabelle Henson I believe it. All you have to do is practice :)
I did the opposite, moving from French to Italian, and while I found it to be extremely challenging at first, at times literally making my head hurt, it got much easier after a lot of focused study. Now I find I have the opposite problem, of having to push down my Italian and do mental gymnastics to hold a conversation in French... all aboard the polyglot train!
I didn't realize how similar their flags are until seeing them side by side in this video lol
Compare the Irish flag to both countries too.
C’est vraiment impressionnant !
Merci pour votre effort sur cette vidéo,ça m’a beaucoup aidé!
I started learning French a couple of months ago. I’m still very much a beginner. However I was watching a TH-cam video of someone’s Italian language progress and when they were speaking Italian I could actually understand some of the context. The words are actually very similar even for a beginner to see. The subtitles definitely helped me to make the connection from my French knowledge to Italian. But I thought that was pretty cool.