# After Italian, which major Romance language (French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) is closest to Latin?



## bubbyx

This is in terms of syntax, pronunciation, verb conjugation, grammar and maybe vocabulary (as in the core vocabulary like adjectives and emotions, not names of fruits, animals and occupations etc)
I've seen many discussions like this but since it is widely agreed upon that Italian is the closest major language to Latin and I know everyone would reply "Italian" so just to be more interesting I'm leaving italian out 

From what I know the verb conjugation in Spanish is very close to latin, like in the conjugation of amare. This is true for Portuguese as well, but probabaly Spanish pronunciation is closer to latin than Portuguese. Romanian is said to be very close to latin in the declension system but it's core vocabulary has a heavy Slavic component. What about french, it doesn't seem like French has any particular feature that is closer to Latin than the other languages :/ 
So what do you think? 
If you were to make a ranking:
LATIN 
1. Italian 
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
Note: let's only consider the major Romance languages (the most spoken), French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian


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## Stoggler

bubbyx said:


> Note: let's only consider the major Romance languages (the most spoken), French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian



Why, when some of the different Italian varieties (like one on Sardinia for example) may well have claim to being closer to Latin than any national language?


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## CapnPrep

There is already *a lot* of comparison of the Romance languages and discussion of how close they are to Latin in the following threads:
Modern language closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary
Which Latin languages are more closely related to each other
Spanish, Portuguese which is more conservative?
Italian/Spanish: How similar are they?
Is Italian the modern edition of Latin?


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## bubbyx

I know but most of them agree on the fact that Italian is the closest to Latin.


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## bubbyx

Yes but I want to narrow it down to the major languages.
I think that many people would be interested in knowing which major language is closer to Latin and not so much smaller languages.


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## Hulalessar

All modern Romance languages are closer to each other than any is to Latin. To answer the question you need to decide what you are going to look at, then how to measure the distance and finally how to weight each thing you have measured. All very tricky and something on which there is unlikely to be agreement. The best you can hope for really is for those who have a working knowledge of Latin and the languages being compared to give an intuitive assessment. In any sort of assessment, especially when made by anyone without such a working knowledge, it is important not to be misled by the way the language is written.

Perhaps an easier question to answer is which Romance language has moved furthest away from Latin. If Italian is the popular choice for the language nearest to Latin, then I think French will be answer for the language least like Latin reflecting the observation: "All Romance languages resemble each other apart from French."


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## Wolverine9

I don't see a consensus in the other threads about Italian being the closest.  A variety of different opinions were expressed with many arguing for one language or another.  There is no conclusive evidence about which language is the closest to Latin.  As others in those threads have also mentioned, what would be the exact criteria for determining proximity?  Advocating for one language as closest seems more like a subjective argument rather than an objective one.


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## francisgranada

bubbyx said:


> ... Romanian is said to be very close to latin in the declension system ....


I wouldn't say _very close_ in the sense that knowing the Romanian cases could help us too much in  understanding the Latin declension. 


Wolverine9 said:


> Advocating for one language as closest seems more like a subjective argument rather than an objective one.


A relatively objective opinion could be that of native Latin speaker )) when trying to understand various modern Romance langages in their written and spoken form.


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## Nino83

In written morphology, I'd say that Italian and Portuguese are the most conservative. 

festa (VL), festa (IT, PO), fiesta (SP), fête (FR) 
porta (VL), porta (IT, PO), puerta (SP), porte (FR) 

French is the most innovative. 

casa (VL, IT, PO, SP), chez (FR) 
pera (VL, IT, PO, SP), poire (FR) 
novo (VL, PO), nuovo (IT), nuevo (SP), neuf (FR) 
corte (VL, IT, PO, SP), court (FR) 

Portuguese is more conservative than Spanish from a consonantic point of view. 

filio (VL), figlio (IT), filho (PO), fille (FR), hijo (SP) 

In pronunciation, I'd say: Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, French. 

foku(m) (CL), foko (VL), fwoko (IT), fweɣo/fwoɣo (SP), fogu (PO), fø (FR) 

In vocabulary there are two groups: Italian and French on one side and Spanish and Portuguese on the other. 
I think that Italian and French vocabulary is more conservative. 

About grammar: Italian is similar to French, Spanish is similar to Portuguese. On one side (past participle agreement, ausiliar verbs etc.) Italian and French are closer to Vulgar Latin but they have also innovative elements (_ci/y, ne/en_). 

So, it depends.


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## Testing1234567

In terms of verb conjugation, French has already lost the *-o *ending in the first-person singular present indicative, and if I continue to compare, I would _hardly_ be able to categorize French as a Romance language.


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## francisgranada

Taking in cosideration the plural in -s and some verbal endings, the Spanish is in many cases closer to Latin than the Italian. E.g. the following proberbs/sayings seem "almost" Spanish:

 Dum vivimus, vivamus! 
 Amantes amentes
 Hannibal ante portas


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## caelum

I find that, generally speaking, Spanish strikes me as the most roundly conservative. It's true that the open vowels have been split into diphthongs, but it maintains many old Latin terms and words that would seem absolutely archaic in other Romance languages. Plus, it (and Portuguese) retained terms that were out of fashion in the Latin spoken outside of Iberia, which were replaced by neologisms and slang in Italy and Gaul.


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## Testing1234567

As far as I know, no language preserved the complicated noun declension of Latin. (I may be wrong on this)


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## Nino83

Testing1234567 said:


> As far as I know, no language preserved the complicated noun declension of Latin. (I may be wrong on this)



You're right because of the vowel merger that happened in Vulgar Latin, the early loss of final _-m_ and the replacement of genitive and dative with _de + ablativo_ and _ad + accusativo_.


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## Testing1234567

So there isn't any genitive or dative at all in VL? What's the ablative anyway? Like I know it exists, but I have no idea where it's used.


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## berndf

Testing1234567 said:


> As far as I know, no language preserved the complicated noun declension of Latin. (I may be wrong on this)


The case declension system was largely lost already in VL. It is partially preserved only in pronouns. French preserved the nominative-accusative distinction a bit longer. Today there are but a few residues of this former distinction (nominative singular had an _-s_ marker that was absent in accusative singular and vice versa in plural); e.g. this _-s_ in _fils_ or _fonds_ is the old nominative ending; most other nouns use the former accusative form. Actually, in all Romance languages most modern noun forms are derived from the Latin accusative forms.


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## francisgranada

Inspite of this 


> it is widely agreed upon that Italian is the closest major language to Latin


I dare say that the Spanish has some features that makes it a "strong competitor" for the first place in the list (the same might be true also for the Portuguese, but it's pronouciation differs quite significantly from the spelling). Some examples for illustration, _in favour of the Spanish:_ 

_Present indicative (amare – to love):_
 Lat. amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant
 Sp. amo, amas, ama, amamos, amais, aman
It. amo, ami, ama, amiamo, amate, amano

_Present conjunctive (amare – to love):_
Lat. amem, ames, amet, amemus, ametis, ament
Sp. ame, ames, ame, amemos, ameis, amen
It. ami, ami, ami, amiamo, amiate, amino

_Imperfect indicative (amare – to love):_
 Lat. amabam, amabas, amabat, amabamus, amabatis, amabant
 Sp. amaba, amabas, amaba, amábamos, amábais, amaban
 It. amavo, amavi, amava, amavamo, amavate, amavano

_Imperfect indicative (esse – to be):_
 Lat. eram, eras, erat, eramus, eratis, erant
 Sp. era, eras, eramos, erais, eran
 It. ero, eri, era, eravamo, eravate, erano

_Perfect indicative (esse - to be):_
 Lat. fui, fuisti, fuit, fuimus, fuistis, fuerunt
 Sp. fui, fuiste,fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron
 It. fui, fosti, fu, fummo, foste, furono 

_Some demostr. pronouns (masc., fem., neut.):
_Lat. iste, ista, istud; ipse, ipsa, ipso, ipsum
 Sp. este, esta, esto,; ese, esa , eso
 It. questo, questa, -; esso, essa, -

_Prepositions not present in Italian (at least not in their direct form): _
 Lat. ante, inter, sine, sub
 Sp. ante, entre, sin, so 
 (It. davanti, tra, senza, sotto)

_And, of course, a long list of words not present or no more used in Italian _(cerveza, pedir, comer, ave [bird] ...)


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## Testing1234567

Well, Italian has got the vowel-at-the-end-rule from nowhere, so the conjugated forms are bound to be a little bit different.

"Questo/a" are from "que istum", which Italian has done a pretty good job of preserving in my perspective.
"Esso/a" compared to Spanish "ese/a", just a slight difference of the final vowel, again due to the vowel-at-the-end-rule so -e means feminine plural

Can you see "anti" from "davanti"? Wiktionary says it's from de+ab+ante, quite conservative in my opinion.
"tra" is from "intra", so it preserved quite a lot.
"senza" is from "absentia", ti>z doesn't affect the pronunciation.
"sotto" is not from "sub", but rather "subtus".


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## francisgranada

Testing1234567 said:


> Well, Italian has got the vowel-at-the-end-rule from nowhere, so the conjugated forms are bound to be a little bit different.


Mostly not from nowhere, but yes, in some cases the final vowels are Italian innovations.


> "Questo/a" are from "que istum", which Italian has done a pretty good job of preserving in my perspective.


_Questo _comes rather from _eccum+istum_, however this doesn't contradict to the fact that the Spanish preserves this pronoun in its "simple" form (without _que _or whatever), while the Italian does not. 





> Can you see "anti" from "davanti"? Wiktionary says it's from de+ab+ante ...


Of course, e.g. also the Spanish _delante_ (<_denante_) can be explained from de+in+ante. Neverthless in Italian the preposition _ante _does not exist, while in Spanish it still does. 

As far as I understand the original question, we are not speaking abut the "explainability" or etymology/origin of the Romance words/grammatical features, but about which modern Romance language is (somehow, in general ...) closest to Latin.


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## Nino83

Latin: sentiō sentīs sentit sentī́mus sentī́tis sentiunt
SP:    siento sientes siente sentimos sentís sienten 
IT:       sento  senti   sente  sentiamo sentite  sentono 

The same happens with dormio, dormir, dormire
Spanish keeps the _-s_ but loses the _-t_ in the second plural person.


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## francisgranada

Ciao Nino. 



> Spanish keeps the _-s_ in the second singular person but loses the _-t_ in the second plural person.


 1. Yes, and even more, in case of _sentire _(and other verbs) the Italian maintains the Latin -_unt _(>-_ono_), which ending is totally absent in Spanish (in the present tense). However, in other cases the Spanish _-en_ is "more Latin", e.g. Lat. _movent _, Sp. _mueven_, It. _muovono. 

_2. The Spanish not only keeps the _-s_ in the 2nd pers. sg. and pl., it also preserves the ending of the 1st pers. pl., i.e. both the final -s and also the original vowel: _amamos, tememos, sentimos_, while in Italian we have _-iamo_ in all verbs, even in the subjunctive, thus making indistiguishable the _congiuntivo _from the _indicativo _(which is not the case of Latin and Spanish).


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> 2. The Spanish not only keeps the _-s_ in the 2nd pers. sg., it also preserves the ending of the 1st pers. pl., i.e. both the final -s and also the original vowel: _amamos, tememos, sentimos_, while in Italian we have _-iamo_ in all cases, even in the subjunctive, thus making indistiguishable the _congiuntivo _from the _indicativo _(which is not the case of Latin and Spanish).



Yes. On the other hand the Italian generalization  of _-o_ as first person singular in the _imperfect_ tense make the conjugation more consistent (while Spanish and Portuguese lost the _-t_ in the third person singular) and the difference between _-iamo_ and _-ammo_ distinguish the first person plural of the present indicative tense from the first person plural of the simple past (preterito perfecto simple).


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ... On the other hand the Italian generalization  of _-o_ as first person singular in the _imperfect_ tense make the conjugation more consistent ...


Yes, but it doesn't mean that the Italian is closer to Latin in this aspect, rather the opposite is true ...


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> Yes, but it doesn't mean that the Italian is closer to Latin in this aspect, rather the opposite is true ...



Yes. It is also true that Spanish and Portuguese made a lot of changes in simple past tense (preterito perfecto simple), regularizing it.


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## Testing1234567

francisgranada said:


> As far as I understand the original question, we are not speaking abut the "explainability" or etymology/origin of the Romance words/grammatical features, but about which modern Romance language is (somehow, in general ...) closest to Latin.



Isn't Italian "davanti" close to Latin "de ab ante"?


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## Nino83

Testing1234567 said:


> Isn't Italian "davanti" close to Latin "de ab ante"?



Only as adverb of place, not as adverb of time.


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## bubbyx

Very interesting Francisgranada, I was thinking that Spanish seems in some aspects very very close to Latin as well especially the verb conjugation which when pronounced would sound nearly identical to Latin


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## bubbyx

It also seems very interesting to me that Spanish is still so close to Latin considering it was a naturally evolving language spread through conquest, unlike Italian which was more or less "agreed" upon by a group of scholars


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## killerbee256

bubbyx said:


> It also seems very interesting to me that Spanish is still so close to Latin considering it was a naturally evolving language spread through conquest, unlike Italian which was more or less "agreed" upon by a group of scholars


Well given that as the reconquesta spread south it assimilated any romance speakers in Muslim lands, this may have lead to a moderation effect on the Castilian.


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## Nino83

Speaking about verb conjugation, the lack of the agreement of the past participle in verbs of movement, pronominal verbs and verbs which take the auxiliar _habere_ (in some circustances), except for the passive voice, is another element that make Spanish and Portuguese conjugation less close to the Vulgar Latin conjugation.


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## Youngfun

francisgranada said:


> _amamos, tememos, sentimos_


Roman dialect is more regular: _amamo_, _tememo_, _sentimo_.

While in Florentine dialect they don't use the conjugation for the 1st plural person at all, because they say: _noi si ama_, _noi si teme_, _noi si sente_.

As I said in another thread, Spanish, Portuguese are also more regular than Italian when forming the future tense, which was originally formed by infinitive+verb to have.
Roman dialect is almost regular.

*Spanish*
amar + he = amaré
amar + has = amaras
amar + ha = amará
amar + hemos = amaremos
amar + heis = amaréis
amar + han = amarán

*Portuguese*
amar + hei = amarei
amar + has = amaras
amar + ha = amará
amar + hemos = amaremos
amar + heis = amareis
amar + hão = amarão

*Italian *- the second a became e, and "we" is irregular because "we have" became _habemus_ > _abbiamo_, while the future tense maintained a more regular -emo.
amare + ho = amerò
amare + hai = amerai
amare + ha = amerà
amare + abbiamo = ameremo (irregular)
amare + avete = amerete
amare + hanno = ameranno

*Roman dialect *- The infinite lost the r, but it's restored when forming the future. Like Italian the second a becomes e, though I'm not sure if this is a influence from Standard Italian.
amà + ho = amerò
amà + hai = amerai
amà + ha = amerà
amà + avemo = ameremo
amà + avete = amerete
amà + han = ameranno


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## bubbyx

Interesting. Is Roman dialect very different to Standard Italian?


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## Cossue

Nino83 said:


> Portuguese is more conservative than Spanish from a consonantic point of view.
> 
> filio (VL), figlio (IT), filho (PO), fille (FR), hijo (SP)



I don't agree. It's true that Spanish lost some of the Latin [f] (Galician and Portuguese either preserved them or lenited them when in between vowels: Sp. _dehesa_, G-P _devesa _< Latin _defensam_) and transformed some consonant clusters containing [l] into [x] (vs Galician-Portuguese lateral [ʎ]). It also reduced the consonant clusters -mb- > -mm- > -m-, which is preserved in Galician and Portuguese.

But, on the other hand, Galician and Portuguese lost intervocalic Latin [d], while Spanish partially preserved it (G _vao_, P _vau_, Sp _vado _< Latim vadum 'ford'); they also lost intervocalic [l] which is preserved in Spanish (G _ceo_, P _céu_, Sp. _cielo _< Latim celum 'sky'); and they lost intervocalic [n] which is also preserved in Spanish (G _lúa_, P _lua_, Sp. _luna _< Latin _lunam_), while the heavy nasalization of vowels produced the epenthesis of nasal consonant everywhere (cf. G. _niño_, P. _ninho_ from medieval G-P _nîo_, vs Sp. _nido _< Latim _nidum _'nest'; Galician _engadir _from medieval G-P ê_ãdir _vs. Sp _añadir _< Latin *_innaddere _'to add'). Additionally Galician and Portuguese transformed initial stop/fricative consonant + lateral clusters into -ch- (Galician [tʃ], Portuguese [ʃ]), while Spanish just palatalized the lateral: G _chuvia_/_choiva_, P _chuva_, Sp. _lluvia_< Latin pluviam 'rain').


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## Nino83

bubbyx said:


> Interesting. Is Roman dialect very different to Standard Italian?



No. Quite similar.


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## bubbyx

Cossue said:


> I don't agree. It's true that Spanish lost some of the Latin [f] (Galician and Portuguese either preserved them or lenited them when in between vowels: Sp. _dehesa_, G-P _devesa _< Latin _defensam_) and transformed some consonant clusters containing [l] into [x] (vs Galician-Portuguese lateral [ʎ]). It also reduced the consonant clusters -mb- > -mm- > -m-, which is preserved in Galician and Portuguese.
> 
> But, on the other hand, Galician and Portuguese lost intervocalic Latin [d], while Spanish partially preserved it (G _vao_, P _vau_, Sp _vado _< Latim vadum 'ford'); they also lost intervocalic [l] which is preserved in Spanish (G _ceo_, P _céu_, Sp. _cielo _< Latim celum 'sky'); and they lost intervocalic [n] which is also preserved in Spanish (G _lúa_, P _lua_, Sp. _luna _< Latin _lunam_), while the heavy nasalization of vowels produced the epenthesis of nasal consonant everywhere (cf. G. _niño_, P. _ninho_ from medieval G-P _nîo_, vs Sp. _nido _< Latim _nidum _'nest'; Galician _engadir _from medieval G-P ê_ãdir _vs. Sp _añadir _< Latin *_innaddere _'to add'). Additionally Galician and Portuguese transformed initial stop/fricative consonant + lateral clusters into -ch- (Galician [tʃ], Portuguese [ʃ]), while Spanish just palatalized the lateral: G _chuvia_/_choiva_, P _chuva_, Sp. _lluvia_< Latin pluviam 'rain').



I agree Spanish pronunciation seems closer to Latin than Portuguese even though Spanish spelling sometimes look different but that is because Spanish has a more phonetic spelling system


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## Nino83

Cossue said:


> I don't agree. [...] Galician and Portuguese lost intervocalic Latin [d]



Portuguese didn't lost regurarly intervocalic /d/ (see _modu(m)_ (CL),  _modo_ (IT, PO), _medius, a, um_ (CL), _media, média_ (IT, PO)). 

Anyway both Spanish and Portuguese have some change in consonants, so I'm not sure that Spanish has less changes (see, for example, past participle of the verb _facere,_ _factu(m)_, _fatto, feito, hecho_).


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## Cossue

Hi. In fact _modo_ or _médio_ are not good examples of preservation of intervocalic [d], since they are learned loanwords, not patrimonial words. You can compare _médio_ with the patrimonial Portuguese _meio_ 'half something; intermediate', or with Galician (frequent) place name _Vilameá_ < medieval Villa Mediana. I have also consulted the historical grammar of reference for Galician (Ferreiro), and the loss of intervocalic [d] is regular in patrimonial words – I guess this is also valid for Portuguese, except maybe for words which Portuguese took from Moçarab southern speeches.

On which language is more innovative or takes further the transformation of Latin consonant sounds, I guess that one can elaborate a list of 100/1000 patrimonial words and add a + to the language that has lost a consonant, experimented the epenthese of a new consonant, or taken further the transformation of a consonant sound or consonant cluster (as you indicates for Spanish hecho vs. G-P feito). Anyway, I think that it is usually easier to guess the etymology of a Castilian Spanish word (when that word has a Latin etymology), than that of a Portuguese or Galician word. A selection:

VL                P/G                    Sp
fabulare        falar                   hablar       'to speak'
femina          fémia                  hembra     'female' 
filectu          feto/fieito            helecho     'fern'
iactare         geitar/xeitar         echar        'to throw'
mea             minha/miña          mía           'mine, my' (f. s.)
*mustidu      murcho               mustio       'withered'
nudu            nu                     (des)nudo  'naked'
plegare        chegar                llegar         'to arrive'
plumbu         chumbo              plomo         'lead'
venire          vir                     venir           'to come'

Etc, etc.


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## francisgranada

In case of the Portuguese, the loss of the intervocalic "n" and other consonants, the nasals and also some plurals make surely more difficult to understand some words from the "Latin point of view" comparing with the Spanish. E.g. vir (Sp. venir), ter (tener), boa (buena), gerais (generales), nações (naciones), pai (padre), mãe (madre), céu (cielo), etc ... In general, the spoken Portuguese is quite difficult to understand, not only for "native Latins"  but for Italians and Spaniards as well (it has already been discussed in details in other threads). 

Another feature that makes the Portuguese a bit difficult to understand spontaneousely are the compound forms like _no_ (Sp. en el), _numa _(en una), _da _(de la), _nas _(en las), etc ...

As to the learned words (cultismos, semicultismos), they are present in all the Romance languages. From the point of view of the original question it's not important if some word is learned or patrimonial. I think not even the difference in the compound tenses (concordance, habere vs. esse aux. verb) is relevant, as they didn't exist in (classical) Latin.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Testing1234567 said:


> In terms of verb conjugation, French has already lost the *-o *ending in the first-person singular present indicative, and if I continue to compare, I would _hardly_ be able to categorize French as a Romance language.



Not quite correct: the -o survives in the -e ending of the -er conjugation (and in some irregular verbs).
Hardly... it's difficult due to phonetic changes, but French is still a Romance language, more so in the purely written form, even if from the Cantonese point of view that may seem different.



Nino83 said:


> You're right because of the vowel merger that happened in Vulgar Latin, the early loss of final _-m_ and the replacement of genitive and dative with _de + ablativo_ and _ad + accusativo_.



Romanian has retained a five case sistem (morphologically, 3 cases).



Nino83 said:


> In vocabulary there are two groups: Italian and French on one side and Spanish and Portuguese on the other.
> *I think that Italian and French vocabulary is more conservative.*



This is quite the opposite of what they taught me in the university: peripheric languages (in this case, not only the Ibero-Romance languages, but also Romanian) usually retain more archaic vocabulary.


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> This is quite the opposite of what they taught me in the university: peripheric languages (in this case, not only the Ibero-Romance languages, but also Romanian) usually retain more archaic vocabulary.



Yes, it's true if we're referring to Classical Latin but it's less exact if we're speaking about Vulgar Latin (Spanish had some Arabic influence and loans). The OP isn't so clear (CL or VL?). 



francisgranada said:


> In general, the spoken Portuguese is quite difficult to understand, not only for "native Latins" but for Italians and Spaniards as well (it has already been discussed in details in other threads).



In fact it's undisputed that in spoken language Spanish is more conservative. 

With respect to written language, I correct my previous statement. 
In written morphology, Portuguese  is more conservative than Spanish in vowels but Portuguese has a little more changes in consonants (but, for me, words like _hijo_, _hecho_ are hardly recognizable).


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ...   (but, for me, words like _hijo_, _hecho_ are hardly recognizable).


You are surely right. Comapring the Italian (partly also the Portuguese) and Spanish, I have the impression that the Italian is more "homogenous" while the Spanish is more "extreme", both in case of patrimonial and learned loan words. With "extreme" I mean that in some cases it's very close to Latin but in other cases quite far from Latin, comparing with the Italian. Some examples:

 Sp. flor, vivimos, me amas, medio, excepto, directo, sin, ave  ... but  hijo, hecho, derecho, hoja, hembra, abeja ...
 It.  fiore, viviamo, mi ami, mezzo, eccetto, diretto, senza, uccello  ... and  figlio, fatto, diritto, foglia, femmina, ape ...


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## Angelo di fuoco

You know, although Arabisms give the Ibero-Romance languages and Catalan a distinctive flavour, the Germanic _bara_/_bière_ is hardly more Latinate than the Arabic _ataúd_, and the Greek _sindaco_ not any more than the Arabic _alcalde_. So in my opinion it's basically tit for tat.


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## XiaoRoel

Dentro de los romances hispánicos el gallego y el portugués al norte del Duero no tienen casi arabismos (los pocos que se usan son préstamos del español (en el caso del gallego) y del portugués sureño en el caso del portugués norteño.
Los arabismos en español crecen a medida que uno se desplaza hacia el sur en la Península Ibérica. En el norte brillan por su ausencia o son los generales del español actual estándar.


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## bubbyx

In my opinion, the Arabic loan words in Spanish and Portuguese affect these languages as much as the Native American words for chocolate, tomatoes and potatoes affected these languages. In other words I believe that these borrowings are mostly used to name foreign things and foreign concepts. They do not affect the core vocabulary of Spanish/Portuguese and like one of the posters above said, the rest of the Romance languages also have loan words from Germanic/Greek to name foreign items and concepts. The only Romance language in which non latin words affect the vocabulary and language as a whole is Romanian in which even the words for love and yes have Slavic origin. This means that Romanian has significantly moved away from Latin, since even these basic words were replaced. On the other hand Romanian has kept the Latin declension system. But again, this is often attributed to the Slavic influence since this is a feature of Slavic languages. Also the Romanian declension system is not exactly similar to the Latin one 

Would it be fair then to say that Romanian is the furthest away from Latin overall?
So
LATIN
1. Italian
2.
3.
4.
5. Romanian?


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## bubbyx

It seems like everyone is unsure whether Spanish or Portuguese is closer to Latin. So far French has not been mentioned much. I think in terms of pronunciation both French and Portuguese are the same distance away from Latin since they have developed extra sounds and phonemes.


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## killerbee256

bubbyx said:


> I think in terms of pronunciation both French and Portuguese are the same distance away from Latin since they have developed extra sounds and phonemes.


 I would have to disagree with that, due to the fact that portuguese (Brazilian more so then European) is still mutual intelligible with Spanish to a large degree while French is not mutual intelligible with any other romance languages in it's spoken form.


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## caelum

Mutually intelligible, no; I certainly wouldn't go that far. Maybe in writing, but by no means would an average Spanish speaker understand spoken Portuguese.

French is definitely quite far from Latin. It retains a lot Latin loans, which doesn't count for much in this discussion, but the core vocab is very Germanic and it has been simplified and altered to the point of not even resembling Latin (whereas you can definitely see the relation in Spanish and Italian). (compare Latin _cauda [kau.da] _with sp. _cola [ko.la]_ and fr. _queue [kø]_​)


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## killerbee256

caelum said:


> Mutually intelligible, no; I certainly wouldn't go that far. Maybe in writing, but by no means would an average Spanish speaker understand spoken Portuguese


I know it's anecdotal, but I can have conversations with Mexicans here in the US using portuguese I learned in basil, but I will grant it to you I try use the most conservative mix of different dialects from Brasil and Portugal as I can, for example overall using less nasal/guttural Brazilian pronunciation but pronouncing d as d (on*d*e obriga*d*o) as in Portugal not g as in the (southern) Brazilian dialect I learned. Heck that got me by in _Italy_ as long as I used Italian verb conjurations.


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## Nino83

If I had to express an overall opinion, I'd say: 
1. Italian 
2. Spanish 
3. Portuguese 
4. French 
5. Romanian


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## caelum

Nino83 said:


> If I had to express an overall opinion, I'd say:
> 1. Italian
> 2. Spanish
> 3. Portuguese
> 4. French
> 5. Romanian



I concur, however evidently there will be disagreements as the scale of comparison is unstable at best.


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## Montesacro

caelum said:


> Mutually intelligible, no; I certainly wouldn't go that far. Maybe in writing, but by no means would an average Spanish speaker understand spoken Portuguese.
> 
> French is definitely quite far from Latin. It retains a lot Latin loans, which doesn't count for much in this discussion, *but the core vocab is very Germanic* and it has been simplified and altered to the point of not even resembling Latin (whereas you can definitely see the relation in Spanish and Italian). (compare Latin _cauda [kau.da] _with sp. _cola [ko.la]_ and fr. _queue [kø]_​)



So French has a very Germanic core vocabulary!
It's amazing, you never cease to learn


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## berndf

Montesacro said:


> So French has a very Germanic core vocabulary!
> It's amazing, you never cease to learn


There is _some _Germanic core vocabulary in French but it is still _very_ Romance and only _a little_ Germanic.


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## Montesacro

Of course.
I was being ironic...


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## caelum

Sarcastic, not ironic.

Yes, the vocab is romance, no doubts there, but the Germanic vocab is significant and prominent.


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## Nino83

According to Henriette Walter and Gérard Walter (Dictionnaire des mots d'origine étrangère, cited on wikipedia) on 35000 word of dictionaries like _Petite Larousse_ (common French), only 4200 (12%) are foreign words (1054 come from English and are recent borrowings, but this is frequent also in other languages) and only 867 come from German and Dutch, equal to 2,5%.


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## francisgranada

It would be interesting to know, whether the "mots d'origine étrangère" are only "later" loanwords, or they include all the etymologically non-Latin words. For example, the examples given here are evidently later loanwords and not those that form the "core vocabulary". 

However, I absolutely don't think that the French vocabulary is "extremely" Germanic. Many - perhaps most - of the "old" words of Germanic origin are present also in Italian (and partially also in Spanish) as e.g. _birra, blu, guardare, guerra, guanto, roba .... _


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## Angelo di fuoco

except blu/bleu, all of them are present in Spanish, although "guardar" in Spanish doesn't mean the same as in Italian, it's more akin to French "garder", although not identical.


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## francisgranada

Also _birra_ ... (_cerveza _in Spanish).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Right, forgot about that one.


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> It would be interesting to know, whether the "mots d'origine étrangère" are only "later" loanwords, or they include all the etymologically non-Latin words. For example, the examples given here are evidently later loanwords and not those that form the "core vocabulary".



550 from ancient Germanic languages, 164 from German and 153 from Dutch. 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> except blu/bleu, all of them are present in Spanish, although "guardar" in Spanish doesn't mean the same as in Italian, it's more akin to French "garder", although not identical.



Yes, but also in some Italian word the verb _guardare_ has this meaning, as, for example, in _guardaroba_ (_guarda-roupa, guardarropa_ in Portuguese and Spanish language).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Yep, and there were times when mirar & mirare had the same meaning.


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Yep, and there were times when mirar & mirare had the same meaning.



Yes, it's a very literary synonym.


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## Dan2

caelum said:


> French ... the core vocab is very Germanic


One more comment on this: English texts often look very "Romance", and it's often said that English has more words of Romance origin than of any other, but we say that the core vocabulary of English is very Germanic because most of the highest-frequency words of English are Germanic.  So if the above claim is correct, we should expect most (or at least a very significant fraction) of the highest frequency words of French to be of Germanic origin.  I just went thru a list of the 100 most frequent words of French, and was able to relate every single word on the list to Latin or other Romance languages.  (I realize that being able to relate a French word to other Romance languages doesn't prove that it isn't of Germanic origin, because some Germanic borrowings are found in more than one Romance language, as has been discussed.  But a) the point of this thread is to _compare _the Romance languages with respect to their closeness to Latin, so if French has a Germanic-origin word with cognates in other Romance languages (like "guerre"), that doesn't "count against" French or make it more "Germanic"; and b) in any case I believe that all 100 of the words on the list are of Latin origin (but as an amateur I suppose I could have missed one or two).)

Conclusion: the claim quoted above is _very _misleading.


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## francisgranada

Dan2 said:


> ...English texts often look very "Romance", and it's often said that English has more words of Romance origin than of any other, but we say that the core vocabulary of English is very Germanic because most of the highest-frequency words of English are Germanic ... Conclusion: the claim quoted above is _very _misleading.


I fully agree. It is important to consider the "weigh" (importance) of the words as well, not only their presence in a given language. 

The same is valid for the Spanish words of Arabic origin: the Arabic influence on Spanish vocabulary is also often overestimated (in my oppinion). There are hundreds of Arabic words in Spanish, but in an average text/dialog  you'll find _very _few or _none _of them. Plus, many words of Arabic origin in Spanish are present in other Romance (and non-Romance) langages as well.


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## Angelo di fuoco

The number of international Arabisms is tiny in comparison to the number of Arabisms present in the Ibero-Romance languages (including Catalan to some degree). You'll find them practically everywhere: from agriculture to administration to military-related topics to crafts, all in all 68 semantic fields.


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## bubbyx

Angelo di fuoco said:


> The number of international Arabisms is tiny in comparison to the number of Arabisms present in the Ibero-Romance languages (including Catalan to some degree). You'll find them practically everywhere: from agriculture to administration to military-related topics to crafts, all in all 68 semantic fields.



There are Arabism and other borrowings in other Romance languages too. In my opinion borrowings, especially nouns are just superficial characteristic of a language. There are so many words that were borrowed from the Indigenous American languages into every language, tomato, potato, chocolate, avocado, coconut, etc These don't make these languages heavily influenced by Native American languages. In fact, most of the Arabism in Spanish and Portuguese have equivalents in other European languages like sugar, algebra.", apricot etc


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## Angelo di fuoco

I think you missed the point: there are international Arabisms (a rather small number) and there is a much larger number of Iberic Arabisms (basically, the majority of the nouns beginning with a in Castilian and Portuguese; Catalan borrowed Arabic nouns without the articles). Zanahoria (carrot), alubia (bean), alféizar (windowsill), alfombra (carpet), almohada (cushion, pillow), albañil (builder, bricklayer), atarazana (dockyard), ataúd (coffin), algazara (clamour) to name but a few. The only two words that have an equivalent in a non-Iberic language is algazara (gazarra in Italian, a rather rare word), and ataúd (tavuto in Neapoletan).
When you say "*most* of the Arabisms in Spanish and Portuguese have equivalents in other European languages" you are heavily mistaken. The only European languages to boast a comparable number of Arabisms are Southern Italian varieties, particularly Sicilian.


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## bubbyx

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I think you missed the point: there are international Arabisms (a rather small number) and there is a much larger number of Iberic Arabisms (basically, the majority of the nouns beginning with a in Castilian and Portuguese; Catalan borrowed Arabic nouns without the articles). Zanahoria (carrot), alubia (bean), alféizar (windowsill), alfombra (carpet), almohada (cushion, pillow), albañil (builder, bricklayer), atarazana (dockyard), ataúd (coffin), algazara (clamour) to name but a few. The only two words that have an equivalent in a non-Iberic language is algazara (gazarra in Italian, a rather rare word), and ataúd (tavuto in Neapoletan).
> When you say "*most* of the Arabisms in Spanish and Portuguese have equivalents in other European languages" you are heavily mistaken. The only European languages to boast a comparable number of Arabisms are Southern Italian varieties, particularly Sicilian.



I'm not saying that Arabic didn't influence Spanish and Portuguese. I'm just saying that the influence is not as strong as people think, because many people believe that Iberian languages are "heavily" influenced by Arabic, which is not true in my opinion. Most borrowed words from Arabic are nouns like carrots and beans (again just like chocolate, tomato etc, they were products introduced by Arabs just like chocolate came from the Aztecs), which are a very superficial component of a language. Adjectives, adverbs and verbs are more important because nouns are always added as time goes by since new concepts are introduced and new products are invented. 

Now we have computers, cars, airplanes, skyscrapers, rockets, spacecrafts, phones, buses, trains and thousands of other things the Romans did not have. Imagine if the Americans decide to name these items using Germanic and not Latin names. These will eventually be borrowed into French, Italian and other languages. Would this mean that they would be less Latin now because of the heavy influence of English? Those are just names for new products, besides most nouns in the Iberian languages came from Latin anyway. Also when people talk about the amount of borrowed words from Arabic in Spanish and Portuguese, place names are always include which I find very strange since place names do not mean significant linguistic influence, just that those places were once occupied by different people. Like the Spanish place names in the US, the Aboriginal place names in Australia etc, there are Arabic place names in Iberia. Place names should not be counted towards borrowed words


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## Hulalessar

Whatever the number of Arabisms in Spanish there is no possibility of anyone thinking it is a Semitic language. However, puzzlement over why English is not classed as a Romance language is not uncommon. The plain fact is that to a native English speaker who has never learned a foreign language all the other Germanic languages, and indeed Old English, are totally opaque. On the other hand he has a sporting chance of at least getting the idea of what a text in, say, French is about, though it does depend on the subject.


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