# french vs. english



## dam_tem

My beloved French teacher(he's French himself), facinated by the power and glory of his language, claims that English is merely a "dialect" of The French. In fact, 70% of the English vocabulary, he goes on, comes directly from The Frech. 

What do you think about this?


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## denis-a-paris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

...

Word origins (of english words):

French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%


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## dam_tem

Thanks for the detailed informatin(and the link)
I'll mention this 28.3-next French class


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## Residente Calle 13

dam_tem said:
			
		

> My beloved French teacher(he's French himself), facinated by the power and glory of his language, claims that English is merely a "dialect" of The French. In fact, 70% of the English vocabulary, he goes on, comes directly from The Frech.
> 
> What do you think about this?



A great deal of Latin vocabulary is of Greek origin yet Latin is not a dialect of Greek. It's Latin with a lot of Greek words in it. English is a Germanic tongue with a great deal of Latin and French words in it.

While you can't write much prose in English without using a great deal of Latinate terms, have your French teacher manage to write a version of this message using only words of French origin.

Languages are more than just words. 
Languages sont plus que seulement mots.

See?


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## dam_tem

OK, I see...
[It's just that he's saying that so passionatly that sometimes is almost impossible to disagree with him. And when you try he gives you all the examples he can think of and never accepts he might be a bit wrong .(I like how he's so patriotic about evrything)]

Anyway
thanks for your opinions-I guess i'll have a lot of arguments on Friday


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## Bastoune

I remember hearing some historians make the same claim of your teacher -- that _at one time_ English was pretty much merely a dialect of French.  But I don't agree for reasons stated above, plus, if we want to use his reasoning, then French is merely a dialect of Latin, as are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. -- so English is really a sub-dialect of Latin?  I don't think so.


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## Residente Calle 13

Bastoune said:
			
		

> I remember hearing some historians make the same claim of your teacher -- that _at one time_ English was pretty much merely a dialect of French.  But I don't agree for reasons stated above, plus, if we want to use his reasoning, then French is merely a dialect of Latin, as are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. -- so English is really a sub-dialect of Latin?  I don't think so.


Well, some people argue that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French *are *just dialects of Latin. I don't think that's completely off. But you cannot write many sentences that make sense in any Romanca language without using at least one Latinate term. I can write sentences in English without using one word from French.

_I like fish. I'm hungry. I hate rain. I'm so tired of this crap._ etc. You can't do that in English using just French words.


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## dam_tem

Bastoune said:
			
		

> I remember hearing some historians make the same claim of your teacher -- that _at one time_ English was pretty much merely a dialect of French. But I don't agree for reasons stated above, plus, if we want to use his reasoning, then French is merely a dialect of Latin, as are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. -- so English is really a sub-dialect of Latin? I don't think so.


 
I agree with you about the reasoning part 
however it's an interesting issue to think about...


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## Lucinda131

I think English and French are separate languages in their own right. English often uses a Latinate term for more formal situations, and Germanic for less formal. For example "distribute" versus "give out"; "respond" versus "answer" and so on. English often has both a Latinate and a Germanic term for roughly the same word, but it's not a dialect of German, is it?!


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## Residente Calle 13

Lucinda131 said:
			
		

> English often has both a Latinate and a Germanic term for roughly the same word, but it's not a dialect of German, is it?!



Not a dialect of...it's _*a cousin*_ of.


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## Bastoune

Residente Calle 13 said:
			
		

> Well, some people argue that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French *are *just dialects of Latin. I don't think that's completely off. But you cannot write many sentences that make sense in any Romanca language without using at least one Latinate term. I can write sentences in English without using one word from French.
> 
> _I like fish. I'm hungry. I hate rain. I'm so tired of this crap._ etc. You can't do that in English using just French words.


 
And you would be right to make the argument that they are just dialects of Latin.  But that is subjective to however one chooses to define just what constitutes a LANGUAGE.  _Qu'est-ce qu'une langue, au juste_?!?

Your second point is really great.


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## dam_tem

Residente Calle 13 said:
			
		

> Well, some people argue that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French *are *just dialects of Latin. I don't think that's completely off. But you cannot write many sentences that make sense in any Romanca language without using at least one Latinate term. I can write sentences in English without using one word from French.
> 
> _I like fish. I'm hungry. I hate rain. I'm so tired of this crap._ etc. You can't do that in English using just French words.


I like your  way of thinking
-even if some vocab. is from french  
when making Sentences there's not much of an 'influence' of any sort by French on English...


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## Lucinda131

Residente Calle 13 said:
			
		

> Not a dialect of...it's _*a cousin*_ of.


 
I agree German and English are cousins, and Dutch too is closely related to them. 

Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian are also close relatives - Romanian more distantly - but I still maintain they're languages rather than dialects. This is a great discussion though - you could debate it endlessly! I studied it at university and it always provoked some excellent points of view!


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## irisheyes0583

Technically speaking, if English were a dialect of French, then the two would be "mutually intelligible", i.e. French speakers & English speakers would be able to understand each other speaking their respective dialects with little problem (think: an American listening to a Scot and understanding, even though vocabulary / pronunciation / grammar is very different).

I have never met a French speaker who could understand English without having studied English first; has your French teacher?


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## Agnès E.

Bonjour dam tem,
Bienvenue sur le forum !

I have moved your thread to the Cultural Discussions forum, as the French-English one is aimed for translations and grammar questions only. 

===

Besides, I find your teacher's statement really strange, to say the least.
Anyone having studied English even superficially would never think claiming this.

Are you sure it was not just a joking, provocative question?


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## Cath.S.

_


			
				Residente Calle 1.3 said:
			
		


I like fish. I'm hungry. I hate rain. I'm so tired of this crap. etc. You can't do that in English using just French words.
		
Click to expand...

_ 
"Me ? I adore aquatic vertebrates. I am famished. I abhor liquid precipitation. The present feces truly fatigues me."  

Only kidding, of course!


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## maxiogee

Does it *matter* if one is a 'dialect' of the other? 
What matters is what has been done with each language, and there are those who would say that English has been more 'successful' in achieving international recognition than French has. 

Why else would French be trying to maintain its "purity" by seeking to ban English- and Americanisms? 
*If* _weekend_ originated in French, why then are the French so horrified by the spectre of "_le__weekend_"?


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## Outsider

dam_tem said:
			
		

> My beloved French teacher(he's French himself), facinated by the power and glory of his language, claims that English is merely a "dialect" of The French. In fact, 70% of the English vocabulary, he goes on, comes directly from The Frech.
> 
> What do you think about this?





			
				dam_tem said:
			
		

> OK, I see...
> [It's just that he's saying that so passionatly that sometimes is almost impossible to disagree with him. And when you try he gives you all the examples he can think of and never accepts he might be a bit wrong .(I like how he's so patriotic about evrything)]
> 
> Anyway
> thanks for your opinions-I guess i'll have a lot of arguments on Friday


Let him have his patriotic fun, but take anything he says about this matter with a grain of salt. 



			
				irisheyes0583 said:
			
		

> Technically speaking, if English were a dialect of French, then the two would be "mutually intelligible", i.e. French speakers & English speakers would be able to understand each other speaking their respective dialects with little problem (think: an American listening to a Scot and understanding, even though vocabulary / pronunciation / grammar is very different).
> 
> I have never met a French speaker who could understand English without having studied English first; has your French teacher?


There are degrees of mutual (un)inteligibility, and, anyway, some dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible.


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## Outsider

Agnès E. said:
			
		

> Are you sure it was not just a joking, provocative question?


Gallic humour?


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## Residente Calle 13

irisheyes0583 said:
			
		

> Technically speaking, if English were a dialect of French, then the two would be "mutually intelligible", i.e. French speakers & English speakers would be able to understand each other speaking their respective dialects with little problem (think: an American listening to a Scot and understanding, even though vocabulary / pronunciation / grammar is very different).



I don't know about that. Aparently some Arabic speakers cannot understand each other if they use their "local" version of Arabic. It's also subjective. Many Spanish speakers say they don't understand Caribbean Spanish. Is Caribbean Spanish not a dialect of Spanish? I think we could go on forever on this.


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## denis-a-paris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect

"There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference."

I am not a cunning ligusist, but it is all _very_ interesting to me as a German speaking, English native learning French. 

However, in no way can you call English a dialect of French. I believe that originally, French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Provençal, Romanish, Catalan, Romanian were either dialects of vulgar Latin, or a regional trainwreck of vulgar Latin and the local tongue. Over the course of 1000+ years they evolved and drifted apart.

Linguists have spent entire careers in studying and classifying languages. Clearly your professer is either twisted, or more probably just trying to excite the class and have a little fun.

One thing I do once in a while, just for fun, is to look at the conjugation of a verb in a romance language and compare that to an English (or German) verb conjugation. Even when comparing French with Italian (the closest to Latin, obviously) or Spanish makes me think... wow! What happened with French over 1000 years?!? It's much more intentionally overcomplicated!


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## Outsider

denis-a-paris said:
			
		

> or Spanish makes me think... wow! What happened with French over 1000 years?!? It's much more intentionally overcomplicated!


Don't you mean "much more simplified"?


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## Bastoune

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Does it *matter* if one is a 'dialect' of the other?
> What matters is what has been done with each language, and there are those who would say that English has been more 'successful' in achieving international recognition than French has.
> 
> Why else would French be trying to maintain its "purity" by seeking to ban English- and Americanisms?
> *If* _weekend_ originated in French, why then are the French so horrified by the spectre of "_le__weekend_"?


 
Well, for centuries, French achieved the international status English now enjoys only since the end of World War II.  

Even the Russian czar Nicholas and family spoke not Russian to each other, but *French.*

French needs to maintain it's purity, because honestly, the French spoken in France is contaminated with anglicisms like "le week-end."  L'Academie Francaise refuses to acknowledge the accomplishments of other francophone countries -- in avoiding anglicisms and in coming up with terminology that conforms with new technology (which is coming from the U.S., not France).

Even England is riding on the coat-tails of the U.S. when it comes to the superiority of English in the world.  If the U.S. spoke, say, German, and not English, the English language would be on equal footing with French, in terms of int'l influence.  And if the U.S. were francophone (as Thomas Jefferson would have liked), I doubt very many people would be interested in learning English at all!!!!!!

But England does begrudgingly (?) accept this fact, whereas the French have a problem accepting any other francophones as having legitimate claims to the French tongue. They tend to find that we are "blessed" to speak "their" tongue but don't tell "them" how to fix it because it's _their_ tongue after all.

I find that ridiculous.  Recently, an Congolese author I saw on TV5 said it's time for the French to let go and realize "it's our language, too."  

If the French would actually respect the rest of the Francophonie, then we'd see less of "les people en smoking qui passent le week-end sur le parking en face du building avec le snack-bar" and more actual FRENCH being spoken in France.


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## cuchuflete

egueule said:
			
		

> "Me ? I adore aquatic vertebrates. I am famished. I abhor liquid precipitation. The present feces truly fatigues me."
> 
> Only kidding, of course!



Nice kidding.  In fact, many of these words came into ME (Middle English) from MF (which is not current slang for __ ____, but Middle French).  Most of the MF words came from Latin.  Some, however, came directly into English from Latin,
skipping French entirely.  Thus, English feces are not French-flavored. Ditto liquid.


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## Residente Calle 13

Bastoune said:
			
		

> If the French would actually respect the rest of the Francophonie, then we'd see less of "les *people *en smoking qui passent le week-end sur le *parking *en face du building avec le snack-*bar*" and more actual FRENCH being spoken in France.



Oh, no reason to worry. Even when French-speakers speak English, they speak French. _*People  *_comes from _*peuple*. *Parking *_could not exist without the French _*parc *_(of Germanic origin anyway) and _*bar *_is also from French; the Old French _*barre*. _Oh well.

Who can stop languages from borrowing words? It's never been done before. Do you know how many of the words the French borrow from English are actually French words anyway? *Many!*


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## ampurdan

Bien sûr: humeur (Fr.) -> humour (Eng.) -> humour (Fr.)

Maybe French was only the means by which many Germanic (Frankish?) and Latin words come into English (a Germanic language in itself). Maybe France was just in the middle and French was the language of its kings. 

Anyway, les langues sont des êtres dissolues et incestueux, on doit avoir du mal à établir le parentage et la filiation entre elles...


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## Cath.S.

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Nice kidding. In fact, many of these words came into ME (Middle English) from MF (which is not current slang for __ ____, but Middle French). Most of the MF words came from Latin. Some, however, came directly into English from Latin,
> skipping French entirely. Thus, English feces are not French-flavored. Ditto liquid.


Tu as raison de le souligner.  J'ai été un peu paresseuse.


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## cuchuflete

> J'ai été un peu *paresseuse*.


 *perezoso**, sa**.*
 (De _pereza_ y _-oso_2).  
*pereza**.*
 (Del lat. _pigritĭa_).  
Therefore, we conclude that French adopted another foreign word, in this case from a neighbor.


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## nycphotography

dam_tem said:
			
		

> My beloved French teacher(he's French himself), facinated by the power and glory of his language, claims that English is merely a "dialect" of The French. In fact, 70% of the English vocabulary, he goes on, comes directly from The Frech.
> 
> What do you think about this?


 
I would suggest to him that if he spent more time researching and less time pontificating, it might lead to fewer public embarassments.  That is if I bothered to respond at all.  

Do you really think anyone in such a terrible a state of disinformation could possibly have arrived there by accident?


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## Jhorer Brishti

nycphotography said:
			
		

> Do you really think anyone in such a terrible a state of disinformation could possibly have arrived there by accident?


 
  nycphoto, Now, that's a tad harsh(albeit funny). We all get carried away by enthusiasm sometimes so much so as to invent irrational and hyberbolic facts that seem supported by whatever crazy logic and resources are at our side at the time..


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## Jhorer Brishti

denis-a-paris said:
			
		

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect
> One thing I do once in a while, just for fun, is to look at the conjugation of a verb in a romance language and compare that to an English (or German) verb conjugation. Even when comparing French with Italian (the closest to Latin, obviously) or Spanish makes me think... wow! What happened with French over 1000 years?!? It's much more intentionally overcomplicated!


 
Of the five major Romance languages, Spanish verbal conjugation has experienced the least innovation. Particularly in the present tense, the conjugations are almost _exact _when comparing Classical Latin and Modern Spanish_._:
Classical Lat. Spanish

Laudare(to praise):   Alabar
Laudo                     Alabo
Laudas                    Alabas
Laudat                    Alaba 
Laudamus                Alabamos
Laudatis                  Alabáis(Vosotros form- restricted use)
Laudant                  Alaban

So in this regard Spanish is much closer to the Latin original than Italian. Sardinian is even more closer than Spanish with regards to verbal forms.


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## Brioche

Outsider said:
			
		

> There are degrees of mutual (un)inteligibility, and, anyway, some dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible.


 
That is because they are not really dialects.
It's part of the Chinese national myth that Chinese people speak the Chinese language, hence the claim that all the _languages_ of China are merely _dialects_ of Chinese.

If we still had a Roman Empire, we could all patriotically pretend that the Romance languages were _dialects_ of Latin, rather than the separate languages that they are. 

Often the choice language or dialect is more political than linguistic.


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## danielfranco

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that the English language has the largest vocabulary of any other language, but that it has pretty much duplicates or triplicates of the same words but from different origins. So that about three fourths of English words are of Greek-Latin origins.
However, of the one hundred words most often used in English in daily speech, one hundred of them are of Germanic origin!
So, surely, French is stuck in there, somewhere, waiting for people to be done with all those German monosyllables...
Laters!
Dan F


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## Outsider

Brioche said:
			
		

> That is because they are not really dialects.
> It's part of the Chinese national myth that Chinese people speak the Chinese language, hence the claim that all the _languages_ of China are merely _dialects_ of Chinese.


That's arguable, since the concept of language is not purely linguistic. It's a _socio_linguistic concept. And even linguists can't seem to agree on where to draw the line between language and dialect. I once saw one call Portuguese a dialect of Spanish.



			
				Brioche said:
			
		

> If we still had a Roman Empire, we could all patriotically pretend that the Romance languages were _dialects_ of Latin, rather than the separate languages that they are.


If we still had a Roman Empire, it's likely that there would be no Romance languages, but, accepting your point, what would be the problem with calling them dialects of Latin? We call the dialects of German and Arabic dialects, don't we?


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## Residente Calle 13

Outsider said:
			
		

> If we still had a Roman Empire, it's likely that there would be no Romance languages, but, accepting your point, what would be the problem with calling them dialects of Latin? We call the dialects of German and Arabic dialects, don't we?


One of the problems with *dialect of *is that it can be construed as *kind of* or *type of*. I don't think many Catalaners would have a problem with saying that both Spanish and Catalan are modern *types of* Latin. The problem arises when people suggest that Catalan is a *type of* Castelian Spanish especially when they suggest it's an "incorrect" version.

_*Dialect *_has often been used in that way so it's often a loaded term. Calling Catalan a dialect of Castelian is both inaccurate and disparaging.

As it pertains to the main question in this thread, English is not a *type of* French in the way it's argued that Picard and Wallon are. It's a type of Germanic language which happens to have a great deal of French words in it. Only about ten percent of English can be traced to Old English. But that ten percent, along with its grammar, is the ten percent that counts.


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## Jhorer Brishti

Another thing is that a dialect is distinct from being another language(subjective to many) because it has not mutated a great deal enough from the standard. Modern Romance languages are, although quite similar to each other, _vastly _differentiated from Latin. In that sense I believe it would be quite presumptuous to state that Romance languages are dialects of Latin, having lost all declensions, most adverbs and prepositions, the neuter gender and a whole host of other complex grammatical points.


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## ireney

I can speak English adequately, French inadequately, understand Italian well, Spanish in a "pin the tail on the donkey" sort of way and not a blessed word from any other language, although my German friends have tried repeatedly to hammer some knowledge of their language through my thick skull with no success (ok, so I can understand what mit, und, uber, Her, von and volkswagen (sp?) mean and I know how to send knuffels)

Well my take as a more or less outsider (meaning that Greek may have common roots with other European languages but cannot be argued to be another one's dialect or whatever from whomever -nice sentence that) these are my observations:

1. There are distinct similarities in the vocabulary although the meaning is not always the same (off the top of my head I can remember Je t'embrasse and I embrace you - plus in French you must be more careful than I am and REMEMBER you have to type to s)

2. That's where similarities end. Take a closer look at the syntax and the grammar. Delve a bit in the way each language makes you think of things (sorry about that, I don't know the English terminology of cognitive psychology). Think of the 'backbone' of each language (Subject + verb; it must be a verb whose use would serve you in a dire situation, I eat, I sleep). You will s_till _find some similarities but the 'groupings' of languages change a bit 

3. There's no such thing as a dialect which one cannot understand if he speaks the 'mainstream' language, provided a) he spends some time learning one or two endings and such b) knows all the possible words of his language. (do I make any sense?)

That, to me, means that it's too far fetched to call any European language the dialect of another. Related yes, dialects no. After all, why not taking just one more step back and say that all languages are dialects of the IE one? Then we can all hug and be a big happy family


P.S. A Greek ex-prime minister and all around strange intellectual guy managed, by really stretching sentences and words to their limit sometimes, to compose a short speech in English, using only words derived from Greek -bar words like 'and', 'the', 'a(n)'. If you want to, you can make any claim you want


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## macta123

I will say No. French and English are quite different. The gramatical difference being most conspicious. The spellings and pronounciation being the other. English has its own identity and French, it's own. The vocabulary is never altogether the same. Just that few of them(words) is common.


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