French

[puellapaschalis]

Because I got accused of hijacking the thread about a Polish Mass.

I say French is a Romance language as opposed to a Romano-Germanic language (which to my knowledge isn't even a seriously accepted language classification). Despite vocabulary influence from Frankish - a Germanic language - French grammar is clearly identifiable as a genetic descendant of Latin.
The influence of Norman French on Old English does not make Modern English Romano-Germanic; the influence of English upon German does not make German Ingvaeonic; the influence of Chinese on Tagalog does not make Tagalog a Chinese language.
The question of language classification is completely independent from the history of any group of people who might speak it.

Dus

Edited April 29, 2008 by puellapaschalis

[StColette]

It's a Romance language and no it does not sound like Polish. A friend of mine speaks Polish and I've gone through 6 years of French lol They sound nothing alike

[Aloysius]

yeah it's a Romance language. all languages influence each other, and influences do not alter language groupings... groupings are based upon what languages are descended from not what languages influenced them.

English is a rare little mutt of a language, though, which almost entirely (or at least 50%+) consists of influences rather than descent... but most other languages though they have influences, even heavy influences sometimes, retain as their core element the lexicon and grammar they have from their parent/ancestor languages.

French and Polish might sound alike to someone who spoke neither French nor Polish. I donno, perhaps they have some similar sounding phonemes that stand out to an anglophone or something, I've never tried comparing them. but on a morphemic level, definitely not.

[puellapaschalis]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1513850' date='Apr 29 2008, 05:24 PM']English is a rare little mutt of a language, though, which almost entirely (or at least 50%+) consists of influences rather than descent... but most other languages though they have influences, even heavy influences sometimes, retain as their core element the lexicon and grammar they have from their parent/ancestor languages.[/quote]

Yup. Indicators of this are often the "closed classes" in a language - pronouns, for example. Hence my bringing up the example of Old Norse as spoken in the Danelaw having such an enormous influence on the local Old English that the 3pl pers pronouns switched to the ON pattern - and yet we still don't say that English is North Germanic.

Or, well, at least anyone who does deserves a and some extra linguistics homework!

[Justin86]

The question should be, "Do the French smell of elderberries?" Answers would be "yes", and "I'm a loser so I say no."

[cathoholic_anonymous]

I voted 'romance' and 'no'. I studied Polish for a term and I don't hear many prosodic similarities between French and Polish.

[Justin86]

[quote name='Cathoholic Anonymous' post='1513879' date='Apr 30 2008, 01:01 AM']I voted 'romance' and 'no'. I studied Polish for a term and I don't hear many prosodic similarities between French and Polish.[/quote]
I've never studied either language myself, but I've met native speakers of both, and I've never noticed any similarities. I thought everyone knew French was a Romance language anyway. Germanic, what?

[fides quarens intellectum]

wow. i don't think i have seen poll results like this before.

[puellapaschalis]

[quote name='fides quarens intellectum' post='1513904' date='Apr 29 2008, 06:32 PM']wow. i don't think i have seen poll results like this before.[/quote]

Quite. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get this kind of thing on "Is Christ really present in the Eucharist" or something

[Old_Joe]

[quote name='Justin86' post='1513872' date='Apr 29 2008, 10:56 AM']The question should be, "Do the French smell of elderberries?" Answers would be "yes", and "I'm a loser so I say no." [/quote]

tsk tsk.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='puellapaschalis' post='1513929' date='Apr 29 2008, 12:48 PM']Quite. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get this kind of thing on "Is Christ really present in the Eucharist" or something [/quote]
depends upon when you put that poll up... phatmass has seasons where it doesn't seem to have a protestant in the place because they've either converted or given up, and if your timing is right you can sometimes see poll results such as that in the debate table. pretty much any day of the week and any week of the year you could put such a poll up in transmundane and get poll results like these.... probably even in Vocation Station just because I don't think non-Catholics would go there.

and luckily for phatmass, we attract the honest bunches. whereas in the real world you might poll a 100% Catholic audience about that and get a mixed answer, on phatmass you know pretty much all the votes of people who claim to be Catholic are going to be right.

[alicemary]

I love these polls!!! French is such a musical language, where I hear Polish as being very gutteral. Interesting!!

[CatherineM]

I used to be able to speak French, but can't anymore, but I can still read it. I like watching cartoons on the French channel with the closed captioning on just to freak my husband out.

[StColette]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1514023' date='Apr 29 2008, 01:26 PM']I used to be able to speak French, but can't anymore, but I can still read it. I like watching cartoons on the French channel with the closed captioning on just to freak my husband out.[/quote]

lol Watch Cinderella in French!! It's too funny!! The little mice even speak in French! It's what my roommates and I would watch to relieve Finals/Midterms stress!

[picchick]

I am sorry......