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Why is it that Spanish and Italian are freakishly similar (for the most part) whilst French* and German are in some sense alien tongue when compared to the former two, even though geographically the countries are pretty close by?

*Alright, perhaps Italian and French do have some similarities across the board. But I am referring to the superficial tone of the languages.

Artemisia
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  • What are you referring to in particular? By the way, the difference between German and the other three you listed is simply because German is a Germanic language (like English and Swedish) and in fact, they all look similar, while French, Spanish and Italian are Romance languages. That's a first thing to note, the most basic one I'd say. – Alenanno Jan 14 '14 at 10:42
  • There are some who claim the phonetic peculiarities of French, compared to rest of Romance, are due to influence from Germanic languages. But then Italian shares with German usage of "she" to mean also "respectful you" and some other small bits I can't remember now, so perhaps there was some mutual influence after all due to contact. – Joe Pineda Jan 14 '14 at 13:23
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    @JoePineda - As far as I know, German uses "they" to mean "respectful you", not "she". Actually, in German "they" sounds exactly like "she", both are "sie", only the verbs are used in the 3rd person plural after both "they" and "respectful you", which is a good argument that it is "they", not "she". – Yellow Sky Jan 14 '14 at 15:17
  • Good point! Have to agree with you then, it's "they" more than "she" – Joe Pineda Jan 14 '14 at 16:59

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I join Alennano in hoping that you realise that French, Spanish and Italian are Romance languages, while English and German are Germanic languages. There is some disagreement about the sub-grouping of Romance: many (though perhaps not all) scholars posit a division into Eastern Romance (Italian, Romanian and the other Balkan Romance languages) and Western Romance (Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance). Any such division has to be based on shared innovations within each sub-group. There is no doubt that Spanish and Italian sound rather similar to each other, and sound rather different from French or Portuguese, but this is because Spanish and Italian are both phonologically quite conservative (that is: their sound system has changed less than other Romance languages in comparison with Latin). This is a shared retention and is not relevant for sub-grouping, which needs to be based on shared innovations only.

fdb
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    Dante Alighieri in his book "De vulgari eloquentia" (written in about 1305 when the vernacular Romance languages weren't yet called Italian, Spanish, and French) divides the vernacular Romance languages of the time according to the word for "yes", and names 3 of them: oc language (Provensal), oïl language (French) and sì language (Italian and Spanish). So even 700 years ago Italian and Spanish seemed alike and were opposed to the rest of the Romance languages, at least Dante thought so. – Yellow Sky Jan 14 '14 at 11:43
  • Yes, phonologically Italian and Spanish are quite similar. Add to it that most Romance have a very similar grammar and similar word roots, and it nets that there's a lot of mutual intelligibility. On the other hand, there are a lot of grammar peculiarities shared by Italian and French that Castillian and Portuguese lack, such as participles of some verbs using "to be" instead of "to have", constructions used to mean "there is/are", particles to mean "that we're talking about" and so on. – Joe Pineda Jan 14 '14 at 13:21
  • That actually explains it. When I speak these languages, I am so conscious of the change in tone between the Germanic and Romantic languages. The Romantic languages roll off the tongue whilst the Germanic ones are... 'heavy'. And I have noticed the stringency in grammar varies as well. – Artemisia Jan 14 '14 at 22:50