Talk:Romance languages/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 →
Discussions archived here are those initiated from 2003 through 2005.

Contents

First discussions

I'm sorry but stupidity is reaching limits. if you want to put dialects in here, you will have to put hundreds. If you want to put varieties they put all of then, for Spanish and French also. Why Portuguese and minorized languages only? When, in reality, there is differences in grammar between the various varieties of Spanish when Portuguese hasnt? Or are you basing your non-sence ideas on xenophobic websites? -Pedro 17:40, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The words "group", "division" and "section" are ones that I have supplied myself in outlining the tree, and they will continue to be useful for keeping logical track of things as long as I'm on the project. Ethnologue.com doesn't use any such terms except for "family" at the very top of its index. Any comments about what the "official" terms should be, or whether there should be any at all will be helpful. Eclecticology

The words can be fine, the point is the content, as differences among theories can be relevant and produce different classifications. I would perhaps wonder if it's possible to render the scheme less absolute, or open to be not only dependent on ISO codes, allowing some notes about variable interpretations and respective reasons.
In Sardinian language there is an ISO code for Sardinian, Sassarese - (SIL Code, SDC) that, listed as it is now, could bring to consider Sassarese - 30,000 speakers? - as a version, while it generally is not accorded the same importance as the other three (and I would agree it has not that dignity - many other local idioms can be more interesting than sassarese like, just to mention one, in the little village of Gavoi, where there are hebrew etyma and tuscan phonemes, among all); this obviously depends on related theories and authors. Respecting the classification here adopted, but needing to include another classification, how could differences be rendered? - Gianfranco

Thank you for your comments, Gianfranco. In undertaking efforts on the Romance languages, my intention was more to expand the structure, than to be an authority on anything. I would not hold the SIL to be the final authority on anything, but merely a very influential one. At what point two ways of speaking can be considered two distinct languages is and will continue to be a matter of dispute. There is still room left to add further languages. The 30,000 speakers of Sassarese are certainly not the smallest living group that SIL recognizes in the Romance languages, but as groups get smaller it is understandable that they may never have heard about them. There is much merit to your argument in favour of including Gavoiese(?); you are in a much better position to know the facts than I am here in western Canada. Your reference to hebrew etyma is especially interesting because of its parallel in Sardinian to the jewish versions of the major European languages.
So, my conclusion: Go ahead and add a line about the language of Gavoi at the appropriate place, and its non-recognition by SIL. The details of what makes it linguistically different, however, might be better placed on the Sardinian language page since that page has already been started.

(sorry for late answer)
I completely agree, I wasn't discussing the value of your contribution (I sincerely regret if this appeared in my words - I would instead thank you) :-)
About Sardinian language and its classification, the fact is that the main authors (M.L.Wagner, Campus, Bottiglioni, Spano, Luedtke, Sanna, the first that I can remember) suggest different classifications. Eduardo Blasco Ferrer summarises all of them in the form that is already in the article, but still some intense debate is on.
The point is how to attribute the correct value to each of the possible variants: Sassarese has been recognised as directly a version of Sardinian by some, while this was denied by others (it is indeed a half-way hybrid between logudorese and gallurese, so it happens to be more a filiation of gallurese than a sardinian version aside, but...). Certainly it is not a matter of how many speakers, if not for the presumed proportions of the other groups.
About Gavoese, I will try to find the source where I learned about it, that should contain some details too (I read it some 20 years ago, at least), so just the time for the investigation and I'll gladly add it (nothing of sensational, but something). However, it is not a version but perhaps a particular case, geographically situated close to the border between Logudorese and Campidanese areas, basicly logudorese but with some differences. I mentioned it only because it is certainly particular, and not proposing it as another version.
Also, I will add some details on the Sardinian language page, little by little. - Gianfranco

No offense was ever seen in your comments; they were welcome. Knowledge best advances when gentlemen can sensibly discuss their misunderstandings and potential disagreements. They often find, as we have, that there was no disagreement at all. When I do find offense, I can assure you that my sarcasm is unrestrained. I look forward to your contributions to Sardinian. Eclecticology

I'd just like to say that I was very surprised to see what the article describes as "Romance languages", because, to me, nearly all of those mentioned are dialects rather than languages. I'm not saying that the article is wrong (not being a native speaker of a Romance language, I'm hardly in a position to contradict), but I have studied Latin and Romance philology to degree level, and this doesn't tally with what I was taught. Could someone point me to an authority on the subject? user: Deb

Linguistically speaking, there is no defining difference between what is a "dialect" and what is a "language". Every person speaks their own personal idiolect, which can collectively be grouped into largely similar dialects, which can collectively be grouped into largely similar languages. But, this system isn't very rigorous, and there is often more variation within "dialects" that one might consider to be of the same "language" than between what are considered separate languages.
Commonly cited are the dialect continua in Chinese and German; for instance, Dutch is often considered a separate language despite there being no clear cutoff point between the Swiss German dialects, the High German of southern Germany, the Low German dialects of northern Germany, and Dutch; Dutch and Low German ("different languages") are largely identical while Low German and Swiss German ("the same language") are incomprehensible! So why isn't Teach Yourself Dutch filed under the German Language section in your local bookstore? Mainly because the Netherlands is an independant country; as the saying goes, "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." The question is political rather than linguistic in nature.
That said... In the particular case of the list on Romance languages, it claims to be based on the classification listed at the SIL Ethnologue. Ethnologue is notorious as a "splitter", dividing languages up as much as possible, perhaps sometimes more than appropriate for all purposes. --Brion VIBBER, Wednesday, May 29, 2002
Thanks for that. I had never heard of SIL but I gather from the web site taht it is primarily a religious organisation rather than an academic institution, and therefore I am not so surprised that I have never heard of the classification. I'm only surprised that we are choosing to follow it here. Deb
Deb, the religious impression is, in my view, accurate. However, from what I have seen of their linguistic work, it is fairly rigorous and reliable as a whole. The fact that it is in a sense a "byproduct" of their (parent organization's?) Bible translation work does not reduce its value as a source of linguistic research. It simply means that there may be cases where one has to be cautious of potential biases induced by their religious-based goals. Just my two cents' worth.  :-) pgdudda
I don't disagree with your assessment, and I didn't mean to imply that they were biased. However, I don't think their idea of what constitutes a "language" is exactly mainstream. I suppose that begs the question of whether wikipedia articles should take an old-fashioned, "conventional" view of knowledge.Deb
Whatever the nature of the SIL codes, could someone maybe create a page here explaining them & their origins, and put a link on the page here? -- Tarquin
Two different points on SIL/Ethnologue. Although their founding purpose was Bible translation, their linguistic credentials are very good. SIL grammars are fundamental works on lots of e.g. Pacific languages, and their Ethnologue classification is good solid work, with just a brief mention at the end of whether Bible translations exist. But, as Brion VIBBER has said, as linguists they're at the extreme end of the 'splitters', dividing and subdividing at every opportunity, and giving a quite false impression that languages can be divided in Stammbaum (family tree) fashion right down to dialect level. Their basic facts can be accepted as pretty authoritative, but they go way too far in seeming to give certainty in classification. I'm going to add a small paragraph giving a brief overview of the main language (as opposed to dialect) divisions. Gritchka 17:29 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I am no expert here, but this:

Latin future tense scrapped, and new future and conditional tenses introduced, based on infinitive+present or imperfect tense of habere.

sounds strange to me when at least French clearly allows to form future tense both by modifying endings as well as composite future (je prendrais, tu prendras, il prendra vs. je vais prendre etc.). Could somebody explain if I understood that paragraph wrong? djmutex 19:12 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think it means that the French future is, historically, just a combination of the infinitive plus a conjugated form of habere (well, actually avoir) - je prendrai is really prendre + ai, that is. In Latin they had an infix (-bi- ?) for the future, but that disappeared in Romance languages. That's what I understand that to meanAdam Bishop 19:21 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks! djmutex 19:31 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

This table shows how the future tense evolved in the Romance languages (note that the future tense endings in French evolved from proto-Romance just as habere evolved into avoir etc):

Classical Latin Proto-Romance Italian French
vendam vender-(hab)eō venderò je vendrai
vendēs vender-(hab)ēs venderai tu vendras
vendet vender-(hab)et venderà il vendra
vendḗmus vender-(hab)ḗmus venderemo nous vendrons
vendḗtis vender-(hab)ḗtis venderete vous vendrez
vendent vender-(hab)ent venderanno ils vendront
Romanian doesn't use this type of future tense, having a form similar with English (conjugation of a form of "will" (a voi) + infinitive of verb)
voi vinde
vei vinde
va vinde
vom vinde
veti vinde
vor vinde
Bogdan 19:16, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It is not just Romanian. Other Romance languages also have a periphrastic future, e.g. Sp "(yo) voy a vender", Port. " (eu) vou vender", Fr. "je vais vendre", in addition to the "normal" synthetic future ("venderé", "venderei", "vendrai", etc...).

Mbruno 02:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Romanian really have two cases? I can't speak Romanian, but as far as I know there are five cases in Romanian: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Vocative. There are few Vocative forms, Nominative is almost always the same as Accusative and Genitive is almost always the same as Dative. For example, this is how the pronoun "ea" ("she") is inflected (some alternative forms are omitted):
N. ea
G. ei
D. ei / i
A. ea / o
V. -
Boraczek 16:16, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. There are five cases. I corrected the article. Bogdan 16:31, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)


No, that's wrong. Romanian has only two fully declined cases. It has five pronominal cases, but then, French has at least four (il, le, lui, son). The general view is that Romanian has two cases, one called 'Direct', and one called 'Oblique'. 'Direct' contains the Subject and the Object, and 'Oblique' contains indirect objects, nouns after prepositions, and the possessor of something.
In fact, it's not a matter of being "true" or "wrong". It seems that there are two alternative descriptions of the Romanian case system. Both have some strong and weak points. A weak point of the "five-cases" description is that nouns and adjectives don't have five distinct forms. Two weak points of the "two-cases" description are that it doesn't explain declension of pronouns and that it seems to overlook the vocative forms (what about "bunule copil!" ???). Given these circumstances I removed the information about the number of cases in Romanian. In fact, this information isn't important in this article. At least we agree that Romanian does have cases. Boraczek 21:18, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Eonaviegan" dialect is never [1] mentioned outside wikipedia. Why ? Bogdan | Talk 13:48, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Try eonaviego. It seems a neologism for a language spoken inthe area of the rivers Eo and Navia. Maybe Eo-Navian?

I really wish to know why non-speakers of Portuguese treat Brazilian Portuguese has a seperated language. I've seen a book on Amazon, that even said that the language would break soon. From where it comes these ideas/myths? It is from France or the USA? Portuguese is the official language of Brazil, it is the same has in Portugal. Nether Brazilians nether Portuguese believe that they are seperated, they are fully inteligible. Same grammar, same lexicon. Politicians undestand they are the same. I wish to know why internacionally, people always reffer to brazilian Portuguese has a seperate language or dialect. Give me your oppinion, i'm really curious. Pedro 02:22, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Well here's a good article discussing just why soap operas from Portugal are being dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese and a lot of detailed related issues. — Hippietrail 13:29, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
That has nothing to do with language, that's only a sad case, that shooked people in both countries, but that was a decision from the Portuguese companie that wants to produce soap operas in Brazil, and to Brazil. The soap operas are showed dubbed and not dubbed, if the TV set has that possibility. They wanted that the public to feel that was a local product. Many Brazilians wanted to ear the accent, what Brazilians are not used to in Brazil, that's why some think that not showing dubbed was important. Most Brazilians only come to ear European Portuguese in Portugal, and they get used to it quit fast. Brazilians are one of the biggest immigrant communities in Portugal, due to language obviously, and because they have a special statute in Portugal's law, like Portuguese have in Brazil. Brazilians are now getting aware of Portugal and the countries are reproaching. Possibly, the Italian community in southern Brazil that dislike Portuguese influence in Brazil spreads that in the Internet. The country has lots of problems with education and some Brazilians believe that. If you say that they don’t speak Portuguese to northern Brazilians, they will find that pretty offensive (they are those who feel more connected Portugal) that kind of information has nothing to do with linguistics. I've received Brazilian MSG saying that they found the Portuguese accent beautiful. Brazilians in Portugal, newcomers, can easily understand any dialect. And Portuguese dialects are quit different from each other. I really never spoke with a Brazilian that said that he doesn’t understand me. And I talked to an Italian origin one. In Portugal, National Geographic Channel that broadcasts from Brazil, most of the time is dubbed in European Portuguese, because the company wants to people feel the product as local. The same happens with Discovery Channel. I find that practice very odd. But in the Internet, there most be some other motive for that. Maybe 1000 years from now, Brazilian will be a language, who knows, but not in the next centuries. That will be very odd to us in Portugal. I talk with Brazilians everyday, and I think we talk the same language. LOL. They with their accent, me with mine's. Much like when I talk to someone from Lisbon. It's very much the same. Canção Nova is a Catholic TV channel that broadcasts from Brazil sometimes boradcasts from Portugal, so they ear the Portuguese accent and it is not dubbed. There is a Portuguese TV received in Brazil, but that broadcasts only on some cable TV. Pedro 01:02, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

By the way, we in Portugal say For "I love you". "Eu amo-te" or "eu te amo". The first is more used in Writing and the second in Speech or poetry. Placing the "te" in the back of the verb or in the front of it, is a Portuguese language nature. People are talking about a language that they dont understand, comparing Portuguese with Russian, for the god's sake! And in Brazil, it is widely popular the second form, but the first is also used.

The use of the geround. It deppends on the dialects. In southern Portugal, next to Lisbon. People say "Estou te amando" (like Brazilians do) I'm loving you. And most of Portugal prefers to say "Eu estou a te amar" (what happens also in Brazil). There is no difference only that the accent is different. Sorry, but what a stupidity! People should learn the language first, before guessing. Pedro 01:16, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

    • By the way, my question is the same. Are American companies trying to divided the language? or the French because Portuguese became more spoken than French in the past century or some other reason? Between my dialect and the Lisbon's the difference is much gratter that of Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. That I assure you, and thought we understand all pretty well. I'll try to put credible info into English language throw wikipedia.Pedro 01:35, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
      • I've talked to an italian Origin Brazilian and he garanteed that the italo-Brazilians don't normally think that nonsence. USA or France origin?...Pedro 21:40, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Mr. Pedro, allow me to clear some things. I am the author of the article that Hippietrail references. First, let me tell you that I speak Portuguese quite well, as well as Spanish, French and Italian. Therefore, I know what I'm talking about, and what I say is no stupidity. Ora, se quiseres, pa, escrevo-te em português. First, I am not comparing Portuguese to Russian. I am saying that Portuguese, when put aside its neighbors, Galician, Castilian, Catalan, and even Provencal and Italian, it has a very distinct output sound quality. I say that the close central unrounded vowel is absent in the rest of the Iberian tongues and as well as in the Brazilian variety of Portuguese, but this vowel is common in Slavic languages. Indeed, I've been told by a few Russians themselves that European Portuguese, especially from certain parts in Southern Portugal and the Açores, have a Slavic resonance to them. Now, "Eu amo-te" or "Amo-te" is the standard in Portugal. In Brazil, it is "Eu te amo" or "Amo-te" indeed. However, what you would hear in educated speech is either "Te amo" or "Amo você", or even "Lhe amo". Once a Brazilian told me that if you were to tell "Amo-te" to a Brazilian female, she would not take you seriously, or, he said, jokingly, if you were a couple, she would dump you. "Amo-te" is indeed used in Brazil though it's rare, outside formal speech. I mean, you could say the same thing about "vós sois"; it is standard in both Portugal and Brazil, but is it used anymore (outside regligious texts, and maybe poetry)? Or, even, "tu és" is standard in Brazil as well, but do you ever hear anyone use it (outside a few secluded regions)? Very rarely, and if you do, it's usually of the kind "tu é", with the verb conjugated in the third person. The construction "Amo você" (or "Vejo você") would be unheard of in Portugal as a standard, even though in Brazil it has entered standard non-formal writing, and in all situations in speech. It is also true that in Southern Portugal, in the Algarve, one finds the gerund used when in the rest of Portugal one would hear the infinitive. Like "Estou comendo", in Portugal, is found dialectally, the standard language uses "Estou a comer", while in Brazil, the standard is "Estou comendo". Now, "Estou a comer", I have never ever heard a Brazilian write or say that, at least with the meaning of "Estou comendo". So, pa, I'm not guessing. What I write in my blog are truly my experiences, what I live through everyday. With the Portuguese Soap Opera business, I did not wake up one day and suddenly decided to write that. Not at all. If you read carefully that entry, I discuss my experiences with both Portuguese and Brazilians. From what I gather, your position is not only against myself or my article, but rather against anyone with the view that Brazilian and European Portuguese have grown apart. This to the point where there are people, both linguists and non-linguists, who label them separate languages. Again, in my entry, I try to not to side with either view, rather listing the facts as they are today. However, at the end, I do say "their common language indeed." If you ask me, they are indeed the same language. I follow myself the European standard of the language, and I always speak to Brazilians as well, and they understand somewhat well (once, I did have to speak Spanish to be understood). Nonetheless, as I say in my blog, they admit to all those things that you negate. It is true that a Brazilian will get offended if you tell them that what they speak is not Portuguese, or that they speak Brasileiro. However, the vast majority will make it dead clear that they speak Português do Brasil, Brazilian Portuguese, implying that they themselves are aware of the distance and differences between their variety and the European one. Just like one Brazilian told me (again, it's in my blog), that it's great that I speak Portuguese, but that I should consider learning Brazilian Portuguese. I tell you, I speak with a very genuine pronunciation based on the Lisbon dialect. I've had several Brazilians wanting me to speak with a Brazilian pronunciation, and, to leave the tu altogether, and use você for familiar address. I'll admit that I even feel odd at times using estar + infinitive for the present progressive with Brazilians, because their standard is estar + gerund, just like in Spanish and Italian, and since I speak those languages, I'm more used to the latter construction. You can not sit there and write that "there is no difference, only the accent is different" because, if you're Portuguese, you know well that's not so. In my article, I mostly address the standard forms of the language, and even these are different. It's true that certain accords have tried unsuccessfully to consider correct the standard of both countries in either country. Though as of now, that's not so. I'll end by reiterating that I personally consider both varities to be indeed the same language. So your comments about "the Americans trying to divide the language" do not apply to me or my entry. Once again, I'll tell you that I simply listed my experiences, things as they are currently, without any horns and whistles. Amongst Brazilians, there is the linguist Marcos Bagno who has done several studies about there being today a Brazilian language. If you read the article from several newspapers, including Folha, the Vice-President of the Band, one of the networks that broadcasts soap operas dubladas (and not dobradas as in Portugal), says that the reason for dubbing the soaps is that "O brasileiro não entende o português de Portugal" (Brazilians don't understand European Portuguese). That is in my entry as well. You ought to read it more carefully. Now, I did not make up that quote, or said it, so you can't take out your rage at me or the "Americans trying to divide the language"; it was said by a Brazilian. It's true that the ultimate goal is to make product as local as possible. For Spanish, shows and movies made in the US are usually dubbed separately in the main regions, including Spain. The same with Quebec and France. But, these are products in English, and these companies are trying to make as much money as possible and you cannot sell that much if the people can't connect and identify themselves with the product fully. But what about when is supposedly in the 'same' language and dubbed? I tell you, soaps and movies made in Mexico (or any Hispanic country) are always broadcast in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Spain, even the United States, where are there are Hispanics of all nationalities, without any dubbing. Sure, the expressions and accents are different, but they are understood. As you say yourself, it all has to do with exposure. The Brazilians are in this situation because they have had very little contact with what has happened in Portugal. Enthusiastically I say in my blog, that hopefully soon the Brazilians will more exposed to the Portuguese culture and accent, and the two varities will grow closer. First you ask yourself a question, then somebody gives you a reference and you burst into a rage. Well, you're barking up at the wrong tree. Once more I find it necessary to say that to me the two varities are the same language, in my article having simply discussed the reality between them, as well as the differences. And sure, we can go indefinitely discussing the differences between European and American Spanish, British and American English, Parisian and Quebecois French, but, in my article I was simply surprised by the decision, whomever took it, of the Portuguese soaps being dubbed into the Brazilian variety; that's it... nothing else. Therefore, I don't see the "stupidity." But if anything, you won't gain anything trying to convince me, because, for millionth time, to me, they are the same language, but good luck trying to convince the linguists with that view, and authors whose books you found on Amazon, etc. The fact about this is there are indeed differences, which you again deny there ever being any, that I discussed in my article.

By
Eddie V. O. (Romanika)

To Eddie: Québec movies and sitcoms are also frequently subtitled when shown on French or international French TV (e.g. TV5). Do you also think the Québécois and the French speak different languages ? BTW, Brazilian soaps are NEVER dubbed/subtitles as far as I know in Portugal. A few Australian shows on the other hand should IMHO be subtitled for the sake of an American audience (I personally have a hard time understanding their accent!). Mbruno 02:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


  • Every credible Portuguese or Brazilian linguist don’t follow that. But there are possibly some reminiscent views from the past regime, which denied the language, and called it as "língua nacional" (national language). "Pá" in northern Portugal is a "shovel" (I used a translation mechanism). It’s used in construction. I ask are you a native speaker of Portuguese? Are you aware that we pronounce very differently many words? For the final s, I (myself) pronounce it differently due that this area has influence from two dialects. I pronounce as "Sh" (mostly), "j" (sometimes) and "Z" (rarely) And "Vós" is still widely used in here (northern Portugal). About Brazilians that don’t understand the Portuguese of Portugal talk to every Brazilian that ever ear it. They'll answer you. I talked about educational problems. How can you affirm that from a single case? I see the "stupidity". I'm sorry. I've heard and know many Portuguese accents, which is why I find it stupid. And for the gerund is not used in the "Algarve" but in "Alentejo". We in the rest of Portugal also use it, but never with the verb(s) "to be" (what happens in Brazil, Alentejo and Africa), we only use it in poetry.

About the linguist theory that supports that "stupidity": There's a Portuguese linguist that says that Portuguese is derived from "Cunio" the language from a kingdom in the Algarve, before the roman invasion. He even says that it influenced Latin. Do you know what that is? Pride. Nationalist pride. I don’t need to "trying to convince the linguists with that view, and authors whose books you found on Amazon, etc." they even said that Cape Verde speaks that "language". Very good linguists!!! Is better ignoring them. They are the same "linguists" who says that Spanish is similar to Portuguese, and people come to Portugal speaking Spanish and they don’t know why the locals ignore them, don’t understand or offend them. I saw a book, not various saying that, but I was just amazed. About being odd, it really is that why a petition of Brazilians and Portuguese was made to stop it. As for the "local" thing: Brazilian Portuguese is only dubbed in cable TV channels of US controlled. In Portuguese TV or Brazilian TV channels the sound is the original one. But that is really embarrassing. --Pedro 00:59, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

    • A note: Spanish is very similar with Portuguese, but some American authors almost takes that similarity to unrealistic patterns. So they think that speaking Spanish in Portugal is acceptable, what surely is not. And about the "vós" not being used. Is another thing that shocks me. Portuguese language is not that simple. Vós is very commonly used. I used excessively, now I prefer to say "vocês" or convosco. Are you saying that we in the North are from the past? "Tu" is used a lot in Northern and Extreme South Brazil, were "você" is almost not used. We in Portugal prefer, to use both, but separately. "Tu" is for friends. "Você" to others with some respect. I've always spoke Portuguese, but everyday I learn something new. I've a teacher that said: "You can learn English or French faster than you can master Portuguese"
  • I've just watched a Portuguese man speaking in Brazil representing the European Union, in Globonews (Brazilian National News Channel) without legends or dubbing. -Pedro 01:32, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

First, the construction estar + gerund is indeed used in the Algarve region as well. I know people people there who use it frequently, including constructions such as em chengandes, falas comigo. And of course the gerund is used in other cases, standard in Portugal, but we are talking the present progressive here. I am well aware that vós is used in some parts in Northern Portugal. However, I said that when it comes to the standard language of Portugual, vós is dialectal. In the standard idiom, this has been replaced by vocês, even though, as I say in my blog once again, vós survives in its oblique and possessive forms, i.e. Estou a vos dizer que [vocês] têm que trazer os vossos livros. Indeed, in Brazil tu survives in some regions (true, parts of the North, like Pará, and in the South, in Rio Grande do Sul), and, is dialectal in this country's standard idiom. Você is the standard form; if Brazilians were to read an ad containing the form with tu, most of them would feel they're reading something from Camões period. In other regions (like Rio de Janeiro), nonetheless, it is used everyday though conjugated incorrectly, i.e. tu falou muito. And I also know that você is used in Portugal, of course; though we both know not for the same context. As far as those "linguists" that you say claim that Spanish and Portuguese are excessively similar and that nationalistic pride has something in this, is not my problem. I write without taking any sides. Go back and read my blog a few times. You'll see I list things as they are. In the Soap Opera entry, I listed the differences that we know exist. Again, I'm the first to tell you that Brazilian and European Portuguese are one language. I talk to Brazilians all the time using the European variety. If I remotely thought that they these two were separate languages, I would speak two different ways: brasileiro with Brazilians, with expressions and their standard, and, português with Portuguese, again, with their expressions and standard. However, I don't do that. I speak Portuguese, period, acknowledging that there are differences. You cannot call my article "stupid" because what I state is accurate. You ought to be more respectful of others' work. It is not my fault that people somewhere else are declaring the two main varieties of Portuguese as different languages, or radically different dialects. For instance, nearly every translation made for Internet portals having two Portuguese ones: Portuguese (Pt), and, Portuguese (Br). Now, who took that decision??? God knows who. One more time in case you didn't get it: for me, they ARE the same language!!! We could indeed do fine with just one translation, despite the differences, it will be understood. Nonetheless, a few days ago in translating for Google's Gmail, I found a message by someone, a Portuguese, who wrote in the translation forum: "Yep, all the help pages in portuguese (of Portugal) were translated by a brazillian! Who was the clever guy? I already started to correct it. Are there some portuguese folks that are willing to help? Thanks!"
Now, why is this done? Maybe they consider the differences too great to merit them two separate translations. And you say that you just saw someone on TV without any dubbing... well, who says that everything from Portugal is dubbed? I clearly say in my article that an educated Brazilian has virtually no problem communicating with an educated Portuguese. I've seen countless Portuguese newscasts with Brazilian correspondants (in Brazil), speaking live with the lisboeta anchors back in Portugal. You've gone off-topic in your replies. I have been talking about the differences that exist amongst the two language varieties, even though, as I've been saying from the beginning, there is only one language, as we both agree: Portuguese. Nice talking to you.
Eddie V. O. (Romanika)

  • I classified as stupid, the book. Read again what you've talk about "vós". It’s unrealistic. We learn “Vós” at school. We learn how to spell the “ou” and “ei” has they are written, what people from Lisbon don’t. So… Standard Portuguese is not the dialect of Lisbon. But these days, that is gaining force especially in TV. "Vós" is not used in some parts of the North, it is used extensively; It is also used in northeastern Brazil. But it really tends do disappear, but I believe that will not occur, nether as the dialect. About the two versions of the language, I work in Software and that's a practice since the mid-1990s. And, again, American companies do it. If software companies used the “Brazilian rich people dialect”, no one would notice and they [the chauvinist Portuguese] will certainly like. Instead they use words like "deletar" or "insertar" when Portuguese words exists (Apagar and inserir) deletar (delete) and insertar (insert) are from English. Tough, in the spoken language, I use words like "crashar" or "logar" certainly I won’t write it in documents! That as being also raised by Brazilian philologists has a problem. In the Internet, the companies are using vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, what google also does. But there's another problem, software companies don’t use the gerund when they are obligatory for Portugal. In windows PT version exists "a iniciar" when it should be "iniciando", like in Brazil, people are excessively trying to really do two different versions of the language, sort of splitting what can not be spitted using symnoms. And again for the case of Brazilians and Portuguese (what I believe that are kids, in the case of Portugal) that say nonsense about the ways Portuguese is written they are, fortunnaly, a minority. But they do some noise on the Internet, that doesn’t exist in the "real" world. I use the google bar that I found in the Brazilian Google and what a finding, its pretty cool. And I thought "what a stupid company, why they don’t put it in Portuguese Google". I’m not defending what already is common sence linguistically and politically, but this all movement is very, very strange. And Portuguese and Spanish are not that similar. Spoken spanish its pretty different. I speak Spanish since early, but I don’t like to see Spanish TV, because I don’t feel very confortable (I must think a bit), I see Braazilian TV (like many Portuguese) do, because it is the same language, and we don’t have any problem in understanding even lexicon (we dont need to think). The construction of the language has in fact converged, I notice that in the way that I speak today and people that surronds me, we are know using você as if is tu, I don’t as a principle, except in work, because everyone treats everyone has você. But the sounds (the accent) we don’t do it, because some sounds are similar to rural Portuguese, that’s why some Portuguese and African don’t like (I’m talking about reading the final “e”w hen with accentuation and not meaning “and” as if it is an “i”, like old Portuguese and like the elderly do). In my accent we do it sometimes, but it is desapiering. And if you don't know, Angolan accent was extremely similar to the Brazilian, but is shifting towards the Portuguese (nation). But not vernacular São Tomean, few days ago I eard São Tomean Portuguese, I taugh it was Brazilian. For the differences in writing Portuguese, an agreement was done to eliminate most differences, but it has not yet entedered into force, because of financial/educational problems in the African countries (as they say), It was approved by Portugal, Cape Verde and Brazil, it is waiting aproval by the rest of the African Portuguese Speaking countries. East Timor asked to accelerate the process, but it hasn’t. It's going slowly, that’s why these countries are 3rd world countries. Pedro 09:54, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

"is dialectal in this country's standard idiom. Você is the standard form; if Brazilians were to read an ad containing the form with tu, most of them would feel they're reading something from Camões period."

  • That only shows that the person is ignorant. In that days, "tu" was not very used.
  • I've read better the Google's Brazilian Portuguese http://www.google.com.br/intl/pt-BR/faq.html#display It could be used in Portugal, it is pretty good. Except for the English included and the orthographic differences. Even if we in Portugal use the English word "link" we write in documents "ligação". But even using Brazilian Portuguese, people dont give a damn if that's from Brazil or Portugal. I've have a website ending with .com.br that is for both countries. Many Brazilians ask if that is European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese, they dont know. One can easily notice because of the "c" ao "p" letters that are deaf in the Portuguese language, Brazil eliminated it, Portugal, due fears that it would distance more Portuguese from Latin, didn't. Now they are willing to remove them. As for the "facto" we in Portugal pronounce it as "fato" or "faketo" (I prefer the last, but most dont). And we dont confuse "facto" with "fato". Much like "verão" (summer) and "verão (You will see).

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Okay. I'm Brazilian and here are my 2 cents on some of these issues:

1. I have never seen anyone disputing the fact that the language spoken in the United States is English, and yet the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are similar to those that divide American English and British English.

I'm not trying to add a political dimension to this stupid, pointless discussion. The simple fact is, ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECTABLE LINGUIST, PROFESSOR, AUTHOR or JOURNALIST - just to mention a few categories that use the language as a professional tool :-) - would dispute the fact that we Brazilians speak PORTUGUESE. In fact, ask any five-year-old what language he/she speaks.

2. Most if not all of us WOULD INDEED UNDERSTAND what a Portuguese is saying. That said, I live in Brazilian State where it's often difficult to understand what people from rural areas are saying (Minas Gerais).

Brazilians, even those who live in the smallest towns, have always been exposed to European Potuguese (through millions of Portuguese immigrants). Some regional Portuguese accents may pose a degree of difficulty, but that's it. The decision to resort to dubbing a Portuguese soap is ridiculous. Several Portuguese actors and actresses have appeared in Brazilian soaps and they acted with their accents. In fact, a Portuguese trying to 'soften' their accent to sound more 'Brazilian' (by a previous poster's rationale to be more intelligible) would also sound ridiculous.


2. "Tu" is WIDELY used in Brazil. A few examples: it is used in everyday language in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina; Rio de Janeiro; all of the Northeastern States and througout the Amazon basin in the States of Pará and Amazonas. THat would cover about what, 80 to 100 million people at the very least.

"Tu" is not commonly used in central Brazil (including Minas Gerais) and, most notably, in São Paulo. This, it seems, is why most foreigners seem to believe that Brazilians only use "você" and its related verbal forms (3rd person) instead of "tu".

Also, if you take personal pronoum usage and the difficulty in understanding some aspects of the spoken language as examples of a supposedly large divide between Portuguese as spoken in Brazil and Portugal, as opposed to the linguistic "unity" in spanish-speaking Latin America, think again. I think Spanish language programmes from Argentina would need to de dubbed to be perfectly understood elsewhere in the continent (with the possible exceptions of Uruguay and maybe Chile); and what to say of the different usage, in Spanish, of "tú", "usted" and "vos"? In Argentina, Chevrolet claims to be "siempre con vos". In Chile or Mexico, it is "siempre contigo". Does that mean our neighbours speak "Argentinian" instead of Spanish, or that they can't understand or be understood by nationals from other spanish-speaking countries?

Finally, a note of warning to people who take São Paulo newspapers, and "Folha de São Paulo" in particular, as examples of standard Brazilian Portuguese: "Folha" is written in what seems to be its own language. People even joke about that - it's written in "Folhês" instead of Português. In "folhês" a fábrica (plant) becomes "planta" (can you guess where they take this from?). Ora, planta in Portuguese is either a plant in its vegetable sense :-) or a blueprint for a building! So please be careful when employing examples from São Paulo newspapers, or when taking their local variation of the language as the standard Brazilian form.

3. In written form, it is nearly impossible to distinguish between Brazilian and European Portuguese without some tell-tale words and expressions that are written differently. Gerundisms are indeed a feature of Portuguese AS SPOKEN IN BRAZIL (as opposed to "Brazilian language"), since it is not exclusive to "Brazilian Portuguese".

I don't know about the situation in Portugal, but most Brazilian newsstands sell Portuguese magazines undistinguished from their Brazilian counterparts. Personally I read 'Evasões' and 'Automotor' - which I first bought several years in the belief that it was a new Brazilian car magazine, possibly one featuring european cars (the numberplates were always replaced by 'Automotor' plates). It was only when I found out that the cars had "travões" intead of "freios" for brakes that I realized it was a Portuguese publication.

4. Nobody in Brazil even argues about the fact Brazil and Portugal share the same language. Only foreigners do. Brazilians may exaggerate their difficulty with some aspects of European Portuguese. In the same way a Brazilian would tell you that they like something by saying "Eu adoro isso!". That doesn't mean they adore something in the same way that and English speaker would (even though "adoração" - adoration - still carries the same weight as in English).

5. Portuguese does have a distinct FUTURE tense.

6. I've never heard of anyone asking somebody to speak SPANISH, of all languages, instead of Portuguese (European). I'm sorry, but the person who found himself/herself in that situation must've spoken with a very strong 'foreign' accent. Besides (in Brazil at least) most people would be somewhat offended if a foreigner would try and speak Spanish with them. You should always try Portuguese (as bad as yours may be) or even English before you try Spanish, ESPECIALLY if you're not from Latin America.

That's it. This whole debate is really pointless as the two countries speak the same language, albeit with local differences, and the situation is likely to remain that way for a very long time as the Portuguese language is a VERY strong part of Brazil's national identity and one of the features (if not THE feature) that sets us apart from the rest of America. It is also a major factor of national unity - as all Brazilians from all regions can understand each other perfectly.

As to foreigners debating the differences between the language as spoken in Brazil or Portugal (as opposed to "the languages spoken in Brazil or Portugal", implying that they're different) I suggest they either focus this debate on English or Spanish or better yet amuse themselves by creating their very own variant of Portuguese...

[anonoymous]

  • Yes, I get to know a lot of things after my inocent edits in here. They based their claims in a ridiculous website that claims the most remarkable things, but I understand them, they don't speak the language, so they believe in what they are told, but in reality there is a girl in the net and her friend who's favourite hobby is to say these things to English and German speakers (she speaks both languages) and laugh afterwords. I also get to know somethings about Spanish, and after several investigations and after learning things from linguists, Portuguese is in fact one os the most unified international languages. I think the ridiculous things written on the net in English, are good, for the various governments to act in deffense of the language. In fact, both governments are keen to make more literary and academic interaction. About Brazilians not hearing Portuguese accent, that is today not true, since many Portuguese are now appearing in shows and soap operas in the main Brazilian TV networks and many Brazilians are comming and going. It is obvious that there's no problem of communication between the two peoples in the real world, besides the occasional hoo do you call that a "comboio" we call it a "trem"!. In fact, it is much easier to a Portuguese understand a Brazilian than many Portugal's dialects. -Pedro 15:49, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)


  • I really got surprised with the distinction made for the Portuguese language,it looks like biased information what you are you trying to give on this page. All languages should be treated equally, the discution if Brazilians understand Eu Portuguese is ridiculus.

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On mutual intelligibility between European and Brazilian Portuguese, here are my two cents:

  • European Portuguese (EP) speakers seem to understand Brazilians without any major difficulty. Brazilian soaps for example are never dubbed or subtitled on Portuguese TV.
  • Differences in grammar and usage generally are not a major impediment to mutual communication because most educated Brazilians actually learn standard Portuguese grammar at school, including some features like the "tu" verb forms that they normally do not use in every-day speech. That is analogous BTW to an Argentinean learning Spanish "tú" and "vosotros" verb forms at school while, in ordinary speech, he/she would use the morphologically distinct "vos" and "ustedes" forms instead.
  • Diffences in phonology however make it harder for a Brazilian speaker to understand certain EP accents. In particular, the reduction of unstressed vowels in European Portuguese is a major complication for Brazilians and may cause them to occasionally miss a word or two when listening to someone from Portugal. Generally speaking, difficulties with Portuguese pronunciation apply to Brazilians of all social classes, but, again, the more educated the speaker is (or the greater his/her basic vocabulary is), the easier it will be for him/her to follow EP speech. I personally watch Portuguese TV on satellite without subtitles, and I don't have trouble understanding what is being said. That might not be the case however for all Brazilians (especially uneducated ones), hence the need to subtitle Portuguese programs on free-to-air Brazilian TV. It should be noted though that Portuguese immigrants historically moved in large numbers to Brazil (over 1.5 million between 1850 and 1960) and, generally speaking, Portuguese people living in Brazil and speaking with an European accent never had problems to make themselves understood, even in small towns in rural Brazil.
  • As mentioned by other commentators, differences between regional dialects of other European languages are generally far greater than the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese. In fact, the so-called "dialects" for example of German or Dutch are actually not mutually intelligible and, strictly speaking, should be considered separate languages (like standard German and Swiss German for instance). Roughly speaking, the differences between standard Brazilian Portuguese and standard European Portuguese, especially in the written variety, but also in the formal spoken modality (e.g. TV newscasts), are comparable in scale to the differences between standard British and American English. The differences on the other hand between the substandard (popular) Brazilian vernacular and standard EP are probably similar in magnitude to the differences between, let's stay, standard British English and African American vernacular English. Educated colloquial BP (the language spoken by the urban middle-class and used in most TV soaps) differs on the other hand from EP as much as Rioplatense Spanish differs from standard (Castillian) Spanish or colloquial Québécois French differs from the Parisian variety. BTW, Québécois movies and sitcoms are almost always subtitled when shown on French or international French television (e.g. TV5) as Parisian French speakers struggle to understand Canadian accents and colloquialisms.
  • Being Brazilian myself, I must confess I am personally annoyed by the way so-called "Brazilian Portuguese" is taught as a foreign language in the United States, especially at the beginner's or even intermediate level. From my experience, most teachers of Portuguese as a foreign language in U.S. universities are either Americans or U.S-based (expatriate) Brazilians who subscribe to an ideological view (sponsored by the likes of Milton Azevedo and Marcos Bagno) that Brazil, like Switzerland or Haiti (!), is a diglossic country where the spoken language (or "L-variety") and the corresponding written language (or "H-variety") are not the same and may not even be mutually intelligible (like French and Creole in Haiti for instance, or the aforementioned example of standard written German and spoken Swiss German). Based on that ideological premise, U.S-based Portuguese teachers teach what they perceive as the "L-variety" and, progressively, introduce the "H-variety", normally only in advanced grammar or literature classes. Some grammar points like "tu" verb forms are probably never introduced at all, based on the argument that "they do not exist in Brazil". At the same time, students are encouraged by their teachers to use colloquial BP features which, although indeed very common in Brazil (even among educated speakers), are nonetheless substandard based on prescriptive school grammar. Typical examples would include "ele/ela" replacing clitic pronouns "o/a" as direct objects or the combination of "você" with the 2nd person oblique pronoun "te". I am not an expert on foreign language instruction, but it would appear to me that the most reasonable thing to do is to teach students the standard language first and then, when they have already mastered it, point to them the differences between the standard and colloquial/familiar speech or even specific regional dialects. U.S. Portuguese teachers seem to do exactly the opposite though, and, in the process, not only deprive their students of linguistic skills that could be used in a broader, international Portuguese-speaking area (e.g. Portugal, Lusophone Africa), but also make it harder for them to be able to read simple Brazilian newspaper articles or understand even common Brazilian TV programs where a more "standard" language is used. 161.24.19.82 15:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

On the main page inside the mini world map, I see that Ethiopia is marked as having Italian influences in its language. This is untrue! The language there comes from an older, distinctly African language named Geez. Please correct the coloring!

I think it is saying that the Italian language can still be found in use in Ethiopia (although I would have thought that it would be sporadic at best). ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 03:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Distinguishing features

I think a heading "Distinguishing features" should be added since there is already such a section but you hardly notice its introductory paragrah since it appears to belong to the previous section.

Also in this section it would be interesting to see how the various languages use verbs for "to be". I know Spanish has "ser" and "estar" and I'm 99% sure that Portuguese uses them in an almost identical way. I also believe that the other languages have cognate words which may or may not be used in similar ways any more. Could anybody illustrate this situation? — Hippietrail 09:47, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Ok Hippie, I've put in a bunch of distinguishing features. As for "ser" and "estar", I mentioned it briefly as a distinguishing feature, and you'll find them discussed to death under Romance copula. Enjoy. Steverapaport 08:32, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

central "Western Romance by default"?

I've been trying to tidy and clarify, but I'm flummoxed by this statement in the article:

Languedocian Occitan could be tagged as the central "Western Romance by default".

Can anyone offer enlightenment? Man vyi 14:08, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)


I don't really like it much, but the best I could do is to offer a pointer to Vulgar Latin where the central dialect and variations are discussed in detail. Steverapaport

Northern African Romance

Northern African (extinct by the 15th century)'

Couldn't find any reference to a Romance language in Africa to have survived antiquity. Was there really such a language to survive as late as the 15th century? If not, we should delete it from the list. Bogdan | Talk 22:01, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure there was such a language - I seem to recall al-Bakri (11th century) mentioning Latin speakers in North Africa - but certainly not as later as the 15th century. - Mustafaa 19:25, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm also pretty sure. The fact that you couldnt find, that doesnt mean that it doesnt exists. Duh! -Pedro 21:37, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Unfortunately, the user who added this didn't have an account, so it's hard to ask him for his source. But this article says that, amazingly, Roman institutions survived in Africa until the turn of the 8th century. So Latin undoubtedly survived for a time, the only question is whether it had a specifically African form. --Erauch 00:26, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Romance Papyrus

Romance Papyrus
Romance Papyrus

Does anyone know for sure if the above mentioned document is a written in 2 century bc in greece in a romantic unknown language, or is purely greek?

The evidence for clearly distinguished Romance languages is usually dated to the 8th-9th centuries AD. The Oath of Strasbourg is one of the earliest known Romance texts. Man vyi 20:19, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

~True. It is in Greek. The term romance refers, in this case, to a literary style, not a language. Thanks youCristianChirita 11:37, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Italian neuter

I hit Enter by mistake while writing the comment to my edit about Italian neuter... :-) Anyway, I'll explain shortly here: Italian "l'uovo" / "le uova", "il ginocchio" / "le ginocchia", and a few other nouns are definitely neuter, although they are traditionally taught and thought of as "irregular nouns that are masculine in the singular and [sometimes] feminine in the plural". The very neuter plural -a ending is there, however, and I think that it is the case that Romanian neuters work exactly the same way (except that there is more of them, I suppose).

LjL 21:07, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I had heard of this from my brother, who studied a bit of Italian. His teacher just called it "an irregularity that you have to learn by heart". :) This should be mentioned as a note, here and in Italian language. Note, however, that when a pattern of inflection is so rare and circumscribed, both traditional grammars and sensible linguistic studies usually agree on calling it "an irregularity". Cf English "irregular plurals" oxen, children, brethren. --Pablo D. Flores 01:33, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is indeed a "vestigial" part of the Italian language. With a few exceptions, nouns that were neuter became either masculine or feminine. The neuter gender is much more common in Romanian, where an important part of the nouns are neuter. such as oul / ouăle. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 07:49, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I dunno. Under your definition of "vestigial", how many words following an inflection pattern are needed for that pattern not to be vestigial? Mind you, I agree that, pragmatically, using the term "vestigial" may be fine, but I think that neuter is present enough in Italian to warrant a mention as neuter (and not simply as an irregular fom).
The main objection to the existence of an "Italian neuter" would be, in my mind, the fact that neuter nouns actually look, behave and smell like masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural. However, Romanian works exactly this way, too.
Also, I think I've read on a Spanish grammar (and on Wikipedia, too) that Spanish has retained neuter in the form of the article "lo" (in front of abstract concepts and/or substantivated nouns). If this warrants being called "neuter", I think the Italian nouns do as well...
In any case, I even disagree with teaching "neuter" nouns as though they were irregular nouns. This is completely subjective, but I think it's always better to give a rule, when there is one (even if it applies to a very limited set of items), than to stamp "irregular" everywhere. Just say (in, for example, a textbook):
While most nouns in Italian are either feminine or masculine, there are a few that derive directly from Latin neuter (2nd declension). These have -o in the singular (where they behave as though they were masculine), and -a in the plural (where they behave as feminine). A list follows:
...
If the student knows Latin, this will ring a bell; if she doesn't, the day she decides to learn it it might ring a bell; if she knows or learns other Indo-European languages, the -a plural ending will hopefully ring a bell. And that's good, I think. And in any case, even if no bell is... uh... rung? (well, weren't we talking about irregularities?), I think our brain is better prepare to learn something that is presented as a rule, rather than an exception. Again, this is 100% subjective, I know.
Besides, I have modified Italian language as well; have a look if you want. I'll re-read it right now and perhaps add the "vestigial" concept to my edit.
A hopefully comprehensive list of Italian "neuter" nouns, for reference:
  • il braccio / le braccia
  • il labbro / le labbra
  • il dito / le dita
  • il ginocchio / le ginocchia
  • l'orecchio / le orecchia (seldom used)
  • il corno / le corna
  • il ciglio / le ciglia
  • l'osso / le ossa
  • il membro / le membra
  • il budello / le budella
  • l'uovo / le uova
  • il muro / le mura (apparently doesn't come from a Latin neuter?)
  • il riso / le risa
  • il lenzuolo / le lenzuola
  • il fuso / le fusa (archaic meaning of "fuso")
  • il fondamento / le fondamenta
  • il gesto / le gesta
  • il grido / le grida
  • l'urlo / le urla
  • il filo / le fila
  • il paio / le paia
  • il tergo / le terga
  • il calcagno / le calcagna
  • il cuoio / le cuoia
  • il vestigio / le vestigia
  • le interiora
The grammatical gender of a noun is defined only by how one must inflect the articles and adjectives that go with it. By that criterion there are only two genders in Italian, masculine and feminine. The nouns above do not have a third "neuter" gender. "Braccio" is definitely masculine, since it requires masculine articles and adjectives (il braccio è grosso); "braccia" is feminine for the same reason (le braccia sono grosse). The simplest way to describe the situation is to say that, for a small set of nouns, the singular form is masculine while the plural form (or one of the plural forms) is feminine. That is very different from the "neuter" gender of German, say, where "neuter" nouns require a separate set of articles and distinct adjective inflections. All the best, Jorge Stolfi 19:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I know that some of the people here understand this fact, but from the discussion, it's clear that some don't. The fact that Italian -o singular / -a plural nouns seem to be half mascluine / half feminine is because they are all descended from the Latin neuter nouns which were -um singular / -a plural. After Italian speakers stopped recognizing the neuter gender, they still had these weird 'mixed' nouns, and calling them 'irregular' is just something that people do when they no longer understand the reasons for why a word is the way it is. Spanish doesn't have this problem because it completely collapsed the neuter into the masculine. Latin saeculum/saecula retained the 'mixed' form in Italian ciglio/ciglia, but in Spanish became siglo/siglos - - completely regularized to the system of pluralizing seen in the masculine pattern of -o singular / -os plural. Call it 'irregular' or an 'exception,' or whatever you like, but these descriptors fall shy of explaining what actually happened.--Hraefen 20:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I am Italian, and I can assure you that there is no "real" neuter gender in our language (as the last two users correctly pointed out): there are however many traces of Latin's neuter gender left here and there. For example there is a rough corrispective of English pronoun it in Italian, in the sense that indicater an object rather than a person, but has both feminine and masculine form (respectively essa and esso). It is interesting to note that in some areas (especially in Tuscany) of Italy people sometimes use a "correct" masculine form for these words (orecchio -> orecchi and so on) in spoken language. Also:
  • common plural form of orecchio is orecchie (a standard plural feminine)
  • membro means "member", like in and organization, and membra means "limbs"
  • an exception to the above rule, membro is used in literature meaning "penis" (really)
  • in familiar language ossi is sometimes used as a plural for osso, meaning scattered bones, like the leftovers from a meal, while ossa is more tied to the human skeleton as a whole
  • muri is probably the most widely used plural form of muro: mura is used only by people who speak more correctly overall, especially in reference to city walls, as opposed to house walls
  • present mura comes from the plural of murus, -i, Latin for house walls; city walls are moenia, -ium (a "pluralia tantum", that is, a word that only exists or has a different meaning in plural)
  • risa is the plural form of riso only in the meaning of "laugh, smile": when riso means "rice", the plural (though seldom used) is risi
  • today, fusa means the sound that a cat makes when he purrs (hope I got that correctly): we say "il gatto sta facendo le fusa"
  • fondamento never means the foundations of an house (rather, it means "proof, base" in abstract sense, for example in relation to a theory) while fondamenta always means house foundations
  • le fila is only ever used in the phrase "tirare le fila", meaning having control in a secretive manner; la fila instead means "queue", always relating to the meaning of thread (filo)
There are other things that demonstrate that many of these words are "irregular" in some way, as most of the Italian is (Italian verbs have lots of little variations like these). The basic concept is that in Italian you don't get much adherence to the rules as in other languages, even if there is plenty of them.

Introductory paragraph

I've removed the phrase saying that some degree of declension is kept in the personal pronouns: for that matter, in Romanian (and perhaps in some, older, forms of Romance), declensions are kept in much more than just personal pronouns. However, I don't think this deserves a mention in the introduction: we've got a whole article to play with. Also, if you don't like the way I've tempered the paragraph ("many of the differences", "among others"), feel free to reword, but some form of "tempering" should be left. Certainly, not all the differences are analytical (and not all Romance languages have all those differences, see Romanian), nor are the cited reasons the only ones for differentiation from Latin (namely, everyday and everylanguage phonetic changes are certainly part of the picture).

Other than this, is the phrase "many of the differences from the Romance languages in relation to Latin" grammatically correct?

LjL 15:35, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • It is obviously a generization. But it is still important and informative.--Pedro 15:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sure, and as I said, I think it should be kept - except for adding clues to inform that it is a generalization, as I hope I've done effectively. LjL 15:50, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Removed sentence under "16" section

Not sure what to make of this, but it was obviously out of place so I moved it to here. --Patik 03:23, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

In chinese,six means good luck,so 16 could bring us at least one good red luck of chance by meeting with our ideal woman.So,good luck,my friends,hope 16 could brings you some kind of romance which you have been dreamed of it.

I'd leave it where I think it belongs -- out of the Romance languages article :-) LjL 12:19, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
It is cute, though. Put a smile on my face. :)--Theathenae 12:24, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I saw it but I didnt remove it. maybe it can be used in the article about the number 16... Maybe chinese is a Romance language after all. LOL. The guy probably thought "Romance" meant "love". -Pedro 13:35, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Romance Languages Forum

I'm a college student in Florida who is fascinated by the Romance languages and Romance linguistics. I have so far studied and acquired a decent and somewhat articulatory knowledge of Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin.

This may not be the best place to do this, but I'm desperate for more members (I only have five so far). I've started a message board forum devoted to Romance languages/linguistics (hosted by SuddenLaunch). I'd like to invite anyone who's interested to check it out and join! There's a board for each major Romance language, a board for dialects, a board for discussing lingual history and linguistics, a homework help section, and a section for Romance conlangs. If you have significant interest in one or more of the Romance languages or in Romance linguistics in general, I hope you join and help make this forum into the Romance language resource/community I'm hoping it will be.

Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Vobis gratias do,

Gregorius

Do you have a link for me?
Oops! I suppose a link would help! : ) http://linguamania.suddenlaunch3

Evolution degrees

What's Evolution degree mean? That section seems completely random. Has French kept more or less from Latin? You can't tell from a number 44 per cent that just sits there randomly looking pretty! Could someone make it make sense, or will I just remove it? —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 13:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

The reference is just thrown in there, but it seems to be
Pei, M. A.. 1949. A New Methodology for Romance Classification.
That's what I found that matches the name and year. We still don't know how the number was calculated, but it's a start. Maybe if the one who pasted the numbers could explain... --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:43, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Numbers - 16

'In some languages the word for the number 16 is irregular after the fashion of English "sixteen".' This sentence had me somewhat confused. I'd regard "sixteen" as following a regular pattern, along with fourteen, seventeen, nineteen, and possibly fifteen and eighteen depending on how pedantic you want to be. Eleven and twelve are clearly irregular in English, but sixteen is not. I suppose the author means that it's irregular in the sense that it's not tenty-six? -86.136.27.156 18:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I guess so. Dieciséis "ten and six" is regular in line with veintiséis "twenty and six" and treinta y seis "thirty and six" (mostly pronounced quickly as if it were treintiséis) in Spanish, for example. Of course, there are languages where the numbers are all regularly formed, like Mandarin (and Chinese-borrowed Japanese). --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 20:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I think what the author was talking about was in regard to the fact that in some languages such as Spanish you have "dieciséis" and others such as French which have "seize."

Number of Romanian-speakers

Where does this number of 30 million for Romanian come from? Our own article Romanian language gives 26 million, which sounds more likely to me. Ethnologue gives about 23.5 million [2], but I believe that they count dual-native speakers only once, and Romanian has a lot of those (for example a million or so Romanian-Hungarian dual native speakers in Transylvania). Still, Romania has a population of just over 22 million, Moldova has less than 3.5 million. Yes, there are some Romanian speakers in Ukraine, and (if you want to stretch the definition of "Romanian language") maybe 400,000 speakers of other Eastern Romance languages in the Balkans, but conversely there are easily a million Slavs in Moldova, many of whom don't speak Romanian at anything like a native level.

I suppose that under Wikipedia's policies all of this is neither here nor there if someone has a good citation for this (Ethnologue is normally considered a pretty good citation, but I find its number implausibly low), but I don't see any citation in the article. I figure I'll give at least a couple of days for someone to answer before I edit, since I'm new to this article and I know how contentious numbers like this can be. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)