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  #31  
Old March 11, 2010, 02:10 AM
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This question about similarities between spanish and italian, reminds me the story we use to tell to explain the word "gringo". Although nowadays it is not very used in Spain, it's said that the term born after realizing that we were able to understand, with more or less work, french, italian, portuguesse etc. while we were unable to understand english or german. Of course, we did guess the reason was that such languages, as the spanish one, came from latin. But in that case, from which language did come the ones we could not understand? Obiously from the greek!, Griego in spanish, and from griego "gringo".
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  #32  
Old March 22, 2010, 09:44 PM
OblivionLord OblivionLord is offline
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hmm

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Originally Posted by Villa View Post
I just returned from a month in Italy. There are many Spanish speakers in Italy and every single Spanish speaker I met in Italy spoke Italian. I have made it a point the last 2 times I was in Italy to go out of my way to meet Spanish speakers. (I lived in Italy for 2 years and in 2007 went back to school in Italy.) I'm going into my 4th year of teaching Italian to Spanish speakers here in California. They all learn Italian relativamente facile compared to the English speakers por lo menos. Ademas I've lived in California all my life and have yet to meet an immigrant from Italy who did not learn Spanish right here in California. I myself learned Italian first and then Spaish. Italian and Spanish are more similar than they are different. Think about it logically. Even English has a vocabulary that is some 60% derived from Latin. Now just imagine Spanish that is a Latin language. Spain was Rome's most important colony for 640 years. Latin was spoken in Spain for 840 years. Romans went to live in Spain and visa versa to Rome. There were Roman emperors, popes, generals etc. etc. from Spain. Spain was Rome and Rome was Spain.
Sometimes when I talk to people in Italian they remind me so much of somebody I know who speaks Spanish and visa versa.
Let's not overlook a major difference between these languages. For 1...

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

"Among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance and 77% with Romanian."

Here is the chart...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity

Now as for Spanish... Considering the land was influenced by Arabs for about 800 years....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_...anish_language

"It is estimated that the Spanish language counts over four thousand Arabic loanwords (including derivations) and well over one thousand Arabic roots, which together make up around 8% of the Spanish vocabulary. This makes Arabic the largest influence on Spanish after Latin."

Here is a list of Arabic and Spanish names for Iberian Cities and places....

http://baheyeldin.com/writings/histo...nd-places.html

This pretty much sums up the differences between a dirty language (Spanish) and a real romance language (Italian).

Not to go off topic though, I think French is the most romantic language. hehe
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  #33  
Old March 23, 2010, 01:39 AM
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¿A qué te refieres con lo de "dirty language? Precisamente lo que tú llamas "suciedad" es lo que enriquece un idioma.

http://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuar.../bueno/p03.htm

¿Y qué fue del indoeuropeo?

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenguas_indoeuropeas

Puesto que ya el indoeuropeo era una lengua sucia, tal vez tendríamos que remontarnos a nuestros primeros gañidos y gruñidos para recuperar el origen de las lenguas.
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  #34  
Old March 23, 2010, 07:36 AM
OblivionLord OblivionLord is offline
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Yes it is true that the languages of Europe can be rooted from others all the way back to Indo-European, but you have to admit that some are more pleasing to the ear than others which is why I mentioned the word dirty in reference to Spanish. hehe

To give you an example. You mostly hear Opera sung in Italian. The language emphasizes more stress with ending vowels at the end of majority of the words. It doesn't sound quite the same if sung in Spanish.

On the flip side of the coin, if you've ever heard Spanish rap and compared it to Italian rap, you will notice very quickly that Italian rap simply doesn't sound as harsh or as rugged as Spanish even though there are alot of Italian rap artists.

Honestly I do enjoy the Catalan language since it somewhat combines French and Spanish.
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  #35  
Old March 23, 2010, 11:13 AM
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Do you know that Miguel de Cervantes, wrote at his masterpiece "Don Quixote", that the italian tongue should not be translated into spanish as the translations are not able to transmit the whole sense of any text, and because he thought the italian was an easy to learn tongue. In fact he wrote that only the difficult languages as latin and greek should be translated, not the rest of them he considered easy to learn.
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  #36  
Old March 23, 2010, 02:30 PM
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El español es un idioma de gran riqueza (¿qué otro idioma tiene dos nombres?), no sólo léxicamente, sino por otros muchos motivos. ¿Qué otra lengua romance tiene la abundancia de tiempos verbales que posee la nuestra? No olvidemos la distinción entre los verbos copulativos ni nuestro querido subjuntivo. La flexibilidad en el orden de las palabras, la existencia de morfemas en adjetivos y adverbios, entre otros elementos sintácticos y morfológicos, proporciona a las oraciones matices semánticos inigualables en otro idioma que, tal vez, tengan que recurrir a una riqueza léxica que a nosotros nos es innecesaria. Nuestro vasto panorama literario es un exponente sin parangón y ejemplifica mis palabras mejor de lo que podría hacerlo yo.

Que un idioma sea agradable al oído en determinados campos es tan solo una opinión subjetiva, sin base científica alguna. En lingüística comparada no tienen cabida apreciaciones personales. Por tanto, es aconsejable no estudiar un idioma supuestamente deleznable o que produzca molestias auditivas de algún tipo, por lo que, ya que estamos en un foro de aprendizaje de los idiomas español e inglés, le sugiero que evite el estudio de esta lengua que tanto dolor le produce.

Personalmente, como no sé apreciar la belleza del rap o de la ópera (igualando en este caso mi exiguo conocimiento al suyo), no me concierne el idioma utilizado en ambos géneros musicales.

En lo que respecta al catalán, éste no es el resultado de una mezcla de español y francés. Es una lengua romance de un territorio que no dejó de sufrir las invasiones musulmanas, entre otras, como las sufrió gran parte de la península.

Last edited by irmamar; March 23, 2010 at 02:43 PM.
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  #37  
Old March 25, 2010, 07:51 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OblivionLord View Post
Let's not overlook a major difference between these languages. For 1...

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

"Among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 78% with Rhaeto-Romance and 77% with Romanian."

Here is the chart...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity

Now as for Spanish... Considering the land was influenced by Arabs for about 800 years....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_...anish_language

"It is estimated that the Spanish language counts over four thousand Arabic loanwords (including derivations) and well over one thousand Arabic roots, which together make up around 8% of the Spanish vocabulary. This makes Arabic the largest influence on Spanish after Latin."

Here is a list of Arabic and Spanish names for Iberian Cities and places....

http://baheyeldin.com/writings/histo...nd-places.html

This pretty much sums up the differences between a dirty language (Spanish) and a real romance language (Italian).

Not to go off topic though, I think French is the most romantic language. hehe
The of arab influence in Spanish language is in vocabulary and is most often found in agricultural terms,( a topic about they were true masters) and places. The massive presence of such terms is even bigger in Valencian language, in which was written the literary masterpiece Tirant Lo Blanc. The presence of arabic terms in any language does not get it "dirty". This "dirty" term is taught in Catalonian schools about Castillian and it is simply false. Educators who suggest that the Spanish language is an arab dialect are separatist propogandists. I hope get their independence soon and leave us in peace!
PS:
The true arabic dominance in the Iberian Peninsulae lasted from 711 to the 1212. From that date on, the Islam Kindoms were submised to Chistian ones.

Last edited by explorator; March 25, 2010 at 09:11 AM.
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  #38  
Old March 25, 2010, 08:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by explorator View Post
The of arab influence in Spanish language is in vocabulary and is most often found in agricultural terms,( a topic about they were true masters) and places. The massive presence of such terms is even bigger in Vanencian(Venetian, Valencian ?) language, in which was written the literary masterpiece Tirant Lo Blanc. The presence of arabic terms in any language does not get it "dirty". This "dirty" term was taught in the past in Catalonian schools about Castillian and it is simply false. Educators who suggest that the Spanish language is an arab dialect are separatist propogandists. I hope get their independence soon and leave us in peace!
--------------------------
Me parece raro que pedagogos eseñaron eso. Hace un rato alguien aquí en los foros presentó una lista de palabras en castillano con origenes arabes. La lista es grande, pero vi que la mayoría de esas palabras
eran que no se usan mucho. Hablo español (más o menos) y no conocí
la mayoría de las palabras. Me gustan las palabras, e imagino que se las usan más en andalusía.
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  #39  
Old March 25, 2010, 08:57 AM
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Tienes razón Poli, la mayoría de esas palabras ya no se utilizan, ni siquiera en Andalucía, donde presumen mucho de origenes árabes, que en realidad no son tales, pues la mayoría de la población bajo los reinos musulmanes eran descendientes de hispano-romanos, convertidos al islam: muladíes (hijos de distinta madre, en árabe) o cristianos, que tenían que pagar un impuesto para ello (mozárabes). Además tras la reconquista cristiana, se ocuparon las tierras primero por castellanos y después, dado que eran escasos por francos, procedentes de la actual Francia. Por último en 1616 se expulsó de España a toda la población con ancestros islámicos aunque fuesen cristianos (Véase expulsión de los moriscos).

Last edited by explorator; March 25, 2010 at 12:34 PM.
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  #40  
Old March 25, 2010, 11:38 AM
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No es cierto que en Cataluña se enseñe que el castellano es un dialecto del árabe. Otra cosa es que no quieran saber nada del castellano, que es cierto (lo digo por experiencia). Pero nunca jamás he oído que digan que el español viene del árabe. Será que no hay pueblos aquí que empiezan por "Al" y por "Ben" o "Bel".
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