Linguistics of Romance Languages:

How Languages Came to Be

Timothy O’Brien

Grade 10

What Is Linguistics?

• Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics.
• In Simple Terms, this is the study of how languages change, gain their structure, and become widespread.
• Studying Linguistics may be tedious to some, but being able to understand a person's language (what it's about), helps people to understand more about the world. Language tells us what the culture finds important or unimportant, its history, its expectations, its fears, and its hopes.

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Romance Languages

• While it won’t help with finding a date, Romance comes from the Roman period in History, when Latin was the widespread language.
• “… A linguistic consequence of the Roman Empire” – Dr. W. D. Elcock, late professor of romance linguistics and French Literature - University of London
• These languages evolved from Vulgar Latin – the nonstandard (as opposed to classical) dialects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed.

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¿Hablas Español?

La Evolucion del Español

(The Evolution of Spanish)

Bienvenidos a España!

• The Spanish language began to evolve around the fall of the Roman Empire when the language was still a version of spoken Latin. In Hispano-Romance language family, it is the most widely spoken.
• It was originally called Castilian, as it was promoted by King Alfonso X of Castile who appointed scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Spanish, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.

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“The Iberian Machine Gun”

• “When we speak Spanish, we fire phonemes from our mouths like bullets from the barrel of an automatic weapon” – El Público, a major newspaper in Madrid.
• According to Gaston Dorren, author of, “Lingo: Around the World in Sixty Languages”, Spanish speakers utter an average of 7.82 syllables per second, compared to 6.17 for anglophiles and 5.97 for German speakers.

Parlez-vous Français?

La Naissance du Français

(The Birth of French)

Bienvenue à Paris!

• A combination of being inhabited by Celtic Peoples, the Germanic Franks, and the Romans led to the birth of this unique language among the Romance Languages.
• From these influences, three major groups of languages (langues d’oil, langues d’oc, and Franco-Provençal) arose.
• Modern French was later formed from the langues d’oil and made the official language in 1539 by King François I.

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French’s Influence on History

• From the 17th to the 19th centuries, France was the leading power of Europe; thanks to this, French was the “lingua franca” of educated Europe, especially with regards to the arts, literature, and diplomacy.
• During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French language established itself permanently in the Americas.
• The Russian, German and Scandinavian Courts spoke French as their main or official language, regarding their national languages as the language of the peasants. Prestige came from the French language, as it had the backings of an empire, and a rich culture spanning thousands of years.

Você Fala Português?

O Nascimento da Língua Portuguesa

(The Birth of Portuguese)

Bem-vindo a Lisboa!

• A mixture of the Gallaecian language (of Celtic origin), Latin, and Germanic Languages, Portuguese evolved to become one of the more unique romance languages like French. With various nasal sounds and pronunciations, this language remains very similar to, but still unique to Spanish.
• In 1536 Fernão de Oliveira published his “Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa”in Lisbon, the first Portuguese grammar of its kind. Later on, in the late 15th-16th centuries, colonizers, traders and missionaries spread the Portuguese language to many regions in Africa, Asia and The Americas, most notably, Brazil.

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Brazilian Portuguese

• Brazilian Portuguese is actually far closer to 18th century Portuguese than European Portuguese.
• Compared to European Portuguese, Brazilian is pronounced much softer and often uses a vocabulary and a style of grammar which is 250 years out of fashion!
• For example, in Brazilian Portuguese, the word for screen is tela , compared to the European Portuguese, which is ecrã. In addition, the word você (the formal and plural form of "you" in Portugal) replaces tu (the informal and singular form of "you" in Portugal),which if said wrong in Portugal or Brazil could be considered disrespectful or rude.
• This makes conversing in either dialect extremely difficult, and almost impossible at times.

Examples

Similarities and Differences

• While all similar in some form, vocabulary from the French Language is more inventory compared to Spanish and Portuguese, in part because of the Germanic, Slavonic, and Arabic Invasions that took place in Europe.
• In France, Frankish tribes mixed with the Celtic influence and Latin Language to form the French we hear today; compared to Portugal and Spain, both of which had been invaded in 711 by the Moors (an Arabic-speaking people.)(W. D. Elcock)

The Study

• For this study, I took interviews with four Spanish speakers, showing them a set of ten words and phrases in both Portuguese and French, and having them guess the phrase based off of their prior knowledge of Spanish. I then asked about what they thought about the words, which language they would understand more, and their reasoning for their choices.
• My hypothesis was that Spanish speakers were more likely to prefer words and phrases in Portuguese over French, and they would guess more correct words in Portuguese than French.

Data

Results

• In the end of the study, my hypothesis was correct; that Spanish speakers are more likely to prefer words and phrases in Portuguese over French, and that they guess more correct words in Portuguese than French. I ended up with an average of 67.5%rate of success with Portuguese words, compared to a 55% success rate with French words.
• If I could have changed the process of my study, I would have included more participants as there would be a more accurate representation of Spanish speakers, as well as completed this study with French and Portuguese speakers, and increased the amount of words to twenty.

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Takeaways

• By learning about the similarities of languages, I have gained a new appreciation for the world as a whole, and I have also grown my love for learning how to speak foreign languages. Completing a study has shown me the value of a knowledge of languages, and the need to teach this in our ever changing world.
• Hopefully, through looking at these languages, we can understand the history of these countries more, and gain a sense of how connected our world really is.

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Importance of Language Learning

• Knowing a foreign language opens up a world of possibilities, especially in our ever-changing, and multi-cultural world. I know that by learning about these languages, and by learning how to speak them, I have gained a sense of understanding of different cultures and backgrounds.
• “If you talk to [someone] in a language [he or she] understands, that goes to [the person’s] head. If you talk to [somebody] in [his or her] language, that goes to [the] heart.”– Nelson Mandela

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Bibliography

• Elcock, William D. The Romance Languages. Faber & Faber, 1960.
• Dorren, G., et al. Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2015.
• Agard, Frederick B. A Course in Romance Linguistics. Georgetown UP, 1984.
• What Do Romance Languages Have to Do with the Type of Romance Between Lovers?. University of Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics