English words that conflict with your language.

**Azathoth** · 12-15-2009, 07:05

French is a germanic language like English and German, maybe it takes the distance a non-native speaker can take to see the similarities.

But French is a Romance language.

**The Stranger** · 12-15-2009, 09:58

Originally Posted by Azathoth

But French is a Romance language.

it has some germanic influences, because the franks were germanic. before that they had celtic language. english though has a lot of romanic influences, from when the normans invaded. alot of english is french... hence the stubbornness of the french to maim their great french language into something of a bastard

**Fragony** · 12-15-2009, 11:11

Originally Posted by The Stranger

it has some germanic influences

It doesn't have some germanic influence it's a germanic language, has nothing to do with german, we just call this type of language germanic.

**The Stranger** · 12-15-2009, 11:45

i know it has nothing to do with german... but isnt it classified as an romanic language?

**Centurio Nixalsverdrus** · 12-15-2009, 16:38

French is a Romance language that's most closely related to Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Gallego, etc. Dutch on the other hand shares a language group with English, German and Frisian. IIRC.

**ajaxfetish** · 12-15-2009, 18:25

French is indeed a Romance language, not a Germanic one. The Franks were a Germanic people and presumably spoke a Germanic language prior to migrating into Roman territory, but in France they came to adopt Latin as their language, and French is a descendant of that vernacular Latin, most closely related to Spanish and Portuguese (and other members of the Western Romance branch).

English and French are related only in that they are both Indo-European (one from the Germanic sub-family, the other from the Italic sub-family). However, of the external languages to affect English, French has had the deepest influence of any save Old Norse. Most of that French influence was lexical, though. As far as I know it had little if any effect on English grammar, and was not an important source of functional words.

Here's a great image if you want to see how all the Indo-European languages fit together:
Indo-European Language Family

Ajax

**Ituralde** · 12-15-2009, 19:49

So my first thoughts when reading the topic were more among the lines of Louis furhter up. So despite what has been written before I share them with you anyway.

Three things that still get me:

1) gift, which means a present in English is spelled and pronounced exactly like the German word for poison. There's just so many possibilities for confusion there if you are not careful.

2) cell phones or mobile phones are called Handy in German. Handy is pronounced English as well and looks like a English word too if you dismiss the upper case. So a lot of people, even my profs at University have difficulty getting to grips with the fact that no English speaker will understand that a Handy is a cell phone.

3) eventually. That one is tricky for Germans as well. We have the word eventuell in German which means that something might or might not happen. While eventually means that it will definetly (yeah, yeah, I don't know how to write that word) happen. So a lot of people mix that up as well.