7 ANSWERS
All Romance languages are based on Vulgar Latin (Latin itself is not counted among the Romance languages, it's Italic).
Basically, Portuguese / Spanish / Italian could be said to be a dialect continuum, especially if you also include Catalan, Occitan and Corsican as intermediate steps. The differences between them are comparatively small and it is easy to convert vocabulary from one to the other if you memorize a few typical changes.
French and Romanian are outliers.
Romanian is an outlier because it was strongly influenced by the Slavic languages around it, so the Romanian vocabulary is now a mix of Romance and Slavic roots.
French is an outlier because the population was in the habit of stressing the last syllable of their words - since Latin words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, this led to a drop of the final syllable of Latin words in French, e. g. amicus became ami (rather than amico/amigo as in other Romance languages), mater became mère (rather than madre), and so on. French can be summarized as "drop one Latin syllable and mumble the rest".
Basically, Portuguese / Spanish / Italian could be said to be a dialect continuum, especially if you also include Catalan, Occitan and Corsican as intermediate steps. The differences between them are comparatively small and it is easy to convert vocabulary from one to the other if you memorize a few typical changes.
French and Romanian are outliers.
Romanian is an outlier because it was strongly influenced by the Slavic languages around it, so the Romanian vocabulary is now a mix of Romance and Slavic roots.
French is an outlier because the population was in the habit of stressing the last syllable of their words - since Latin words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, this led to a drop of the final syllable of Latin words in French, e. g. amicus became ami (rather than amico/amigo as in other Romance languages), mater became mère (rather than madre), and so on. French can be summarized as "drop one Latin syllable and mumble the rest".
Wikipedia has a nice picture showing closeness of Romance languages.
Kit di Pomi mentioned an important ommission in this picture (see answer comments): Ladino(Judaeo-Spanish) belongs into the Ibero-Romance group.
Kit di Pomi mentioned an important ommission in this picture (see answer comments): Ladino(Judaeo-Spanish) belongs into the Ibero-Romance group.
- Percentage of non-Latin borrowings: from Arabic en Ibero-Romance (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan), from Slavic languages in Romanian, from Germanic languages in French.
- Plural endings: -s (“Western Romance”), -i (Italian, Romanian).
- Vowel systems: 5-7 (typical), plus nasal vowels (French, Portuguese).
- Past and future tenses: simple vs periphrastic
- Different spelling: ñ (Spanish) = nh (Portuguese, Occitan?) = ny (Catalan) = gn (French, Italian).
I think you will find the main difference in the words that were used everyday, they are the ones that have actually change, while the formal, specific and not-so-used words are almost the same. Example:
- Butterfly: mariposa, papillon, farfalla...
- Democracy: democracia, démocratie, democrazia...
- Butterfly: mariposa, papillon, farfalla...
- Democracy: democracia, démocratie, democrazia...
One big difference between Ladino and other Romance languages is the innovation of a syllable final sibilant number distinction in the second person of verbs. Like in Italian, you need to know what syllable to stress, it is not marked.
You are = sos (sing,) sosh (plural)
You'd sing - kantariyas - kantariyash penult stress
You'll sing - kataras - kantarash antepenult stress
Buen diya ke tengash vozotros! (we don't have 'usted')
You are = sos (sing,) sosh (plural)
You'd sing - kantariyas - kantariyash penult stress
You'll sing - kataras - kantarash antepenult stress
Buen diya ke tengash vozotros! (we don't have 'usted')
I would like to add that Romanian also retains some noun declensions from Latin that the others do not, making it very unique!
It's an interesting (and true) point the one about the verb "to be" in Italian and French, but let me point out that, when speaking in particular, in central-southern Italy they tend heavily (if not exclusively) to use the verb "Stare" (technically: to stay) instead of "Essere" (to be), basically in the exact same way it is used in Spain.
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