Romance Languages facts
While investigating facts about Romance Languages List and Romance Languages Definition, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Modern Romance languages come from a "non-classical" version of Latin called "Vulgar Latin" that had no orthography, was written in graffiti, and spoken by the lower-class. Basically, Romance languages evolved from Latin slang.
how romance languages developed?
Some of the earliest "roller coasters" originated in Russia, and in romance languages, roller coasters are often called "Russian mountains" (e.g. Spanish: montaña rusa). However, in Russian, they are called "American mountains" (американские горки).
What are the five romance languages?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is not one of the five romance languages. Here are 27 of the best facts about Romance Languages Tree and Romance Languages Fight List I managed to collect.
what are the romance languages?
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Sard, the language spoken on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, is much nearer Classical Latin than any other surviving Romance language.
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Thesauruses rarely exist for languages other than English. Compared to other languages, English has an unusually large number of synonyms due to the influence of very different language groups: Germanic (Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, the main basis of English), Romance (Latin, French), and Greek.
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Latin had no words for yes and no. This accounts for different affirmatives like Sì (from sic, 'thus'), Oui (from ille, 'that') and Oc (from hoc, 'this') in modern Romance languages.
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Peony signifies romance, elegance, honor, wealth and abundance in the language of flowers.
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Interlingua is an artificial language created to be comprehensible by everyone who speaks a Romance language.
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English-language authors dominate the romance-novel market. All romance novels sold in France are translations, and some German publishers don't let authors use their own names because they think that readers won't buy romance novels without Anglo-named authors.
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Celtic tribes who spoke languages related to Irish Gaelic or Welsh once lived throughout continental Europe. Though those areas now mainly speak Romance or Germanic languages today, many placenames of Celtic origin are still in use, such as "Vienna" or "Zurich".
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The Sims has famous artists to re-sing their songs in scripted Simlish language (a language specifically designed for the game), from Katy Perry to My Chemical Romance.
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The belief that English should return to it's original roots by removing all words coming from romance languages, Latin, Greek etc. Leaving only the Germanic ones. This includes coining new words based on German or reviving old ones.
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Roller coasters are known as 'Russian Mountains' in Romance languages. In Russia, they're known as 'American Mountains'.
Romance Languages data charts
For your convenience take a look at Romance Languages figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why romance languages have gender?
You can easily fact check why are they called romance languages by examining the linked well-known sources.
The romance languages are so called not because they're romantic but because they're rooted in the language of the Romans. (I knew they were rooted in Latin, but never made the connection between Roman and romance)
The term "Latino" originated with the French intervention in Mexico, and was meant to imply a closer connection between France and the Romance language-speaking nations of the Americas - source
As Romance and Germanic languages are related, the Romance p- and c- often corresponds to the Germanic f- and h- respectively. For example: French 'poisson', Spanish 'pescado' vs. German 'Fisch'; Fr. 'pere', Sp. 'padre' vs. Eng. 'Father'; Fr. 'cent', 'chien' vs. Eng. 'hundred','hound'. - source
All Romance languages have a definite article while Latin itself and many non-Romance languages don't.
Sunday was renamed to "Day of the Lord" in the Romance languages in honor of the Christian holy day, but remains named after the pagan-associated Day of the Sun in English and other Germanic languages - source
When did romance languages diverge?
Four of the seven days of the week in English are named after Norse gods (Odin, Thor, Tyr, Frigg). The names of those days in romance languages are so different because their days were named after Roman gods (Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter).
How romance languages sound?
Bevis of Hampton, a Middle English romance from about 1324, has been printed in many languages over the years, including English, French, Irish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Croatian, and Yiddish.
Proto-Indo-European, an ancient language which was the common ancestor of the Romance, Greek, Germanic, Slavic, and Indo-Aryan languages.
The English language used gendered nouns, like Germanic (der, die, das) and Romance languages (el, la), until the 1300s when their use fell out of practice.
English is a Germanic language despite having 58% Romance (Latin) language vocabulary.
The answer to Prof. Banks' question on the movie 'Arrival': Why does Portuguese sound different to Other Romance Languages? It's because a Celtic language was once spoken in the area and influenced the sound of the language.
