Italien

[Catmeouws]

AIBU to think that Italien is just French with different endings and French is just English with a more complicated grammar?

Errm yes, YABTotallyU and very silly. I think you should put whatever you are drinking down & go to bed.

Oh, and it's Italian btw.

*Italian

Go to sleep dear

That's pretty offensive OP...

Do you also think pizza is “posh cheese on toast?”

Languages take and adapt words from other languages constantly. For example "beef" is from "boef" which is french and from "bos" which is Latin for Ox. There are many similarities you can find and lots of words have very interesting origins but it's still separate languages.

Let's try a couple of words.....
so water
French: eau
Italian : acqua

car
F: Voiture
I: Macchina

Work
F: travail
I: lavoro

nope, doesn't work

Having...

I love you.

I'm Italian, brought up in the UK. To the pp who mentioned it.. yes... pizza is glorified cheese on toast (unless my mum makes it :o )

Ha. I used to say this to wind up my Italian ex. When I was learning Italian if I didn't know the word I would try the French one with an Italian accent and ending. It was right about 90% of the time.

Well I did go to bed and that is why I didn't reply to any of your queries. I prefer welsh rarebit any day to pizza.

"bonne nuit" or should I say "buona notte"

European languages have lots of common roots. It explains the cross-over words and similar-sounding words. But no, French is not "English with more complicated grammar".

It's the other way round: English is German, with lashings of French. The seemingly less complicated grammar is a red herring: 1000 years ago, English had a far more easily recognisable Indo-European grammar, it's just moulted a bit along the way.

As for Italian and French, they're both Latin-descendants. "Eau" is the same word as "aqua": both derived from Latin "aqua". The fact that they have chosen two different Latin-derived words to describe things that did not exist in Roman times does not make them any less closely related. Americans use "gas" for what we would call "petrol"; that doesn't mean American English isn't related to British English. Norwegian and Swedish are close enough to be mutually intelligible, but Norwegians say "vindu" for window and Swedes say "fönster".

Firstly, it is ItaliAn, not ItaliEn.

And no, your theory doesn't really work. There can be the odd similarity due to Latin roots, but they are very different.

The reflexive verbs are pretty much 100% identical in French and Italian though?

I mean they all work identically they’re not the same words obvs

Italian sounds like poetry. They could be reading the instructions from the dvd player and it would be beautiful.
I live in Germany and it does not sound pretty.

"And no, your theory doesn't really work. There can be the odd similarity due to Latin roots, but they are very different."

It's not the odd similarity: it is very deep similarities about how the verb system works and how the noun and adjective systems work. I have never had any formal lessons in Italian, but with my knowledge of Latin and French (and the insights that has given me into how this group of languages works) I can read an Italian newspaper article or get the gist of a lecture as long as the lecturer speaks clearly. I can see that x in Italian must be the same kind of construction as y in French or z in Latin. No way I could do that with a less closely related language.

Italian sounds like poetry. They could be reading the instructions from the dvd player and it would be beautiful.

I think listening to ds talk about poo or dh go on about pensions has ruined its musicality for me!

@Kewqueue if you can understand it, it's probably not that exciting! It just is musical and doesn't sound like you're trying to get snot out of your throat!
I resolve never to learn it so I don't spoil the magic!

Oh dear!

If there are lexical and grammatical similarities in any two European languages it would be Italian and Spanish, my Spanish is enough to read basic Italian headlines/road signs etc but that's about it. Other than that your statement is laughable.