Similarities between Irish and Romantic languages

Fakename4242

Just curious on this one..
Does anyone know why there seem to be so many similarities between Irish and the other romantic languages? I'm thinking about the days of the week of the week here and some other vocab (unfortunately only the word for sea comes to mind at the moment- but I'm sure there are many others).

I'm not saying that there is a very close connection between Irish and the R languages - just that it seems they are more closely related than Irish and the language of our closest neighbour.

Gaeilge mará
Spanish mar
Italian mare

Gaeilge - Dé Luain, Dé Máirt, Dé Céadaoin, Déardaoin, Dé hAoine, Dé Sathairn, Dé Domhnaigh

Spanish - Lunes, Martes, Miércoles, Jueves, Viernes, Sábado, Domingo

Italian - Lunedi, Martedì, Mercoledì, Giovedi, Venerdì, Sabato, Domenica

franc 91

I think you must mean Romance languages - though that doesn't in the slightest, stop you being romantic in them.

golden lane

franc 91 wrote: »

I think you must mean Romance languages - though that doesn't in the slightest, stop you being romantic in them.

all european languages that a non slavic..........have the same root...

keepkeyyellow

Well there's male and female nouns in Irish and Romantic languages but while current English doesn't resemble Irish in the slightest if you go back to 800AD Old English it's very like Irish, grammar wise at least. Male and Female nouns, noun declension and so on.

franc 91

You might want to have a look at this - if you want to compare them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

Enkidu

The Italic languages and the Celtic languages originate from the same stage of Indo-European (middle Indo-European, about two thirds of the way through its life cycle). The are more closely related to each other than to any other branch of Indo-European.

English on the other hand is Germanic, it came from a slightly later form of Indo-European.

Although as keepkeyyellow said, go back enough and English looks grammatically similar to
Irish, even if it doesn't have similar words.

all european languages that a non slavic..........have the same root...

Slavic languages have the same Indo-European roots as well.

Gael

Enkidu wrote: »

The Italic languages and the Celtic languages originate from the same stage of Indo-European (middle Indo-European, about two thirds of the way through its life cycle). The are more closely related to each other than to any other branch of Indo-European.

English on the other hand is Germanic, it came from a slightly later form of Indo-European.

Although as keepkeyyellow said, go back enough and English looks grammatically similar to
Irish, even if it doesn't have similar words.


Slavic languages have the same Indo-European roots as well.

Indeed. I think that Basque, Hungarian and Finnish are the only European languages that don't have a clear Indo-European root.

Fakename4242 wrote: »

Gaeilge mará
Spanish mar
Italian mare

Gaeilge - Dé Luain, Dé Máirt, Dé Céadaoin, Déardaoin, Dé hAoine, Dé Sathairn, Dé Domhnaigh

Spanish - Lunes, Martes, Miércoles, Jueves, Viernes, Sábado, Domingo

Italian - Lunedi, Martedì, Mercoledì, Giovedi, Venerdì, Sabato, Domenica

Putting aside the common Indo-European root as mentioned already, some of those similarities are based on the fact that Irish borrowed a lot of words from Latin during the early-Christian/monastic period and of course the modern Romance languages emerged from Vulgar Latin around the same period.

Fakename4242

Thanks!

tac foley

Basque is a language isolate.

Magyár, Finnish/Saami and Estonian are Finno-Ugrian.

The two other near-isolates - Latvian and Lithuanian - are other oddities.

tac

franc 91

You might like to know that unsurprisingly there are different forms of words for days of the week in the various forms of Occitan and the other dialects spoken in France.
This is a rhyme from les Deux Sèvres -
Lunde, marde, merque micade, jeude (pronounced herder), vende, sam'di, dimanch'

loldog

There's a good page here on the Indo-European roots of Irish words:

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/donncha/focal/ieroots.html

.

tac foley

And THIS is how sheep are counted this very day in Cumbria, UK -

Yan
Tan
Tethera
Pethera
Pimp
Sethera
Methera
Hovera
Covera
Dik
Ena dix
Tena Dix
Thethera dix
Pethera dix
Bumpit
Ena bumpit
Tena bumpit
Tethera bumpit
Pethera bumpit
Siggit

tac

dubhthach

tac foley wrote: »

The two other near-isolates - Latvian and Lithuanian - are other oddities.

tac

Latvian and Lithuanian are both Baltic languages which is a branch of Indo-European. Some linguists talk of Slavic-Baltic as a common group. In general Baltic languages are regarded as quite conservative when it comes to preserving features from proto-Indo-European.

The counting system you mention from Cumbria shows clear influence from the extinct "Cumbric language" which was basically the Brythonic Celtic language that survived in Cumbria up until the early medieval period (12-13th centuries)

tac foley

...and the childrens' counting-out numbers - 'eeny, meeny, miney, mo' are said to be remnants of a pre-celtic number system.....

tac