Romansh vs Romanian vs Italian vs French | Can they understand each other?

[@Ecolinguist]

🤓 Arpitan Language | Can French, Catalan and Ligurian speakers understand it? → kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2qYo4afgtVlpLM

[@luisdestefano6056]

I live in Argentina, and Speak Spanish. Also fluent French, Italian and Portuguese. In written form I understand Catalan maybe two thirds, when spoken maybe one.half. Gallego on the other hand is almost identical to Portuguese, I easily understand most of it.

[@ARUchannel1]

in spanish I understood the insight of every word very useful to see our romance language family

[@jordillach3222]

I just commented before I read your question. My comment was as follows: _"My mother tongues are Spanish and Catalan and I guessed them all! I'm so proud! 😁"_

[@jordicm]

As a catalan speaker I can understand some words but it's very different from my language.

[@janteo1]

This language sound like a roman legionaire got lost in the german woods for 30 years

[@Ecolinguist]

That's an interesting origin story for a language!

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

@@Ecolinguist and after he got crazy...

[@FernandoFlores-gr4gc]

xD

[@TheSaltube]

I agree.

[@hnguyen5656]

Though there is heavy German influence on Rumantsch, the inhabitants of the area spoke Rhaetic (now extinct) and Celtic languages, when the Romans came in. The Germanic tribes and Romans gradually squeezed out the Celtic languages which once dominated France and central Europe, which are now only spoken in the UK, Ireland, and part of France.l

[@SuperJNG18]

Romansch-speaker: This animal is often associated with Transylvania French and Italian: Ah, OK! Romanian: *Unimpressed.*

[@RaduB.]

Hi! Yes, because we don't really agree with this myth... Let's say that it appeared against our will. 🙂

[@SuperJNG18]

@@RaduB. Oh, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want my country associated with a blood-sucking vampire either…then again, after the last four years, it’s hard for people not to…

[@BlueSwampyCraft]

@@RaduB. I don’t have anything against it. And I think most Romanians don’t mind it either. We had a lot of popular myths about strigoi before Dracula anyway

[@RaduB.]

@@BlueSwampyCraft A "strigoi" is indeed a vampire but Dracula is another name for Vlad Țepeș, which definitely was not a vampire. Bram Stoker's name choice for his character really is unfortunate.

[@BlueSwampyCraft]

@@RaduB. I’m Romanian don’t need to explain. It’s a LEGENG, it was inspired by Vlad for obvious reason - the blood theme. I don’t see anything wrong with that. If anything foreigners became more interested in the region and in Vlad himself as a historical figure. And they discovered on this occasion the true beauty and culture of Transylvania.

[@binema5797]

As a Romanian the Romansh language is much more harder than i tought 😳 The other Latin languages seem easier now 😅

[@wyqtor]

It's mostly because you are used to the others. Also, the guy's dialect appeared to be a bit non-standard to my ear (i.e., it was a dialect from one of their valleys, not the standardized Rumantsch Grischun). I was able to understand more than 50% of what was said on Rumantsch radio while on my trip to Switzerland as a Romanian native speaker with a good knowledge of Italian and Spanish.

[@stefangeorge8876]

Sunt de acord și eu. Nu am înțeles absolut nimic. :))

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

da, roman !

[@mlsterlous]

You are right. I lived in Moldova many years, and i don't understand 90% of Romansh in this video :)

[@flrazvan]

Yeah the same for me too, and i could say i have basic knowledge of French and Italian ( more Italian). I perceived it more like a german language than the Latin language.

[@niklask8753]

Roman family reunion 1500 years after the fall of the empire be like:

[@bramantyoprahoro7284]

More like a great reunion...

[@noam_segal]

Beat me to it

[@DZRESPECT]

well they are all celts or germanic invaded by the romans haha

[@niklask8753]

@@DZRESPECT yeah and the romans you mean probably are romanized etruscans and italics. there was no roman people. being roman was the same as being american today. the only real romans probably were the early patricians. the rest were all romanized foreigners

[@noam_segal]

@@wolfruhn byzantine empire doesn't count, those languages aren't eastern

[@Zdamaneta]

As a romanian speaker I barely understood a few words. It sounds like a mix of latin and german and the accent sounds german.

[@arthur_p_dent]

As a German, I'd say the accent sounds Swiss-German, and unmistakably so.

[@antonovvski]

I think it is a mix of german and another language i wouldn't say Latin though. Since it was spoken in Switzerland you expect some accent influences and maybe some vocabulary influence too. I've seen that he used "Genau" which means "Exactly" in both Romansch and German

[@Oluinneachain]

Marcus do you think a photo of Hitler as your avatar is appropriate?

[@citizenz4640]

@@Oluinneachain I'm not sure if you're sarcastic or not :)) But I think it s his face lol

[@felicepompa1702]

@Marius Imholz also in many italian dialects asparagus can be called 'sparagi which is similar to the romansch

[@ObvsCam93]

I don't know about everybody else, but Romansh is the hardest romance language for me to understand on this channel so far. I've never heard it spoken before and it actually helped not reading the script but my knowledge of italian (and a little French) meant I only understood the context of each sentence. Thanks to everyone who made this video possible, it was fascinating!

[@johaquila]

I have occasionally heard Romansh on Swiss radio, where I found it quite easy to understand. But there it came with a much stronger Swiss German accent, so presumably it wasn't as pure. And I must agree, as a native speaker of German with a reasonably good passive command of French, Italian and Spanish, I find this to be at least as hard to understand as Portuguese. Even with the written text it's probably harder for me than Catalan without it (which is also quite tough).

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

Written Romansh is more or less readable for romance language speakers. There are 5 (or 7. Even more!) idioms of Romansh, each one with its written standard, and a koine language called Romauntsch Grischun. The later one anybody can see on Swiss franc banknotes and federal official documents. RG is artificial and nobody has it as mother language.

[@johaquila]

@@robjj4769 I have never heard of that claim, can't find any evidence for it anywhere, and severely doubt it given that (to my knowledge) no Slavic languages are or were spoken near to the region in question. Are you mixing up Romansh with Romanian? These are completely different languages. The only thing they have in common is that they are both Romance languages and have similar names deriving from that.

[@renatomsoborghi]

I agree! As a brazilian who also speaks fluent spanish (having lived 9 years in Argentina), and a little bit of french, this was by far the most difficult romance language to unterstand, from those we saw on this channel. Even Sardinian or Neapolitan were a lot easier (I found Occitanian quite easy once I understood some weird pronounciaton differences).

[@johaquila]

I wonder where the difficulty comes from. Maybe the German influence? Even as a native German speaker I only noticed the very German use of "also", which I actually found irritating rather than helpful, coming so unexpected in a Romance language. Or could there be a lot of Rhaetian traces left? We know that this language was spoken in the region before it was Romanized. Rhaetian is hypothesized to be related to Etruscan.

[@fedem14]

omg i've never heard spoken romansh before

[@pigeonarmstrong]

Same

[@Ecolinguist]

Now you have!

[@fedem14]

@@Ecolinguist also not as hard as i thought really

[@fedem14]

@Dovyeon maybe being an italian native speaker, having studied latin and knowing some german? i didn't understand a lot but still like 40%

[@fedem14]

@Dovyeon i don't speak a celtic language so i doubt it, also i probably would have understood a lot less without reading

[@uby54ty06]

Romanian: "I am the hardest romance language" Romansh: "I'm gonna end this man's whole career"

[@Hun_Uinaq]

Yeah that was a rough one. Romanian is not so bad. Once you get used to the UL at the end of the words and the Slavic vowels. The only one in the romance language series from Norbert that comes close in difficulty for me is Neapolitan.

[@RyanCarterVonArad]

or * ''woman's career''....

[@zorronegro229]

Is it really difficult to learn it?

[@italixgaming915]

@@Hun_Uinaq There are other Italian regional languages that are quite close to Neapolitan, like Sicilian for instance.

[@arasev_hd1524]

Chau, native Romansch speaker here. There are 5 diffrent Romansch dialects. The dude in the video talks the ugliest Rumantsch xd 😂🇨🇭

[@L-mo]

Romansh vs Romanian vs Italian vs French | Can they understand each other? NO.

[@nickcohen4900]

First of all , the apellation Romanian is wrong ! Our language is called valahica . We are valahi . Romania and romanian language is a fraud invented by Vatican .

[@daciaromana2396]

Nick Cohen 😂 😂 😂. Also, Romanian is an alien language that comes from Mars. 😂

[@neroma]

As a Romanian I understand Italian , but my guess is the italians cannot understand romanians

[@ilariabrunetti317]

@@neroma I'm Italian. I find spoken Romanian hard but with the subtitles, I understood most of it.

[@L-mo]

@@neroma true, but I think Romanians are probably exposed to more Italian language (e.g. via the TV) than vice versa, so this might not be intrinsic to the languages' unequal mutual intelligibility.

[@RippleMks]

As a French speaker it was fascinating to hear, most difficult Latin language ever... When the Romanian girl was starting to talk I was thinking "finally someone I understand in some extent" 😂 hopefully I am fluent in German, it helped me with many small words (aber, genau, also, schon...), but it wasn't sufficient to grasp the meaning of what he was saying.

[@alexj9603]

@VFM #7634 Definitely. But the meaning of the word has changed quite a bit between these languages. I immediately recognized the cognate as well, but I couldn't make a sense out of it.

[@danu1608]

❤🤣🇷🇴🇪🇺❤❤🇨🇵

[@katherineamelia98]

i think you meant ‘luckily, i am fluent in german,’ the word hopefully is used in situations that haven’t happened yet!

[@Fl1mper]

As a Swiss who speaks German, Italian and French, I still couldn't understand most of it.

[@ruejr]

These three languages seem closest to Romansh yet they only help a bit with this one.

[@Ryosuke1208]

Spanish, english and french and still nothing.

[@marcaubrun2954]

lura es ti betg in bun Svizer. Jeu sun Franzos e discur l'unica lingua specifica alla Svizra. Jeu discur anc ils trais auters idioms dalla Svizra.

[@BigButtPaperWings]

sie verstönd sich ja amig underenand nöd mal ;)

[@heloisaestevo9836]

Portuguese, french and english, still couldn't understand much too

[@chrisicu4236]

So fascinating. My grandfather, who died before I was born, spoke Romansh. I’ve never heard it before and enjoyed hearing this episode. Thank you.

[@kaderbueno6823]

As a French guy it's the first time in this series of video I was lost... All latin languages have their difficulties but this one killed me

[@poseidonoceanstorm7396]

J'suis d'accord avec toi, je n'ai rien compris. C'est trop allemand pour moi haha

[@Tiqerboy]

Very true. I can get the idea in Italian, Catalan and Occitan, but Romansch was pretty much incomprehensible to me. I've been told it is closest to Latin and when they have brought the Latin speaker, I found him most difficult to understand in the group. I think the Latin guy would understand Romansch the best.

[@kaderbueno6823]

@@poseidonoceanstorm7396 le pire c'est que j'ai des notions d'allemand mais c'est la première fois que j'écoute une langue qui a des influences et latines et germaniques c'est très bizarre ça me donne l'impression qu'il parle très vite dans 2 langues différentes et que mon cerveau doit faire le lien

[@poseidonoceanstorm7396]

@@kaderbueno6823 ouai je crois qu'il est à cheval entre les deux. Mais je crois que c'est l'influence du suisse allemand je crois

[@kaderbueno6823]

@@jaredwilliams6853 interesting thanks def got to check that out

[@stefangeorge8876]

More romanian please! 🇷🇴💕

[@Cezar4ik]

Yeah 🇷🇴🇲🇩💕💞💓💗

[@HuGo031191]

As a portuguese native speaker I could understand; 40% Romansh 50% Romanian 70% Italian 40% French

[@samaaaa_]

respect

[@leonebicchierai9460]

Para de mentir cara kkkkkkkk

[@mrbrs2]

O unico que posso concordar contigo é o Italiano, de resto são poucas palavras compreendida quando eles falam, mas a legenda deixa um pouco mais tranquilo para entender!!! po

[@HuGo031191]

Entender ou não um idioma é algo pessoal. Não tem que concordar comigo. Eu costumo consumir muito conteúdo de poliglotas. Brasileiro no geral não tem esse interesse por idiomas estrangeiros visto que somente 5% da nossa população entende o inglês que é um dos idiomas mais populares do mundo.

[@KeillaSellay]

Romanian joke for the Portuguese: Cu carne de vaca nu se moare de foame. I am sure that Portuguese speakers or Galician speakers will understand 100% all the words.

[@darkkestrel1]

So happy this has come out. As a Romand Swiss (francophone/western Swiss) I'm glad the Romansh speakers have been able to keep their language alive. I wish it were the same for us with arpitan/francoprovençal, which is spoken in Switzerland by very few people mainly in the Valais

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

suisse romande?? 70 80 90... septante huitante nonante...

[@BobbyBermuda1986]

@@stephanobarbosa5805 Arpitan/Francoprovencal would be a great one to do in this series, I agree.

[@darkkestrel1]

@@stephanobarbosa5805 yes, that's how we count (well my canton uses quatre-vingt but whatever) octante for eighty is also used but rarely

[@lukasdutli3473]

it is more widely spoken in the Aosta Valley ( Val d'Oûta in Arpitan)

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

@@darkkestrel1 your canton uses 4x20?? very sad!! ... pardon me... but i hate 60+10, 4x20, 4x20+10....

[@toxicbee990]

Romansh sounds like an italian after having lived for 20 years in Germany tries to speak french

[@MrMikkyn]

It kind of reminds me of Catalan with some German words thrown in there pronounced in a Swiss Accent.

[@hamburger9157]

While his drunk.

[@liliana6003]

😀😀😀

[@refreshh5]

To me it sounds like a mix of french and portuguese with a german accent

[@tbirdparis]

As a native Italian and French speaker (and also some basic German), that was still really hard. I guessed all the words correctly, but I think it was only because I could see what he was saying written on the screen.

[@luancardoso3060]

As a portuguese speaker, it was harder than romanian

[@spinjitzustudios780]

69th like

[@thelegend3163]

I'm a portuguese speaker and I speak french as well. I was totally lost when the guy was speaking. Romanian looks easy compared to romansh lol

[@Oliver-eh6hc]

I never thought that romanian would help me to understand another Latin language :D amazing language, sounds so ancient! i was lost so many times!

[@isissophieandandreea]

Latin is a Romanian language.

[@ronnyalvarado8116]

Extremely tough, but extremely fun too! Romanian is the next language on the list after seeing this :)

[@vnietov]

By far this is the hardest romance language to understand for me. I'm a native speaker of spanish.

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

más que rumano

[@vnietov]

@@stephanobarbosa5805 Sí, mucho mas complicado que el Rumano, definitivamente.

[@Pakiu1306]

@@vnietov hablo inglés (como idioma segundo/primero? No sé. Yo hablo 4 idiomas en totales [no sé exactamente como lo dice en español pero yo soy un Malasio. Todo el mundo acá aprende malayo, inglés y su lingua materna cuando ellos se aproxima 4 años]) y la francés es más fácil para entender. I’d say that it’s easier than Spanish, even. “Marron” -> “maroon” animal->animal etcétera.

[@giselarigone666]

I agree!

[@vnietov]

@@Pakiu1306 Are malay and indonesian considered the same language?

[@desanipt]

That's interesting, bat is "chauve souris" (bald mouse) in French, "miezmur e miezutsch" (half-mouse and half-bird) in Romansh and "morcego" (blind mouse) in Portuguese ("mor" doesn't really mean "mouse" in modern Portuguese but it does come from the Latin word for mouse that also gave "mur" in Romansh)

[@65fhd4d6h5]

You just blew my mind. Murciélago in Spanish, but I didn't know it meant any of those things because in Spanish blind mouse would be "ratón ciego", and neither "mur" is similar to "ratón" nor I had thought of the possibility that "ciélago" came from "ciego". 😂

[@65fhd4d6h5]

E tampouco sei porque respondi no teu comentário em inglês.🤦‍♂️

[@desanipt]

@@65fhd4d6h5 Eu também só soube agora 😂😂 Com o vídeo perguntei-me de onde viria a palavra "morcego" em português e fui ver a etimologia. "Cego" é mais evidente em português, contudo "mor" também é muito diferente 😅 O mais perto que temos é "murganho" (que é um nome bem formal para "rato doméstico"). "Rato" é a palavra mais comum em português, sem dúvida.

[@arthur_p_dent]

In German, a bat is literally a "feathered mouse". EDIT: no it's not, as several users have pointed out. "Fluttering mouse", more like.

[@Miggy19779]

Indeed, lots of them use the Latin root for mouse, mus (genitive muris) cognate with English mouse and German Maus. Interestingly Italian takes the direct Latin word for bat, vespertilio (from vesper, evening, as that's when they become active), and corrupts it into pipistrello.

[@SniaVillagePunk]

Madly hard, and I'm a lombard native speaker. He reminds me of a german trying to speaking lombard and mixmatching random words from french

[@osvaldobenavides5086]

Thanks! You can hear most of Romansh's similarity to the other languages. It takes a bit to acclimatize your ear to it, but once you do comprehension increases quite a bit!

[@sasepatrutreipedos]

Could you do a video in this same format with Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-romanian? It would be interesting to see how different such languages are compared to one another. It might be difficult to find speakers of the latter two since less than 5500 people speak them combined. I hope you consider my idea. As always great video.

[@empyrionin]

Where do you find meglenites and especially Istrian vlachs nowadays? I think they might even be extinct. An Aromanian though, that would be awesome. Farsherot.

[@mihaiisvoranu]

@@empyrionin there are plenty of megleno-romanians living in macedonia. as for istrians, yeah, they are probably less than 100.

[@angelaurelio7907]

¡Me perdí! Ni siquiera con subtítulos lograba entender; me ayudaron los otros participantes. ¡Geniales!

[@GarfieldRex]

X2

[@migkocando]

Me ha pasado igual

[@guidoylosfreaks]

Murciélago y grava son cognados. Las demás no. Nada, ni cerca.

[@Ecolinguist]

Romansh or Occitan? Which one is easier to understand? The Occitan Video→ kzbin.info/www/bejne/l5-Uh6hjgdx0nNE 📽

[@rauðaz]

For an Italian speaker like me, Occitan is definitely easier to understand

[@mrmarmellow555]

WONDEBAAAA...I CLAPP'D

[@alessio4761]

Occitan for sure Could only understand Romansh becuase I could read it

[@augustodaro2208]

Occitan for sure. Both written and spoken

[@isaacranghetti]

definitely occitan

[@podlasian65]

Norbert, you're doing a great job bringing people (and peoples) together! Hats off!

[@mandarinesalon1937]

In romanian, two words came out for eagle: *vultur* and *acvilă* . The cognates of *vultur* are: _Vulture_ (english), _vautour_ (french), _avvoltoio_ (italian) The cognates of *acvilă* are: _Eagle_ (english), _aigle_ (french), _aquila_ (italian), .... _evla_ (romansh) In romanian, *vultur* may be used either to refer to a _vulture_ or to an _eagle_ In romanian, *acvilă* is used to refer unambigously to an _eagle_ . I don't speak at all romansh, but when the romanian girl came with _vultur_ , the romasch speaker seems to worry about the alimentation of the bird: dead ( _vulture_ ) or live prey ( _eagle_ ). I don't know to which extend the word is used, but according to some dictionnaries, _elva_ may also be used for _eagle_ in romansh.

[@Unbrutal_Rawr]

The word *acvilă* doesn't really belong here as it's a loan from Italian (if not from Latin). The inherited word exists as *aceră/aciră,* which seems to normally mean "hawk", and "eagle" only dialectally.

[@daciaromana2396]

As far as I know, "acvila" is a specific type of eagle: the golden eagle, while "vultur" is used to mean any generic eagle or vulture.

[@JCMH]

The Spanish cognates are, respectively, _buitre_ and _águila._

[@gcsgcs1]

Vulturul este numele comun dat mai multor păsări răpitoare diurne, mari, din familia accipitridae, ordinul falconiformes, cu ciocul lung, ascuțit și coroiat, cu aripi lungi și cu picioare puternice, cu gheare tari, care se hrănesc cu pradă vie și, uneori, cu stârvuri. În această categorie se pot aminti: genul Pithecophaga cu specia. Pithecophaga jeffery genul Aquila cu 12 specii (ex. Aquila chrysaetos) genul Spizastur genul Ichthyophaga genul Hieraaetus cu 6 specii genul Spizaetus genul Oroaetus genul Polemaetus cu 1 specie genul Stephanoaetus cu 1 specie genul Ictinaetus genul Harpyopsis genul Lophaetus genul Haliaeetus genul Morphnus Vulturul pescar (Circaetus gallicus) face parte din familia Pandionidae

[@phillipsiebold8351]

Just running the Romansch word, the closest phonological word I find is the Apache word "ch'ishoogi" and Navajo "Jeeshoo". Doesn't sound like it comes from Celtic as nothing from the Celtic languages have anything close.

[@PauloVictor-vu2bt]

I've never heard Romansch before, it sounds like a German trying to speak Romanian 😅

[@arasev_hd1524]

Well, there are 5 different dialects. His Rumansch is nearer to German than the Romansch I speak. He speaks Sursilvan and the Rumantsch I speak is nearer to Italian. So I speak Rumantsch Vallader

[@sl2547]

@Irina Popa I think he means in term of how the language sounds - I speak French and German, and some of the Romansch words do sound quite Germanic

[@ismt9390]

I speak German and Romanian and i still didn't understand anything :))

[@schurch1569]

It's reaaaally strange to Swiss German speakers, because phonetically it's very much like the Swiss German dialect of the canton of Graubünden, but you just dont understand a word…

[@davethewastelander8326]

@@arasev_hd1524 I think the most similar language is Lombardian, indeed i come from Lombardy, and I gotta say I understood him more because I understand Lombardian than anything else

[@explorerpigeon8462]

For me I think the romansch pronunciation was the hardest to understand more than the words themselves. P.s I speak Romanian, Italian, french, Portuguese and Spanish as for the romance languages

[@mihaifox359]

Ba esti nebun

[@IM_AYKHARAAD]

As a French native (who speaks Spanish and a bit of Italian), I’m surprised that I could understand Casiana (the Romanian girl) at about 90 % without listening again and again what she said. I used to understand around 25-40 % of Romanian as I never studied it but with the subtitles and the context, I almost understood everything she said. And I feel like Romansh is a mix of Occitan, Italian and German (kind of), but I am curious to know if the accent is the authentic or if Leander speaks Romansh with a German accent. I would like to know, but anyway that sounds pretty nice. Very interesting!

[@thebauci1167]

I‘d say it‘s the language and not him having an accent. Source- I‘m romansh

[@richlisola1]

It’s authentic

[@IM_AYKHARAAD]

@@richlisola1 OK thanks. 😊

[@IM_AYKHARAAD]

@@thebauci1167 Now I know. Thank you.

[@sergioamayajr.5868]

I recently learned, by watching Italian futbol games that Italian speakers cannot understand the Portuguese language.

[@alce3197]

I thought the hardest latin language to understand was Romanian, I was wrong

[@jrthiker9908]

As an English speaker who also speaks French and Italian, I was on a train across Switzerland on my first trip there years ago and when 4 teenagers get on speaking Swiss German. They immediately switched to Romansh so that the other Swiss around them couldn't understand them. I saw everyone sort of look perplexed, and I couldn't understand a word but then quickly realized it was Romansh, which I was eager to hear. It was pretty cool.

[@jeanpauljh]

As a student of Rumantsch, I am so happy to see this language on your channel, Ecolinguist! Grazia fitg ^__^

[@DoraEmon-xf8br]

I speak native French and Occitan and somewhat Italian but I really struggle to understand Romansh when spoken. It’s a litter easier when I read the text but still, it’s really hard to even get a grasp.

[@cartswhat8177]

As a Romanian, It was sometimes easy to understand, and other times I had no idea what he was talkinga about. Amazing job!

[@stanisawsosenko3952]

One of "Swiss" languages, WOW ;) Does this bring us any closer to the long-waited Germanic languages comparison? :D

[@Ecolinguist]

A bit closer! yes. ;)

[@clotildedecasaantici8065]

Germanic languages, English included?

[@tchakamaura3850]

@@Ecolinguist I am here for that! Let's see 'Scandinavian dialects' in action (supposed to be intelligible) as well as some West vs North Germanic comparisons if that's feasible for them and the Nor-Den-Swe trio against Icelandic, and the languages Dutch vs Frisian vs Afrikaans, as well as any dialects you can find that are not any of these but are rumored to not be intelligible with them.

[@tchakamaura3850]

@@clotildedecasaantici8065 Ah but English has so much other vocabulary! I don't know many Germanic words. I am watching Bron|Broen and I find cognates everywhere but only cognates and they are jumping out from a soup of unintelligibility.

[@jonathanemslander6896]

I hope! Ik hoop! Ich hoffe!

[@alexito23avp]

What a strange language, it's a good mix of Italian and German language, Norbert you are the BEST , I never heard Romansch

[@dan_leo]

This is the hardest romance language to understand for me. I am Italian (I studied French) and I couldn’t grasp almost anything 😅 but I refrained from activating the English subtitles 😉 Romanian is way more understandable. Very interesting video as usual 😉

[@rarezam]

I think it's because romanian has a more Slavic approach which for me it's easier to understand while romansch has an German approach which I feel it harder to understand

[@fabiandanesti1497]

@@rarezam idk about "slavic" words bro 77% of Romanian is complete Classical Latin , 5% German and 5% hungarian and just 13% is slavic , its weird to hear anytime that slavic and slavic

[@contecristian686]

Italian is the closest language to Latin, followed by Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, and the most divergent being French. Romanian and Italian are 77% alike. The closest language to Romanian is Italian. The closest to Italian is Spanish. Face sens.

[@tincaionut4111]

@@fabiandanesti1497 nu știu ce slavona aud ăștia,de zici că români vorbesc ca Moldovenii de peste Prut

[@tincaionut4111]

@@contecristian686 You are bad informed, Romanian is the closest language to latin. Read more.

[@bogdancristea9270]

Oh wow! I did not expect Romansh to be so difficult. I think I'm quite confident with Latin and I can speak French, Romanian, Italian and Spanish fluently but I still struggle with this one. You've got me into it now.

[@imhalida]

Love that Lionel is in here. He's always fun to watch 😄 The Romansh language sounds mostly similar to German, with Italian and French sounds here and there. (At least to me, who don't speak any European languages other than English.) At first I thought there should have been Luke here but then having seen the guests struggling to understand Leander, I guess a Latin speaker would fare no better.

Merci beaucoup ! ;-)

[@katarinawikholm5873]

It sounded like a romance language w Swiss German intonation, I tried listening to it again from a distance and the singsong and consonants came through the strongest.

[@imhalida]

@@katarinawikholm5873 Ah, that's interesting. I'm not familiar with Swiss-German. I just heard the German R and automatically thought "German" 😅

[@bordoraux9537]

Soy de España y escuchar Leandre saying « BIEN » made me feel good haha

[@danielbarrantes7751]

Basta y casas también jajaja

[@joalexsg9741]

That was most interesting! Romansh, though beautiful, is the hardest to guess the cognates for us romance language speakers among the languages compared here but it's been truly enriching. This sort of guessing from hearing the descriptions given in the language with the subtitles helps us a lot to develop our learning skills and also a bit of each language being used, as the subtitles are also given in each of them. Thank you so much!😇

[@AlefSousa017]

Wow, I'm brazilian, I speak portuguese and a bit of french. I first got interested in the romansh language after my brother moved to Switzerland. When I see it written, it really looks like a total mix of all of the other native languages in Switzerland (french, german and italian), but when spoken, it sounds really unique, a bit like german, but to me it doesn't sound as the mix of languages I was expecting it to sound! I usually watch these videos without subtitles and often can understand most romance languages pretty well, even if I'm not that familiar with said language, like italian or romenian for me, but I basically couldn't understand much at all of the romansh language, and even though I KNOW it's similar to other languages I'm a bit familiar, it just sounds SO different from anything I've heard! I had to turn subtitles on for this video lol. Loved the video, as always, by the way!

[@subitopresto2572]

I LOVE YOU!!!! you have the most interesting channel on KZbin. A vzhledem k tomu, že mluvíš i česky, tak ti to napíšu česky. Opravdu klobouk dolů za to, co děláš. Moc rád se dívám na tvoje videa. Mají neuvěřitelný přesah a dokonale ukazuješ spojitosti a provázanosti, které panují mezi jednotlivými jazyky, kulturami, jazyky, národy...lidmi. Bravo, bravo, bravo!!!

[@Ecolinguist]

Dzięki!

[@pedromenchik1961]

Português: morcego, pedra, águia, violino, aspirador de pó. For me, Romansh was the hardest Latin language to understand so far.

[@diogorodrigues747]

Parece alemão, não é? Até mesmo na pronúncia... O romanche claramente teve bastante influência do alemão suíço.

[@sportm1lgrau550]

@@diogorodrigues747 parece o alemão suíço com meia dúzia de palavras latinas hahaha.

[@bumble.bee22]

@@sportm1lgrau550 pk

[@danielbarrantes7751]

Murciélago, piedra o roca, águila, violín y aspiradora en español latinoamericano. Saudações amigo lusófono, muito bonito o idioma português em todas as variedades.

[@simonebattistini6701]

"french Is the most germanized latin language" romansch: hold my beer

[@emburez]

yeah pretty much that xD

[@Bln-f9u]

Welschgerman is the German transition to romance and Romansch vise versa.

[@jabrown]

Fascinating. I am a native speaker of Dutch who speaks a little French, Spanish and Portuguese, but almost no Italian and no Romanian at all, and with the subtitles I could sometimes understand the Romansh a little bit, but then other times not at all. I think without subtitles it would've been completely incomprehensible.

[@victorcornea3393]

Super mișto idee!Fiecare vorbește în limba lui dupa ce i se adresează o intrebare într-o altă limbă pe care nu o cunoaște niciunul din cei trei.Fain!!!Bravo!

[@benmariusc2845]

Bun-venit pe canalul Ecolinguist!

[@maxmansi]

Arranca con un "Bien" tan en castellano que maréa. Las palabras clave se entienden. Es increible que cuanto más difícil es la difícil menos difícil parece la anterior. O sea, el rumano y el francés parecen portugués para un hispanohablante al lado del romansh.

[@carlosliboriocurreri7030]

Sin duda el rumano es fácil delante de este

[@adamelhawari166]

Sisi, a mi me ha sonado a japonés más de la mitad y mira que además de castellano también hablo catalán. Parece ser que está muy influenciado por el alemán

[@miguelgomezmora155]

Yo estoy aprendiendo alemán y creo que entendí más el romansh por ese lado que por el propio español, por ejemplo genau es exacto.

[@guidoylosfreaks]

La chica rumana te daba todas las claves. Ella entendía primero y lo hacía más fácil... en rumano.

[@andri5040]

Hey, sorry for interrupting your catalan conversation but i‘ve got a funny storytime: when i went to Barcelona with my family (and we speak rumansh together), my father who is not the best spanish speaker started to order food in rumansh and it worked perfectly! That was the moment we realized that catalan is probably the most resemblant still existing language to rumansh! And switzerland isn‘t even close to Catalunya...

[@alexandra9944]

Romansh sounds very German. Romanian sounds beautiful

[@bramantyoprahoro7284]

Romanian sounds so beautiful, soft and stern respectively. Italian is similar but expressive (with lots of hand gestures).

[@Cezar4ik]

Thank you Romainian Does Sounds Beautiful

[@bramantyoprahoro7284]

@@Cezar4ik Merci.

[@radiantsvn]

@@bramantyoprahoro7284 hand gestures aren't part of the language.

[@bramantyoprahoro7284]

@@radiantsvn But I saw some Italians with hand gestures in some YT videos.

[@magnajota4341]

Romansh sounds like a German trying to speak French, but only knows Spanish and Italian

[@REOGURU]

As a German and Spanish speaker I found this extremely fascinating, in particular the sprinkling of Germanic words in Romansch. Although I found the Romansh nearly incomprehensible compared to the other languages, there were enough key words in it for me to eek out the meaning.

[@rodsol5612]

Thank you very much for this video. I knew Romantsch, but only in internet pappers, this is the fist time I hear how it sounds, it's soooo beautiful! Thank you! Well done, it's a really nice video!

[@davi99ful]

This was by far the hardest latin language challenge on this channel, I still managed to get the words correctly because of the others helping but I'm pretty sure if I didn't have Italian, French and Romanian in the conversation I would be lost. Interesting though, a lot of vowels and consonants pronunciation in Romansch sounds very similar to portuguese, and the use of the word "BASTA" caught up my attention because it sounds exactly like some portuguese accents and I think it means the same thing.

[@cius96]

Only the romanian girl actually guessed the third word: "tschéss" means "vulture" not "eagle", so the correct terms would be "avvoltoio" in Italian and "vautour" in french ("aquila" and "aigle" mean "eagle", while in romanian "vulture" is used for both "eagle" and "vulture"; acvilă exists but isn't used that often). Finally, the romansch word for "eagle" is "evla". Norbert, if you'll ever see this comment and if you have the possibility to do so, please let the guests know about the misunderstanding.

[@HinnStormur]

But he meant a bird of prey eating living animals, not corpses, so "avvoltoio" in Italian would be wrong. There are other terms like falco, gipeto, poiana, gheppio... falco is the more general word together with aquila. I mean, he clearly reacted negatively to vultur, so it's not "vulture". A Romanian-Italian dictionary gives "aquila" for vultur, so again no, there was no misunderstanding.

[@user-uz7gb7gb4v]

The most fascinating part for me was how every once in a while he’d break out like “genau”, “schon“, “also”, etc.

[@thomastschetchkovic5726]

Yeah, but sadly, that didn't make it any more easy to understand for me (native German speaker) because these words are just fillers and don't actually add any context

[@FernandoFlores-gr4gc]

Este video logró que el rumano y el francés me resulten fáciles de entender xD.

[@pablomeza987]

x2

[@frms7571]

x3

[@leilagreen7]

Fernando Flores, rumana, vivo en Suiza, hablo frances y italiano ( tambien espanol😉), pero romantsch language is very hard to understand!🙋‍♀️🙈

[@juanjacobomoracerecero6604]

X4

[@marcoprado187]

Igualmente amigo 😅

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

The Italian girl and French guy were kind of translators for others romance language speakers. Even Cassiana was more understandable for me as a Portuguese language speaker.

[@diogorodrigues747]

I am from Portugal and I feel the same thing. Strange, isn't it?!

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

@@diogorodrigues747o romanche teve muita influência do alemão. Para os italianos é bastante compreensível. Um forte abraço do Brasil!

[@geocazan2218]

Portuguese is the most close romance language to romanian.

[@diogorodrigues747]

@@geocazan2218 What? No, it's not...

[@fabiolimadasilva3398]

@@geocazan2218 estão em extremos opostos do contínuo dialetal românico. Sua afirmação é descabida.

[@salimrahal1811]

I also noticed some German words in Romansh such as "genau" (exactly) and schon ( already) and Geigia stems probably from "Geige" which is violin.

[@evelynn08]

And schuber from sauber

[@zbigib.5762]

Also "also" 😃😊

[@isissophieandandreea]

In Romanian we have an old type of violin with horn, used only in Bihor county, that we call “higheghe”, exactly as Romansh, but with a “hi” before it.

[@Meridianux]

Eu sunt din Romania! Felicitari! Toate limbile latine sunt sensibil apropiate intre ele! Limba romana e mai aproape de italiana!

[@CouchPolyglot]

Que interessant, sempre havia volgut sentir el romanx. La veritat és que sense mirar els subtítols no és gens fàcil! Mirant els subtítols sí que s'entén bastant tot. Moltes gràcies! 👏👏👏

[@irondasgr]

Is this catalan???

[@CouchPolyglot]

@@irondasgr sí :)

[@agentdcooperr]

I'm addicted to this channel, seriously.

[@TheRealWALLABI]

This sounded very obscure, unlike other romance languages I have listened to (as a native french speaker), perhaps for lack of exposure.

[@oleksijm]

His phonology is essentially German. If he rolled his Rs and had a more Romance prosody, he would be understandable on par with languages like Piedmontese and Ladin (North Italy), though those are not crystal clear sounding either.

[@nicolaramoso3286]

@@oleksijm Yeah for example if I try to watch the regional Ladin newscast my understanding highly depends from the accent of the reporter: if they have a Venetian accent it's super easy otherwise if they come from South-Tyrol it's much harder to grasp the words.

[@caseyrogers573]

It’s very interesting watching everyone acclimate to the language and slowly being able to understand more and more.

[@annakaraivanova6936]

Wow as a French speaker the Romansch was very difficult. I could understand the Italian very well, the Romanian as well, and then the Romansch I could get some stuff from the written text but otherwise not so much. It sounds so much like German even Latin words are being said

[@alexj9603]

Among the different dialects of Romansh, the Sursilvan dialect presented here has the most phonetic similarities with German. Especially due to the r sound. Other dialects sound closer to Italian.

[@norbertohess4477]

Interessantíssimo essa apresentação. Muito obrigado. Até a próxima! Norberto do Brasil 🇧🇷

[@yesid17]

i will never get enough of this channel this video was so good, thank you, keep it up!!

[@michelefrau6072]

In sardinian: Spoiler Bat There is not a single word, in sardinia there are a lot of geo-synonyms for the flora and fauna, and the bat it's the animal with the highest number of local names, there are almost 180 names arrata pinnada or ratapignata (from catalan, feathered rat) alaepedde (wings of leather) sorighe pinnadu ( feathered mouse) or sorighe pedde (leathered mouse) And there are tirrìolu, satzamureddu, tzurrundeddu, and so on ... Stone Petra, Pedra / Perda (lat. Petra) Eagle Abbila / achili (lat. Aquila) Violin Biolinu Vacuum cleaner Boca•proine / boga•pruini (Literally: dust remover)

[@Tore1960]

Niente da precisare su quasi tutto. Al limite su Stone/Pietra (in italiano) potrei aggiungere anche Preda. Sull'aspirapolvere però mi sono perso. Mai sentito il termine Boca proine/ bogapruini. Il quale oltretutto mi pare che sia una traduzione che calca il termine italiano. Potrei anche azzardare l'ipotesi che sia un termine inesistente o magari facente parte della Limba Sarda Comuna e quindi un termine che nessun parlante 'normale' sardo usa. In ogni caso si usa come 'polvere' anche il termine 'prughere' /'pruere'.

[@michelefrau6072]

@@Tore1960 aspirapolvere stavo per non metterlo poi ho cercato su internet e l'ho trovato, ma giusto per completare la lista 😉 Su preda hai ragione ma visto che anche per il pipistrello ho scelto qualcuno dei tanti anche per pietra non ho inserito tutte le varianti, ho scelto arbitrariamente quelle che secondo me sono più frequenti

[@默-c1r]

I love this. Also, it was hilarious when the French man laughed when he realized how hard this was going to be love from the US

[@alessio4761]

Romansh only understandable if you have subtitles for me

[@MrLydius]

Romanian guy here. Excelent clip! felt like trying to understand a distant relative by asking for help from a sister (Italian) and a cousin (French). good job!

[@fluffypancakes7626]

In the German part of Switzerland, we have the evening news in Romansh once a week because Graubünden contains the Romansh minority. Half the time, I feel I can understand it because my French is decent, but then it quickly goes off the rails lol. I've never heard Romanian before. It surprisingly sounds a lot like Portuguese! A bit off-topic, the romanian speaker is also really pretty

[@diegoch1111]

I'm a Spanish speaker and I understood: French: 95% (I have been learning it for a few years) Italian: 90% ( Without previous knowledge) Romanian: 30% (Sounds a lot like Latin to me, it is pretty hard) Romansch: 10% (Sounds like a strange combination of a German speaking person trying to speak Latin. I have studied German for a few years too but still I didn't get almost anything of what he was saying, just identified a few cognates, both with German and romance languages)

[@Tiqerboy]

It's interesting, I lived in Switzerland 1982-83 in the French part (Valais) as a kid and I remember these TV spots which featured a common saying in the four official languages of Switzerland. A cartoon with animals speaking the languages in random order so that each had a fair chance of coming first (when the spots featured only German, French and Italian, it was always in that order). The bear spoke German, the dog French, a cat for Italian and finally a beaver for Romansch. The phrases would be something simple like "Can I enter?" or "where is the station?" or "I am hungry". With that, the Romansch sounded pretty straightforward and I was thinking "that's not too bad". It's a good thing they didn't try to use the word for vacuum cleaner! Does anyone here remember these? I used a tape recorder to get a lot of them!

[@BurstWalkthroughs]

Wow. This was very hard. More Romanian please

[@wyqtor]

Would be a nice idea to do a Romanian video with the speaker intentionally using Romance vocabulary, and later a different video that would mostly use Romanian words of Slavic origin, in which Slavic language speakers get to guess!

[@BurstWalkthroughs]

@@wyqtor that would be nice

[@ioanaturcan356]

YES!

[@danascully6698]

@@wyqtor That's not possible . The Romanian language cannot be spoken only from words of Slavic origin, they have a weight in the sentence between 0 and 10%, let's say a maximum of 20%! But that would be the maximum and they are not even identical to those in Slavic. But in order to know this, you must be a native Romanian speaker or at least know the Romanian language, not give your opinion just from hearsay!

[@danascully6698]

@@ioanaturcan356 Adica cum yes? Poti vorbi romana din cuvinte slavone? Nu. Reprezinta doar in jur de 10% din ponderea cuvintelor dintr-o propozitie.

[@sikViduser]

As a Spanish speaker I started strong understanding the first three words well enough, but the last two had me at a bit of a loss for a bit, but thankfully between all the questions from the other speakers I was able to piece together all of them eventually. A lot of fun, Thanks for sharing!

[@Waldemar-bb1sn]

Hola Ecolinguista. Me encanta la lengua Romansch. Habla español, soy de Puerto Rico. Tienes videos para aprender Romansch? Gracias.

[@haminatmiyaxwen]

I really enjoyed this video! I hope Leander thinks about making a KZbin channel teaching Romansh or becomes a iTalki teacher, I would love to learn!

[@12341430]

That's a good idea.

[@conjurer8341]

So we've had a lot of these videos on Romance languages, Slavic languages and Germanic languages. I would love to see a video on Semitic languages next (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, etc...). Please Ecolinguist make that a reality!

[@wyqtor]

And between Arabic and Chinese 'dialects' (which are actually more like their own distinct languages)

[@GutoKowalski70]

It would be great!

[@RedHair651]

Amharic isn’t Semitic, it’s Ethiopic

[@conjurer8341]

@@RedHair651 Amharic is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgroup of Semitic languages

[@RedHair651]

@@conjurer8341 true, my bad, I thought Ethiopic was a different branch of Afroasiatic

[@judna1]

I got the first one when he said Transilvania, I understood that it was an animal that eats insects but until he said Transilvania I had my doubts. Bat in Catalan is "ratpenat" or "ratapinyada". The second one, stone/rock in Catalan is "pedra" or "roca". The third one is an special one for me, is one of my favourite animals, if I were an animagus I would be a black eagle , "àguila" in Catalan. The fourth one, the violin in Catalan is called "violí". The last one quite difficult, I knew the word once he said it suctions the air. In Catalan is quite similar to the others, it is called "Aspirador", though the "r" isn't pronounced. And well, this one have been the toughest of them all, I understood Romanian even better. I got the words thanks to some coments from others. This video was interesting! Best regards from Barcelona!

[@supremerevelations]

I like the way Lionel speaks French, well-articulated and at a decent pace easy enough for a rough learner like me to follow along, the way a teacher should speak

[@luisdestefano6056]

I speak 6 languages fluently (besides English, German, from which many Romanch words are derived), plus French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. I did find out all correct answers quicker than the panelists, but I think that was in good measure by having subtitles available. I went to St. Moritz for many years, where I got a limited exposure to Romanch. Although I can half guess the Swiss dialect I had great difficulty with Rumanian with which I have no experience. Interesting video!

[@alexanderfroebelzehl3825]

My grandma is from the lower engadine valley in Switzerland, and grew up speaking romansh. I visited once, it was a while ago, but I remember the local variety sounding a lot softer, closer to Italian and with less German influence, not sure if that is right though. I sent her the video asking for her thoughts. She said "I don't know what this language is but it is not the rumantsch ladino (which is these days called valader) we speak in the lower Engadina." So it would seem there is quite a difference between the different dialects of romansh

[@vornamenachname8381]

Yes, the romansh in the video was sursilvan.

[@TheMikeOrganist]

For me as a German (and Austrian dialect) speaker, who learned some Italian and Latin in school, this (and also the sister language Ladin) sounds soo strange. Because on one side I can understand some similar words from Italian and Latin, and also some Germanisms, like "aber", "also", "genau", "sain" (= sein), "eis schon" (= ist schon), but on the other side, the sometimes strange pronunciation of Romansh and Ladin is so different from Italian, that, for me, makes it very difficult to understand whole sentences (especially if speaking faster and with no subtitles). It sounds like if French and Italian were combined with the Allemanic and ancient Rhaetic and Celtic dialects of the region. Very funny. In any case.. Grüeß in'd Schwiiz us Eschtriich and lep pozdrav Poljski! ;)

[@mauriziocosta8416]

L'inflenza reto-etrusca è presente anche nel ladino.

[@thebauci1167]

Just to mention. „Also“ and „aber“ are no romansh words. But many people are heavily influenced by the german language and use these expressions instead of the real romansh words. „Aber“ would be „denton“ in romansh. And „also“ would most likely be „schelu“

[@davidetoffoletto9981]

The german accent is because after several years the german dialects took space in the Grisuns Cantun instead of Romansch and Italian (remember, Grisuns are the only tri-lingual Cantun of Switzerland) before the mass migration of Bavarian-Tiroler immigrants in this part of Switzerland during middle ages, before that the whole population was Romansh or Italian speaking.

[@juandiegovalverde1982]

I think it’s very important that you don’t let die your language, Rumantsch.

[@MarynaRGurzuf]

What an interesting language! Surprisingly understandable. Thank you for the video! 😊

[@stradavisinului]

Fantastic! Mulțumesc pentru ocazia să văd cum arată și cum sună romanșa!

[@sushi777300]

Would love to see more of Leander He was so nice and I've never heard spoken Romansh

[@edwinloherstorfer5686]

Engraziel fetg per igl interessant video!

[@alexanderstefan7192]

What forgot Cassiana to say is that we say in romanian also "acvilă" which is synonim to "vultur" and "pajură". It is mostly in poetry used and actually it is a general name given to the familly of eagles. The same is for the word "piatră" (Rock) and approximately for all romanian words which have at least one synonim and in many cases that synonim looks like the word from another language.

[@lucaesposito6896]

That was super interesting!! Thanks for this content! I'd like to see Corsican language understood by Italian, French and Spanish 🤩

[@792p]

Those guys are intelligent. Seriously. They guess what the other speaker says and reply with what they think is the most basic expressions and words that can be understood by everyone. They do that on the fly. Impressive.

[@gsmgsa]

Romansch "coulmi" - Romanian : culmi (some sort of hill slopes) - it's practically the same old word! I am amazed.

[@Lara-jp4xk]

"Culme" (Ro)="top" (Eng), not "slope" (Eng)

[@gsmgsa]

@@Lara-jp4xk Right! Usually it's about the top of a hill. So when someone says " Casa lor e pe culme" usually it doesn't always mean the house is situated exactly on top or on flat ground, but more likely on a slight slope close to the top.

[@nicoladc89]

@@gsmgsa In Italian is "culmine" or in some cases "colmo" both from Latin culmen that means summit, peak, the top of.

[@792x33]

Leander, the Romansh speaker's accent influenced by Swiss German was instantly recognizable, however I didn't understand much of it. I did hear a bit of similarity with Occitan/Catalan, though. I'm fascinated by Romanian but Casiana spoke a bit too fast. The Italian speaker, Jessica, was easiest to understand correctly, and I understand a lot of what the French speaker said because I have seen Lionel in your other videos and he speaks clearly although I have little experience with French. I speak English, German and Spanish and am learning Italian on the side. Great job, keep them coming!

[@ilregulator]

As a Swiss who doesn't speak Romansh I never know if they purposely speak with such a swiss accent or if this is just how the language sounds

[@maksphoto78]

I LOVE how all these languages melded together in this ivd.

[@frankparis9408]

This one is the most extreme by the distance it lays with the other Romance languages, also super interesting! Bravo. Another nice surprise.