How Similar is French and Italian?

When embarking on your journey of learning a romance language, you are quickly put into a language group that has almost a billion speakers. With languages like Italian and French, you may wonder just how related these languages are. Many say that the Iberian brothers, Spanish & Portuguese, are like twins, but what about our other European siblings? Let’s explore how similar French and Italian are.  

 

Vocabulary 

As both languages are members of the Romance language family, vocabulary is probably where the languages are most evidently related. It is said that there is a lexical similarity of nearly 85%-90%, meaning that almost 90% of all vocabulary either has a direct cognate (same word) or related word associated in each language. 

You can clearly see this when looked at some words like: 

French                  Italian                   English 

interessant                          interessante                        interesting 

bibliothèque                        biblioteca                            library 

faire                                      fare                                       to do 

manger                                mangiare                             to eat 

parler                                   parlare                                 to speak 

dormir                                dormire                                to sleep 

You can see that some words, like the last two verbs, are only differentiated by an e at the end of the word. However, there are words that are a little bit less obvious, usually as a reflection of a difference in spoken pronunciation. But you most likely still have an idea of what the word means if you speak the other language. Here are some examples:  

French                Italian                     English 

taller                                  andare                                    to go 

hôpital                              ospedale                                 hospital 

office                                ufficio                                      office 

But of course, there are even simple words that are completely different, like apple which is mela in Italian but pomme in French. Or enfant being child in French while bambino is its equivalent in Italian.  It’s found that the more common the word, the greater the chance that it will differentiate.  

 

Grammar 

Verbs: 

Like vocabulary, the grammar of French and Italian are similar in all senses. There are an equal number of tenses in both languages that roughly correspond to each other in idea and in formation. 

The simple past tense, for example, is formed in the exact same way. Personal pronoun + to have verb + verb intended in past tense. Here is an example comparing “I eat” & “I ate”:   

• Je mange → J’ai mangé 
• Io mangio → Io ho mangiato  

However, this is not where our conversation about grammar stops, as there are some clear aspects that these two differentiate in. 

Pronouns:  

For starters, French & Italian are different in that Italian is a “pro-drop” language, while French is rigidly not. Pro-drop means that the pronoun of a verb is often dropped. This is because we already have an idea of who is talking based on the conjugation of the verb.  

As we saw with “I ate”, io mangio, mangio already implies that “I” is doing the eating, so you only have to say mangio, like mangio la pasta [I eat the pasta]. In comparison, you can never drop the pronoun in French, and it always be, Je mange [I eat]. This is because French conjugation between I, You, He, She, etc does not have any verbal differences, so je fais, tu fais & il fait, are all pronounced the same.  

Additionally, formal pronouns are different in each language. French uses a 2nd person formal and plural pronoun vous, while Italian uses a 3rd person pronoun Lei for the 2nd person formal. So Vous in French is both for your boss and a group of people, while Lei is just formal, but is conjugated like he, she, it.  

 

Pronunciation 

The biggest difference between these two languages is easily the difference in pronunciation. Italian is a mostly phonetic language, meaning that the word is written as it is pronounced. However, French has a semi-complex phonetic rule system, meaning that you can’t guess what a French word sounds like until you learn the correct rule. For example, false in Italian is falso [fal-so] while in French it is faux [fo], even if your inclination is to pronounce it like fox.  

 

Conclusion 

To bring it all together, French & Italian are similar languages with pronunciation being the aspect that largely differentiates them. If we look at a sentence, we can see just how similar they can be, like:  

French: Quels sont vos plats préférés? 

Italian: Quali sono i tuoi piatti preferiti? 

English: What are your favorite dishes? 

If you’re looking to begin your language-learning journey in either French or Italian, our talented LanguageBird instructors are ready to help! Contact us today to find out how you can get started.