Is English the most hybrid and impure language in the world?
Is English the most hybrid and impure language in the world?
Who knows? It's a big hybrid, but Tagalog sounds like a huge hybrid to me. Japanese has added in Portuguese, German, English and Chinese, but then Vietnamese has add-ins as well.
Korean is more strongly influenced lexically by Chinese than English is by any other one language, so English is not the most mixed in terms of lexicon.
English has a reputation of being a hybridized language (usually Germanic + Romance), but this is misleading. It is not [a hybrid].
English is impure, and the statement that English accepts words from other languages most easily is probably true. At least as easily if not more than any other 'accepting'-type language.
English has a reputation of being a hybridized language (usually Germanic + Romance), but this is misleading. It is not [a hybrid].
English is impure, and the statement that English accepts words from other languages most easily is probably true. At least as easily if not more than any other 'accepting'-type language.
English might be a mongrel tongue of sorts, but it's richer for it with many synomyms that have slightly different nuances of meaning.
I suggest that you pop down to your local library and choose any book featuring the origins and development and overall history of the English Language, from its inception right down to the present day. You will then realise what a truly complex entity the Language really is, and ever becoming more so, as with all living things.
<<English might be a mongrel tongue of sorts, but it's richer for it with many synomyms that have slightly different nuances of meaning. >>
This is true for all languages in the short term, but overtime the majority of these "richer" words become obsolete.
I don't know what it is, but it's almost as if the human brain is pre-programmed to want only a certain sized vocabulary, opting rather to make do with varying 'senses' of existing words as opposed to maintaining numerous superfluous, hyper-flowery type words.
This is true for all languages in the short term, but overtime the majority of these "richer" words become obsolete.
I don't know what it is, but it's almost as if the human brain is pre-programmed to want only a certain sized vocabulary, opting rather to make do with varying 'senses' of existing words as opposed to maintaining numerous superfluous, hyper-flowery type words.
It seems like it's heading in the opposite direction to me. The grammars of most IE languages are trending towards simplification, while lexically they are becoming more complex.
You might argue that, surely, words have no meaning than that which people assign them. Then you might want to say that, surely, nobody's definition can be called better than anyone elses: we're all equal, aren't we? But then, on the other hand, how can we communicate if we've all got different ideas on what words mean. We'd be best to reach an informed concensus and write the definition down in a book. Well, it seems that they have gone and done that. Now when I've got a definition that doesn't quite fit yours I go refer to a dictionary to see whose fits what is most widely accepted as the meaning of the word.
I actually read that among the aboriginal languages of Australia is a high degree of "impurity," if you care, due to the high degree of mixing between different language groups. I believe McWhorter was the one writing about it, saying something along the lines of imagine trying to classify the European languages if Germans were borrowing words from French that were borrowed from Polish which they had originally borrowed from German and Spanish words that English picked up through the Danish and so on.