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what makes English Germanic?
Greg: >>Normand et français sont 2 languages différents.<<
In view of this comment by Greg, please substitute all references to French in my post above with "French/Normand" (I have been aware of what he pointed out, but I was being somewhat inaccurate).
>>I wouldn't say English is "related" to French<<
Not in this context at least. Of course the Germanic and Romance language groups are related within the Indo-European family, insofar as they can be traced back to the same proto-language.
=>"Lichtverstärkung durch stimulierte Emission der Strahlung"<=
Haha, would be this in Dutch: " Lichtversterking door bevorderde uitzending van lichtstraling "
Sander: >>" Lichtversterking door bevorderde uitzending van lichtstraling "<<
Yes, I suppose I could have made the German definition more Germanic with a little more effort (but I was a little tired at such a late hour). :)
Travis,
Re: "...I know all about Nostratic-type and Dene-Caucasian-type hypotheses and trying to form things into massive language groups in the manner of Greenberg, which I tend to be rather skeptical about..." Greenberg's work was certainly seminal in this area but some of the theories about relationships between language families even antedate Greenberg. Edward Sapir showed the relationship between the Sino-Tibetan languages (principally Chinese) and the Athabaskan group of North American Indian languages in the 1920's. Mario Pei ("Story of Language," 1949) discusses attempts by some linguists to relate Japanese "onno" (girl) to Itallian "donna" (woman). I admit that this kind of comparison is falacious since the Latin ancestor of "donna" (domina -mistress) looks even less like the Japanese word. I also remember reading a book by an American Protestant minister published in the early 1900's in which he tries to compare words in Indo-European languages with words in Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and American Indian languages. He was a great believer in this thing about all of humanity springing the lost ten tribes of Israel. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to relocate the book. Again, I admit that one of his comparisons like between English "water" and Cheyenne "wato" (lake) is very tenuous (though not entirely impossible) and some of his other comparisons are even more fanciful and questionable; however linguistics has gotten a lot better since then when it comes to comparing possible cognates. For instance, I think that the similarities between words like English 'baby', French 'bebe', Italian 'bambino' (baby, child), Greek 'bybis' (baby boy) 'byba' (baby girl), Hindi 'babu' (young man), Chinese 'bay bao' (child) and Vietnamese '(Em) Bé' (baby), and American Indian 'papoose' (infant, baby) are all much more likely going back to a common ancestral word during the cave man period for "baby" or "young one" which was probably something like *babwa(s).
=>"Lichtverstärkung durch stimulierte Emission der Strahlung"<=
Haha, would be this in Dutch: " Lichtversterking door bevorderde uitzending van lichtstraling " In German, it would be better to say: Lichtverstärkung durch stimulierte Emission von Strahlung.
I think that English is definitally typical German language, because of base of language. And 25 % of words has Norman - French origin, 25 % Latin origin. However in Norman French was about 30 % of German oridin, so more than 50 % is Germanic!!!!
You're making a few mistakes there Gandalvo,
First it's Germanic , with the 'ic' not German. Secondly you've made some mathematical mistakes, You said, English consists of 25% Norman French origin and 25% Latin origin and assume that the rest (50%) is of Germanic origin... (this is not correct btw) Then you say that Norman French is of 30% Germanic origin ... If all those words ought to be loaned (which I doubt) the percentage would be 30% of 25%. an increase of (if I'm correct) 16,6 %. Let's stick to real numbers shall we? French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3% Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24% Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25% Greek: 5.32% No etymology given: 4.03% Derived from proper names: 3.28% All other languages contributed less than 1% Even when assuming, the 4.03% are all Germanic the number of word of Germanic origin doesn't even reach 30%.
Encore une fois, l'expression « Norman French » ne veut rien dire. Il y a la superfamille d'Oïl qui comprend des langues (d'Oïl), des dialectes, des supradialectes et des variantes interdialectales.
Quant à l'ancien normand au sens strict, il y avait au moins deux formes : la première faisait partie de l'Oïl occidental, la seconde de l'Oïl septentrional. Ce que les gens appellent « Norman French » ou « Anglo-French » ou « Anglo-Norman » est une variante d'Oïl ancien constituée par l'amalgame de plusieurs langues et/ou dialectes d'Oïl, tout comme l'ancien français capétien, dont elle était très proche d'ailleurs. L'ancien français d'outre-Manche était aussi peu germanisé que l'ancien français capétien.
" And I would say that English is more related to French than to German "
I hope that this sentence is a joke !!... Anyway, every native french speaker would laugh when hearing that !! This question have been answered thousnads of times. Once again, when some people claim that english is 60% of latin origin, it means in reality that in all the words used in english 60% of them are of latin origins... including scientific terms, animal or plants names, specific vocabulary, international words of latin origins... a lot of these words are also used in German, Russian, or Japanese. No one of these peoples would claim that German, Russian or Japanese are romance languages ! Arabis has also a lot of latin and Greek in it (and French has also arabic influences), etc. In english, the way the language is constructed, the main vocabulary and even the way are prononced and deformed the few words of latin origins are clearly very typical of germanic languages, there is absolutly no doubt about this. When I was little, before learning english, I was totally unable to ditinguish english to german or Dutch. To me it sounded like all "weird foreign northen European languages".
How many times to we have to go through this same discussion. So what if English is truly Germanic in origin but because of all the borrowings English has become completely unintelligable to all of the other Germanic languages. I understand what Ericka is trying to say because it in a way makes sense. With many monolinguist in the United States if they heard any of the other germanic languages with very slight exception with dutch (only because with subtitles when I've seen a Dutch films I can get kind of a jist of the conversation and basic plot lines in Dutch) with spoken and heard language a person who is a native speaker of English can not understand any other spoken germanic language.
>>with relation to Easterners answer<< Whats funny is in the full name of AIDS I am more likely to recognise the French spelling rather than any of the Germanic spelling because of the many cognates in that name. So I think that particular explanation is rather flawed...
How much mutual intelligiblity is there betwen the other (non-English) Germanic languages as spoken (not written)? Is the difference between (for example) Icelandic and Yiddish or Afrikaans and Swedish much smaller than the difference between Scots and English?
English is Germanic because it comes from French. As everybody knows, the french people are decendants of Franks, a Germanic tribe.
English is Germanic because it comes from French. As everybody knows, the french people are decendants of Franks, a Germanic tribe. ====
THAT'S THE MOST STUPID THING I EVER SAW HERE IN ANTIMOON FRENCH IS A LATIN TONGUE THUS BY YOUR "LOGIC" ENGLISH SHOULD BE A LATIN TONGUE ALSO BUT NO.....ENGLISH IS GERMANIC AND THAT'S ALL |