>>So why still classify the language as Germanic? It's obviously a hybrid.<<
Because the basic vocabulary is Germanic, and it is mostly this that counts. And at the same time English has not only borrowed Romance words, it has only transformed them to its own image (e.g. in pronunciation), so it may be said they are "naturalised" English words, if not English by birthright. By the way, you can replace most Latin/French/Normand words with Germanic ones in most situations with a bit of effort. So you can say "laughable" instead of "ridiculous", or "bother" instead of "disturb", or "get away" instead of "escape"... That "-able" still bothers me though, it seems French too, so it is not so easy to get away after all... :-)
Taking a look at the good side, though, the Latin vocabulary of English may come in handy when learning Romance languages, though this can also be tricky sometimes, because of false friends. For example, "introduce" is not the same as French "introduire", because they use "préseneter" for introducing somebody, which is also present in English, but with a different meaning, and so on ad infinitum... On the other hand, I think English has gained mightily in expressiveness due to its "mixed" vocabulary, as well as offering more choice than most other languages.
You know what I hate about the English language?
It's this (it probably has a name but I don't know it) tendency to add up, down, off, in, on to words and give it different meanings which are usually tricky to figure it out.
Eg.
TAKE IT OUT
TAKE IT IN
TAKE IT UP
TAKE IT DOWN
TAKE IT ON
TAKE IT OFF
ETC...............
You don't the kind of headaches this gives. It's just incredible the huge number of variations you can make the list sometimes seems endless.
Dear Reggie,
"Take" used this way is a helper verb. Many languages have few helper verbs and the fact that Modern English has many of them is actually considered an evolutionary improvement by many linguists. Other languages have to use a lot of different verbs or a bunch of wasteful flexions to express what a simple helper verb can do.
The thing most people don't seem to like about English is not so much its grammar but its sound. It is not a very good sounding language. Many others sound more musical or melodious or pleasing to the ear in some way but not English. What is your take on that?
---Brennus
I agree that English, while practical and useful, is aesthetically pleasing to neither the eye nor the ear, and is frankly quite bland. I'm rather annoyed that I'm a native English speaker, in spite of the obvious practical advantages. Personally, I'm fascinated by die Deutsch Sprache. I love the look and sound of the language; I admire both its virile intensity and its subtle lyricism, as well as its dense structure and enigmatic logic. I'm only in my first year of study, but I plan to some day attempt Kafka, Freud & Jung, amongst others, in the original. I'm equally (and perhaps masochistically) fascinated by Latin and Russian.
English can sound horrible depending on how someone is speaking it but some people speak in a way or accent that can make it sound like absolute music to my ears. Lucky for the people who can speak even one of the latin languages fluently because they are at an advantage since being fluent in just one of those languages will create less difficulty for them when they'd like to learn more latin languages. Those languages share so many words that have just slight differences in the spelling as as the simlilar grammar rules.
<<as as the simlilar grammar rules.>>
Je m'excuse, I meant to say, "as well as the simlilar grammar rules.
True, the speaker does make a difference. Listening to Christopher Lee or James Earl Jones or Sean Connery speak English is much easier on the ears than listening to, say, George W. Bush or Tom Brokaw.
Surely not Sean Connery!!!
>>I agree that English, while practical and useful, is aesthetically pleasing to neither the eye nor the ear, and is frankly quite bland.<<
Well, it depends who is speaking and in what dialect. From a strictly personal viewpoint, I find the British dialects more pleasant than American ones, the latter generally seem a little harsh to me, but this is less true for the General American accent. From British accents I like Cockney, Scottish and Irish accents the best, also the general, not over-pronounced version of RP, but I find Estuary English less pleasant. But as I said, it is strictly personal.
I TELL YOU THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GERMANIC AND GERMAN.
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR ICELANDIC (OR LIVE IN ICELAND) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR SWEDISH (OR LIVE IN SWEDEN) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR NORWEGIAN (OR LIVE IN NORWAY) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR DANISH (OR LIVE IN DENMARK) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR LOWER FRANCONIAN (DUTCH) (OR LIVE IN HOLLAND) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR LOWER SAXON YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR MAIN FRANCONIAN YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR ALLEMANIAN AND/OR SWABIAN (OR LIVE IN SWITZERLAND) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
WHEN YOU SPEAK OR HEAR BAVARIAN (OR LIVE IN AUSTRIA) YOU FEEL GERMAN,
AND I'M SURE IF YOU COULD SPEAK OR HEAR GOTHIC YOU ALSO FEELED GERMAN.
BUT EVEN WHEN YOU DONT WANT TO USE LATIN WORDS WHILE SPEAKING ENGLISH YOU DONT FEEL GERMAN.FAR FROM IT.
WHY DO YOU WANT TO THINK ENGLISH IS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE?
IT IS NOT,BUT JUST SOME WORDS AND STRUCTURES WITH GERMAN(OR AS YOU LIKE TO SAY,GERMANIC) ORIGIN.YOU ACCEPT IT OR NOT,ENGLAND IS NOT GERMANIC,NOT LINGUAL,NOT CULTURAL,AND NOT RACIAL.(I KNOW IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE BUT I CAN GIVE YOU SOME SCIENTIFIC RESOURCES ABOUT THE RACE OF BRITISH PEOPLE.)
AFTER ALL I PREFER TO USE "BRITAIN" INSTEAD OF "ENGLAND", BECAUSE BOTH ANGELS AND SAXONS WERE GERMAN,AND A BRITISH IS NOT.
I am just trying to say british is also a nice language,but there are two possibilities if you think britain is a teutonic country:
1.You don't know britain.
2.You don't know what is teutonic.
{PARDON FOR MY ENGLISH...,OOPS!,I MEAN BRITISH :-) }
Anglophobe,
You could have easily made your point without hitting caps lock.
Britanophobe / Anglophobe
There is some truth in what you say but it is kind of a complicated situation.
From everything I've read and heard, the Teutonic (Germanic) invasions of eastern Britain were quite heavy. Even though the Jutes, Saxons and Angles were comparatively few in number the Viking invasions brought in lots of Danes followed by Norman French who were also essentially Danes.
The western part of Britain remained mostly Celtic and was largely free of rule from London until the time of the Norman Conquest (1066). It's people still have a strong Celtic element in them. I've heard that Liverpool is full of Irish, Scots and Welsh. The Cornish are Celts too.
So you have a country that is somewhat divided ethnographically, with the eastern part being a Teutonic bulwark and the western part having a little more in common with Celtic Wales and Ireland. I admit that English culture was mostly influenced mostly from the south, however, and it has none of the Hanseatic German influence found in Holland and the Scandanavian countries. There was a strong troubador influence in England during the Middle Ages coming up from Provence. As a result, a lot of English music has a southern European flavor to it reminiscent of Spanish and Italian music. There is none of the beer hall songs or hamba and polka music that you find in northern Europe. This is true.
Fab, french doesn't come from Anjou. It was the language of the power located in Paris. Anjou had its own "langue d'oïl" which name is "angevin".
Well, obviously the first Germanic settlers of the British Isles were Teutonic, but even in the early stage of their settlement their language had some peculiarities. I think it was mutually intelligible with the language spoken in present-day Northern Germany, but it developed softer sounds, like the palatalisation in what is now "eye" (cf. German "Auge"), also the plural of "egg" was "eiren" or something similar in Old English (today's "egg" is of Scandinavian origin, and curiously Standard German also has "Ei"). The voiceless "th" sound, as I know, was also peculiar to Old English. The above is mostly true of the language of the Saxons, which was the most prominent, that of the Angles could have been even more different from the Continental dialects.
>>Fab, french doesn't come from Anjou. It was the language of the power located in Paris. Anjou had its own "langue d'oïl" which name is "angevin".<<
So would the original French ("langue d'oil") area encompass a little more than today's Ile-de-France and perhaps some neighbouring areas? Interesting to hear...
