does english look and sound germanic?

Hopeful   Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:21 pm GMT
does english look and sound germanic?
what do you think?
Guest   Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:28 pm GMT
I think so
Brennus   Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:32 pm GMT
Yes, but to me it looks more Germanic, almost Visigothic, when written in the International Phonetic Script (IPA). That's just my impression, however. I don't know if other people on this site who are familiar with the International Phonetic Script like Kirk or Travis would view it the same way.
Guest   Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:40 pm GMT
Nein!
Brenda   Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:52 pm GMT
>>Yes, but to me it looks more Germanic, almost Visigothic, when written in the International Phonetic Script (IPA). <<

I wouldn't say it looks Visigothic. It looks more like Frankish with a twist of Vandalic, a pinch of Ostrogothic, an odd tinkering with Lombardian and a heavy butchering of Latin.... and possibly even Anglo-Saxon, when written X-SAMPA.
Ren   Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:35 am GMT
[I wouldn't say it looks Visigothic. It looks more like Frankish with a twist of Vandalic, a pinch of Ostrogothic, an odd tinkering with Lombardian and a heavy butchering of Latin.... and possibly even Anglo-saxon, when written X-SAMPA.}

Wow did you get that out of a cookbook? :P
Brennus   Sat Dec 24, 2005 6:27 am GMT
Re: "Wow did you get that out of a cookbook? :P "

I like that one Ren!
Brenda   Sat Dec 24, 2005 7:33 am GMT
>>Wow did you get that out of a cookbook? :P<<

Yes, I thought I'd share a page from the same cookbook Brennus used!
Brandon   Sat Dec 24, 2005 7:41 am GMT
The problem is the illustrations in the cookbook don't show how Visigothic looked and sounded.
Travis   Sat Dec 24, 2005 9:41 am GMT
While people often say that English doesn't sound stereotypically "Germanic", in reality its phonology is actually rather Germanic in nature, considering its use of aspiration, its only relatively weak voicing across the board, its partial word-final devoicing, its being stress-timed and allowing words to be pronounced with different levels of stress, and its quite complex vowel system (albeit without rounded front vowels in most dialects) which makes use of both tense and lax vowels and the general open-syllable/closed-syllable restrictions on such. Even if it does not sound exactly like the likes of German or Dutch on one hand or Swedish or Norwegian on the other, it is still phonologically fundamentally Germanic in nature, and not at all close to even French, of any Romance language at that.
Adam   Sat Dec 24, 2005 6:59 pm GMT
English is really in a class of its own. It doesn't sound as harsh as other Germanic languages, such as Dutch and German. German just has to be the ugliest language in existence, and it's no wonder that Germans have no sense of humour having to speak that language everyday. German is the ugliest Germanic language just as French is the ugliest Romance language.
Guest   Sat Dec 24, 2005 7:57 pm GMT
""""German is the ugliest Germanic language just as French is the ugliest Romance language. """"

Them how can 2 ugly language produce English?
Adam   Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:00 pm GMT
I don't know.

How the Hell can something as pretty as Latin give birth to something as disgusting, stuck-up and snobbish as French?
Guest   Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:22 pm GMT
Well English ,being a Latin language, sounds okay to me...
Hopeful   Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:57 pm GMT
"English is really in a class of its own. It doesn't sound as harsh as other Germanic languages, such as Dutch and German. German just has to be the ugliest language in existence, and it's no wonder that Germans have no sense of humour having to speak that language everyday. German is the ugliest Germanic language just as French is the ugliest Romance language."

Germanic languages don't have to sound harsh and I think the Scandinavian languages (Icelandic, Swedish and Norwegian) are not harder than English! Danish can sound a little harsher than English

But when I think about "germanic languages", I don't think about German, but all the Germanic languages
There are great variations in the Germanic languages just as in Romance languages! I would also say that French is the hardest one of the Romance languages, but I think that the Scandinavian languages are not harder than English! You don't have to think "harsh and unpleasing" when you hear the word "Germanic" only because German is