The closest language to English
And the winner is...... Frisian!!
Yes, we already knew that. But after Frisian????
The runner-up is............. ????
In addition to providing your opinion as to what that answer should be, I would love for one of you to provide a link to spoken Frisian for me. If you have it handy that is. Thank you dearly.
You need to be talking to Sander. He's covered this subject a million times.
I'm thinking after Friesian comes Dutch.
Travis will be arguing, though, that Scots is a different language than English and deserves the number one slot. Stay tuned for that....
Oh yes, I know. All too well, I might add. Dutch is definitely closer than German. I don't even want to talk about Scots, which is just a highly corrupted form of English.
Out of the MAJOR languages, Dutch is definitely the closest in my book.
In order of relatedness to English
*Scots
*Frisian
*Low Saxon (dialects of German, spoken in Northern Germany, did not experience the HGCS)
*Dutch (because its lack of the HGCS)
*German (If one would revert the HGCS, would probably be closer to English than Dutch)
--------
*North Germanic languages, first would probably be Danish.
LAA - Juaquin en la caja! : « I don't even want to talk about Scots, which is just a highly corrupted form of English. »
Au lieu de proférer des enormités qui vont certainement te valoir un recadrage net et rapide, pourquoi ne t'informes-tu pas au préalable sur ce que tu ignores si complètement ?
>> Travis will be arguing, though, that Scots is a different language than English and deserves the number one slot. Stay tuned for that.... <<
And I will be arguing that Northumbrian is a separate language, and that deserves the number one slot before Scots.
<In order of relatedness to English
*Scots
*Frisian
*Low Saxon (dialects of German, spoken in Northern Germany, did not experience the HGCS)
*Dutch (because its lack of the HGCS)
*German (If one would revert the HGCS, would probably be closer to English than Dutch) >
So whats with the stupid argument on the other thread about how English is now a romance language? Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English.
Sander Said:
*North Germanic languages, first would probably be Danish.
I heard that a couple of towns along the North English coast has Norwegian influence on their local dialect (if there any).
Anymore information on this?
<<Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English. >>
I think those honors would go to French, for obvious reasons. Then Latin.
>> Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English. <<
Do you even know what related means? It doesn't refer to which language looks most like English it's about the relation they have with eachother. In that way, it doesn't matter if French looks more like English, because Icelandic will always be closer.
It works like this;
*English and Scots have a common ancestor, Old English.
*English and Frisian have a common ancestor, languages who experienced the Ingvaeonic sound shifts.
*English and Low Saxon were very similar in the past, Low Saxon even partially experienced the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law and no HGCS.
*etc
The point where English and French have a common ancestor lies at Proto-Indo European. Which means French is basically just as related to English as Russian and Greek are.
The timeline doesn't go as far back as Proto-Indo European for the strong interlude that English had with French.
>>The timeline doesn't go as far back as Proto-Indo European for the strong interlude that English had with French. <<
Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness.
>>Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness.<<
Maybe so in terms of the classical way languages are viewed and grouped according to their origin. But historically because of its long relationship with French, other areas of English have also been heavily influenced by French, like phraseology. And this is what contradicts the conventional classification.
"Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness. "
That might be the opinion among linguists, but from a practical standpoint, if English has absorbed so much French vocabulary, that now nearly 60% of its vocabulary stems from French, then one can't help but ignore the similiarities, at least in terms of vocabulary, between the two languages. Lexicology is one of the major aspects of classifying a language, and the lexicology is one the most important components when it comes to intelligablity between persons of different languages. So yes, in many ways, English is closely related to French, for historical reasons. For centuries in England following the Norman conquest, the nobility and learned class, which would include all the literary persons, scholars, architects, scientists, chemists, poets, etc, all spoke Norman French. It is only natural that the majority of advanced level English vocabulary comes from French. And "advanced" doesn't neccessarily imply rocket science vocabulary, but speech we use on a daily basis, beyond the basic level.
"English and Frisian have a common ancestor, languages who experienced the Ingvaeonic sound shifts.
*English and Low Saxon were very similar in the past, Low Saxon even partially experienced the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law and no HGCS."
Well, the Anglo-Saxons are also of the same region of Europe that the Frisians occupy today. 1500 years ago, they were probably incredibly similar languages.
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was a very Germanic language in all ways one can look at it. But, seldom in history has one language, ever undergone such a drastic evolution in such a short period of time, as Old English did, when it under went the transformation to Middle English, following substantial "Gallicization" of the English tounge. You cannot deny the huge impact French has had on the development of modern English.
English is a Germanic language, and always will be. But it is also correct to say that English is one of the, if not the most, distant language within the Germanic family. The phonology of English is very distinct from languages like Danish, or German, or Dutch, etc. And the vocabulary has been extensively Gallicized to the point, where the actual majority of words within the English language, is not even of Germanic origin.
But I would like you to know Sander, that I am NOT claiming that English is a Romance language.