| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Porthos |
Could the ancient language of Britain have been Germanic?Could the ancient, pre-Anglo-Saxon language of eastern Britain have been Germanic, and not Celtic as we all assumed?<<So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar's time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little." The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion. >> http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817 |
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| David |
Itcould have been, but I think the loss of the Germanic accent was due to the Latin/Romance influences, or something like that. I may be wrong, though. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| David |
Actually, I think I am wrong on this, because the English accent doesn't sound very Romantic. |
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| fab |
" Itcould have been, but I think the loss of the Germanic accent was due to the Latin/Romance influences, or something like that. I may be wrong, though. "
I don't think really that english had a loss of germanic accent. I should say that I found rythms in British english close to Dutch ones, even maybe to scandinavian ones. |
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| Porthos |
I think English has a very distinct phonology, which is very different from other Germanic languages. But, it still sounds nothing like a Romance language. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sander |
I disagree, English phonology is quite similar to other (especially West) Germanic languages. It's mainly the thorn that's unfamiliar. |
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| Porthos |
What do you mean by "thorn"? And I think English sounds very different from the other W. Germanic languages. In fact, German and Dutch sound more like Scandanavian languages than they do English, at least to my ears.
I don't know why linguists ever had difficultly classify English. For a long time, there was a debate over whether it should be classified with the West group or with the North group. English looks nothing like a North Germanic language, so I don't see how there was ever a debate. I read an article on wikipedia in Swedish, and I don't think I recognized one single word that was similar in English. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
He means the English 'th' sound.
As others have mentioned before, the only reason why you think this is because you don't understand the other Germanic languages.
It's not about how the language 'looks' on paper though. |
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| Porthos |
Well, even when spoken........ | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sander |
Well, this debate took place during the Viking revival, a time when the English had a very romantic look on the Norsemen of the past. It's much easier to classify English as a North Germanic language when you want it to be one. A bit like those Nazi scientist who were send out to prove the Germans came from Tibet. |
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| Porthos |
Sander,
Do you know any North Germanic languages? Fluently that is. And as a Dutchman, would you say English was relatively easy to learn, or was it much harder for you than German? |
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| Sander |
No, not fluently. I've taken some interest in Norwegian though, my profiency isn't good enough yet for a spoken basic conversation. To me English was definately easier to learn then German. Eventhough German is linguistically closer. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
But of course. :) Likewise, if people want to see English as an extreme outlier within the Germanic language family for some reason, they will see it as such, even though it isn't. |
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| Porthos |
Was that supposed to be some insidious reference to me? English is a distant outlier within the Germanic family. Oh, wait! In my personal opinion, from my perspective, the way I view things, (although not endorsed by the collective representative group of the people of the world), English is a distant outlier within the Germanic family. I would like to take the opportunity to emphasize that this is just my personal opinion, and in no way, am I stating this as if it is a fact. But, of course, I am close-minded, and the only way to not be considered close-minded is to concede every argument which I engage in, which means that I fully acknowledge that I am always wrong in every debate. I can't possibly be right, and therefore I am absolutely wrong. Benjamin, Sander, your opinions hold more weight than mine. You are correct, and I am wrong. But, I'm not sure about that, because that is just my opinion. When I say that "I am wrong", it is in no way endorsed by the collective representative group of the people of the planet earth, and is therefore, invalid as a fact, and merely an opinion. In fact, what I just said, is also an opinion and is in no way endorsed by the collective representative assembly of the people of the world. Oh wait, that was an opinion too. And that was an opinion. And that last sentence, ................................. etc, etc........ |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Not especially. Some, such as James C Bennett's band (the ones who are usually thought to have invented the term 'Anglosphere') have claimed this as they believe that it supports their philosophy of Anglo Exceptionalism. (Their whole argument is seriously flawed, in my opinion).
This may be your personal opinion, and you are obviously entitled to hold it. However, I'm still not quite sure what the linguistic basis for this opinion is, except that other Germanic languages (which you don't understand anyway) sound very similar to you.
Don't be silly. But surely you can appreciate that the classification of languages is not based upon what sounds vaguely similar to the untrained ear? |
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| Porthos |
It's not just because I can't understand other Germanic languages. I don't speak French, Italian, Portuguese, Occitan, or Romanian, but I can tell all of these languages apart easily. Other Germanic languages sound very similar to me, and I can't tell their accents apart in English for the most part. On paper, I can tell them apart, but even so, on paper, they still look very different from English, to me that is.
And the words we share of the same origin are not even similar enough for the average person to recognize. Compare that to the similarity between Romance languages, where a speaker of one, can understand much of the other languages. From my knowledge of Spanish, I'm able to understand Portuguese (written) at about a 60% level. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
It is true that the mutual intelligibility between, say, English, German and Swedish is not as great as that between, say, French, Italian and Spanish, at least in the written form. But that doesn't make English an extreme outlier in the Germanic language family.
Could this possibly be because you are more interested in Romance languages, so you have had more practice at listening and recognising them? |
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| Porthos |
No. I don't think so. I only really took an interest in languages in the last three months. So, prior to that, I never really read about languages at all. I knew the language families of the Indo-European group since I was about 9, but to this day, I still can't really tell Slavic and other Germanic languages apart. I can tell Russian apart from Polish, mainly when written, and I can tell Dutch apart from German, mainly when written, but also somewhat when spoken. If I can catch a few words or phrases which I know in German or Dutch, I'll be able to tell them apart. But north Germanic languages, forget about it. Not only are they like martian to my ears, but I stand no chance in hell of distinguishing between them.
Here, let's try an experiment. Post a link to conversational speech in various Germanic languages, and we'll see if I can tell them apart. But refrain from the minor, dialectal languages that I wouldn't be that familiar with. |
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| Porthos |
And in your opinion Ben, would you say that Dutch is closer to English than to German? If so, why do you feel this way? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
I wouldn't be able to distinguish between spoken North Germanic languages either, for the simple reason that I have never really heard them. And Swedish, Danish and Norwegian really are mutually intelligible to quite a large extent anyway (less so between Swedish and Danish, I believe).
No. German and Dutch are generally seen as part of the 'Southern' branch of the West Germanic languages, whilst English is seen as part of the Anglo-Frisian branch. |
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| Porthos |
And yet Frisian is still closer to Dutch than it is to English. Hum. Yet more reasons to conclude that English is the most distant of the three languages. Dutch, English, and German that is. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Not necessarily — I'm afraid that I don't know enough about Frisian to give an informed opinion.
I wasn't just talking about English, German and Dutch. I was talking about Germanic languages in general, from Icelandic to Schwyzerdütsch. |
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| Sander |
Frisian is the closest language to English, but you have to remember that there are 3 kinds of Frisian. West, Saterlandic and North Frisian. We'll exclude Saterlandic (spoken in Germany) as it is dieing. North and West Frisian both bear the influence of at least 500 years of Danish and Dutch respectively. Because of this they are intelligble (to some degree) to Danish and Dutch speakers. But the basics are much closer to English, Old Frisian and Old English were nearly identical. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Another thing to remember about Frisian is that is resembles English far more in the spoken form than it does on paper. For example, the Frisian for 'cheese' is 'tjiis' — spelt totally differently, but pronounced virtually the same.
It has also been suggested that Frisian is more intelligible to speakers of certain English 'dialects'/languages (e.g. Northumbrian) than others (e.g. Received Pronunciation or General American). |
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| Sander |
I believe there are "myths" of Canadian soldiers stationed in Friesland in the final days of World War II being able to communicate with the Frisians using their own languages ... then again, the Dutch (and therefore the Frisians as well) had been listening to Anglophone radio and English lessons provided by the Dutch BBC broadcasts for 5 whole years so that + an heavy accent might have been the cause of the mutual intelligibility. One of the reasons that Frisian doesn't look like it's very related to English is because (West) Frisian is written with a Dutch phonology. There have been experiments writing down Frisian with (Br.) English phonology and the results are said to've been amazing. |
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| Pauline |
where can we find this text(s) ? it would be very interesting compare it /them with english and dutch. |
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| Porthos |
Yes, I agree Pauline. I would love to see those texts.
Ben, Sander, It's just that I've read that Frisian is actually more similar to Dutch in the present period, than it is to English, although, at one time, Frisian and Old English were as close as two languages can possibly be. Independent evolution has drastically changed the face of English, while Frisian underwent a more conservative evolution, thus remaining closer to Dutch than to modern English. But Benjamin, I know this is difficult for you to understood, but I'll try to explain my reasoning to you. Basically, because of Spanish, I understand most of the core vocabulary of other Romance languages. So, an unfair advantage is present here, as I'm sure, you assumed we were talking about only an English speaker, with no expierence with Romance languages. But, consider this. Basic, core vocabulary is very easy to learn, and with the proper instruction, and preferably immersion, one can pick up core vocab in a matter of weeks. It's mainly comprised of small words which are used the most often, and so forth. The more advanced vocabulary is the real meat and potatoes of the language learning process. Now, English, shares nearly all of the cognates for "advanced" vocabulary with Romance languages, making them easily recongizable. And cognates between Romance languages are usually much more similar and easily identifiable than they are between Germanic languages, like English "cold" vs. German "kalt". Compare that to Spanish "conversacion" vs French "conversation". And a lot of these so called "advanced" vocabulary words are actually used in basic, everyday conversation, and sometimes, more frequently than their Germanic equivalent in English. I wish I could remember, but the other day, I was at an amusement park, and I was trying to access my locker via the computer system, touchpad screen they had in the locker room. I went through the process in all three language options. French, Spanish, and English. The directions and command options on the screen were nearly identical to the English one, because it used words like "access" and "enter". The smaller words like ("por, tu, pour, por favor, oui", etc) were of course, not similar to the English ones, but these are basic, core vocabulary words, which are very easy to learn. Yet, this still brings us to the fact that our core vocab is almost entirely Germanic. We use our core vocab more than than all of the other words combined. I've taken to counting the number of Germanic words and Latin words in everything I read, and I usually find that about 70-90% of the words are actually of Germanic origin, (that, who, they, why, because, I, have, go, take, etc.). But, the core vocabulary which are of the same origin in other Germanic languages, are completely different, and totally unrecognizable both in spoken form, and in written form! English - I have food. Dutch - Ik heb voedsel. How would the average person be able to identify the connection between these phrases???? |
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| Sander |
That's not entirely true, in a way Frisian is very similar to English in it's historical development. For example, at about the same time the Normans invaded England, the Dutch invaded Frisia. Frisian has had a huge influx of Dutch vocabulary, the biggest reason why it looks closer and is understandable to Dutch people.
Would the average person figure this one out? "Een huis is groot" |
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| Porthos |
No, I sincerely doubt it. It's Dutch right? All I can make out is " a house is", and that's only because I'm more familiar with the words than the average English speaker is. If I did not know that "een" meant "a", and "huis" meant "house", then I would not have understood anything in that sentence.
I would love to see Frisian with an English orthography. That would be fantabulous! |
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| Porthos |
I am starting to notice a difference in Dutch and German accents when spoken in English, now that I've taken more of an interest in W. Germanic languages. I like the Dutch accent in English the best. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Of course, I realise that you can read many other Romance languages because of your knowledge of Spanish. The same is true for me because of French — I can read Italian better than I can read Swedish, for example. This is because, at least in the written form, the mutual intelligibility is greater between, say, French, Spanish and Italian, than between, say, English, German and Swedish.
In the written form, yes, but not in the spoken form. Here are my pronunciations of those two words in English, compared with fairly standard (European) German, Dutch, French and Spanish pronunciations: en - cold [ko:wlt] or [ko:wt] de - kalt [kalt] nl - koud [kVut] but: en - conversation [konv@"seIS@n] fr - conversation [kO~vERsasiO~] es - conversación [konbE4saTi"on] Thus, I would say that the English cognates with romance languages are rarely easily recognisable to untrained speakers in the spoken form.
Really? Hallo! Mein Name ist Benjamin. Ich komme aus Birmingham in England. Mein Haus ist ein Kilometer von hier. Ich lerne in der Schule Englisch Das ist so gut! Und dies' Mann war OK, ja? Ich singe oft englische Musik. Ich finde Bier besser als Wein. ... Those are all common German phrases. Are you really telling me that they would be totally unrecognisable to you, even in the spoken form?
Well, I can see it quite easily... |
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| Porthos |
I understood everything you just posted in German. But when I hear German spoken, and when I read German online, I really find that I understand about three times as much French, or Italian, and about five times as much Portuguese as I do German, or Dutch.
Somebody mentioned texts in Frisian w/ English orthography. I want to get my hands on that pronto! |
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| Porthos |
Benjamin, I'm going to translate the German phrases just to make sure I got them right. I notice that the word order is different than English in many of them though.
<<Hallo! Mein Name ist Benjamin.>> Hello! My name is Benjamin. <<Ich komme aus Birmingham in England.>> I come from Birmingham in England. <<Mein Haus ist ein Kilometer von hier.>> My house is one kilometer from here. <<Ich lerne in der Schule Englisch>> I learned English in the school. <<Das ist so gut!>> That is so good! <<Und dies' Mann war OK, ja?>> And the men were okay, yeah? <<Ich singe oft englische Musik>> I often sing English music. <<Ich finde Bier besser als Wein>> I find beer better than wine. Correct? I think "Mann" also means "people", right? Or, does only "volk" mean people? It seems like "Mann" is used as "personas" is used in Spanish. And saying "ja?", is used like Spanish "verdad?", or English "right?". |
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| Porthos |
Benjamin:
Sorry, I'm afraid I edited your post by mistake, instead of replying. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Yes.
Yes. More literally, 'aus' can be translated as 'out (of)' — notice the t-s shift which I've mentioned before.
Yes
I learn (present tense)
Yes
And this man was okay, yeah?
Yes
Yes
No. 'Mann' can only mean 'man'. However, 'man' means 'one', as in the personal pronoun.
The following could potentially be translated as 'people' in German: Leute Menschen Volk Personen man
Yes, I suppose so. |
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