Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 1:18 am Post subject: Possible *Celtic substratum* in Anglic languages????
The many peculiarities of English among the West Germanic languages has many wondering if there is perhaps, a Celtic substratum in the English language. According to many modern theories, there was no large scale displacement of Celtic peoples in Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, but merely a conquest and a cultural and linguistic Anglicization of the native peoples. If that were the case, it would be rather illogical to assume that a small minority of settlers' speech was not at all affected by the far larger population of natives, and even more illogical to assume that the millions of natives who adopted the Anglo-Saxon language did not adapt the language according to their mother tounge, or did not leave any trace of their original language on the new language they adopted.
English is very different from its West Germanic relatives in that it underwent substantial semantic drift, and its syntax and grammar is very different.
Three other factors which set it apart from major relatives like Dutch and German is its retention of the original "th" sound, its large number of Norse words, and a very great deal of Romance vocabulary. The latter three however are not indicative of Celtic influence. The first two just might be.
The first two qualities (semantic drift and syntax/grammar re-organization) are often found with the contact between two languages, such as a creole. I'm thinking that English might be somewhat of a creole language. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
English is very different from its West Germanic relatives in that it underwent substantial semantic drift, and its syntax and grammar is very different.
You might be interested to look at Danish, Swedish and Norwegian grammar, actually.
As an example of very different syntax, the major Germanic language which I understand best, Dutch.
Dutch - Ik begrijp het niet
Eng - I understand it not
Dutch - Spreekt u Engels?
Eng - Speak you English?
Dutch - Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is
English - I can my pen not find because it much too dark is
Compare that to Spanish syntax:
Sp - No puedo encontrar mi pluma porque es demasiado oscura.
Eng - No can find my pen because it is too dark.
The Spanish syntax (a Romance language), is actually much closer to English than the Dutch example is, even though they are both Germanic languages. Part of the similarites between languages which facilitates learning with ease for the student include grammar and syntax. Unlike Romance languages which seem to share similar syntax, and German/Dutch which do also, English does not. So, knowing English does not aid in learning another Germanic language nearly as much as learning any other Germanic language, namely any other continental Germanic language. I find it odd that the languages of the continent can have so much in common, but the one language that developed on the British Isles, happens to have the least in common with the others. Again, this seems to point to a Celtic substratum or some form of Celtic influence, but much remains a mystery. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
As a side point regarding our other discussion in another thread Benjamin, in this Dutch example, without the aid of a translation, I would not understand what is being said, aside from a literal word for word translation of the first half of the sentence.
Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is
But I understand this in Portuguese very well because of my knowledge of Spanish:
Eu não posso encontrar minha pena porque é demasiado escura.
The only word I wouldn't recognize would be "posso".
And here's a good example for why I say Italian is the intermediary between French and Spanish
French - Je ne peux pas trouver mon stylo parce qu'il est trop foncé.
Italian - Non posso trovare la mia penna perché è troppo scura.
Spanish - No puedo encontrar mi pluma porque es demasiado oscura.
Now, granted, I wouldn't understand much of the French or Italian text, but the Portuguese was very easy to understand, and the French and Italian were about on equal level with the Dutch, although in this case, the Dutch sentence happens to make use of words which are still rather similar to their English cognates, and if one is familiar with certain consonant shifts between English and Dutch, as I am, it becomes even easier to understand, such as the 'f' to 'v' between English and Dutch, in 'find' vs. 'vinden'. And I also have a limited knowledge of the most basic Dutch words, but without that knowledge, I don't even think I would understand "Ik kan mijn pen niet", as an English speaker. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
"The Romantic period has often been characterised by the search for primeval origins. Indeed, the late 18th and early 19th century witnessed major strides forward in the field of linguistics, the discovery of the bond between the Indo-European family of languages being perhaps the most far-reaching in its implications. It goes without saying that the contribution made by German philologists was of critical importance. The latter part of the century saw history established as a major academic discipline in European universities. The fascination by scholars in the ethnic and linguistic origins of the European peoples was one of the consequences. In its most extreme form, this fascination eventually led to the development of an ideology based on the concept of racial and linguistic purity.
This paper attempts to show how such notions conditioned the thinking of 19th century scholars and, consequently their views on the ethnogenesis of their own nations. More specifically, we concentrate our attention on the work of the 19th century English historians in an attempt to trace the line of thought that led to the conclusion that the Brittonic-speaking population in what is today England was exterminated or driven out by the conquering Anglo-Saxons from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Although this hypothesis is still widely disseminated, it should be noted that most modern historians no longer place much stock in the idea. The extent to which the British population survived is a matter of current debate but, recent archaeological studies show that their numbers were superior to those of the incoming Anglo-Saxons, even in the most anglicised areas of eastern England. We do not wish to go so far as to say there was harmony between the two populations, however. On the contrary, there can be little doubt that the relations between Britons and Anglo-Saxons were often conflictual and marked by prolonged periods of bloodletting.
Nevertheless, of special importance to scholars of Celtic English is the fact that the linguistic pendant of the argument, namely that there is no Celtic substratum in English, has rarely ever been challenged, the logic being, of course, that if the British population was wiped out how could Brittonic have influenced the English language? Another common argument against a Brittonic substratum is that there is virtually no Celtic vocabulary in English thus providing that the Britons must have been exterminated or driven out. The argument is, of course, a circular one.
The paper concluedes with the proposal of a sociolinguistic model showing how the shift from Brittonic to English may have occurred and suggests the possibility of such a substratum as well as the form it may have taken."
-----Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Scholars: 19th Century Attitudes Towards
the Survival of Britons in Anglo-Saxon England
And this topic on American English is interesting:
"The Celtic Element in American English
Millions of Americans had ancestors who spoke either a Celtic language (Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, or Scottish Gaelic) or a variety of English or Scots influenced by a Celtic language. Settlers from Ireland, for instance, formed the third largest emigrant group after the English and the Germans, and the surnames they contributed to the American population are innumerable. However, historical accounts of American English make virtually no mention of linguistic influence from these emigrant streams. The few items of Welsh, Irish, and Scottish background in the first two volumes of the 'Dictionary of American Regional English' have never had more than marginal currency, differing little from those cited as Celtic contributions to British English, whose small number is supposedly attributable to the cultural dominance of the English. It can be shown, however, that the linguistic impact on American English made by emigrants from the Celtic parts of the British Isles, especially those who came from Ulster in the eighteenth century, were both numerous and profound and that they have been routinely overlooked by researchers because they lie not in the lexicon but in the grammar. These are particularly noteworthy in the speech of the Appalachian mountain region.
This paper has three objectives: 1) to discuss the range of grammatical features in American English that are traceable to varieties of English from Ireland and Scotland; 2) to provide explanations for why the ancestry of these features have not been identified before and why they have endured while lexical items have rapidly eroded; and 3) to explore the implications of this ancestry for understanding present-day regional and syntactic variation in American speech." _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
And here's a good example for why I say Italian is the intermediary between French and Spanish
French - Je ne peux pas trouver mon stylo parce qu'il est trop foncé.
Italian - Non posso trovare la mia penna perché è troppo scura.
Spanish - No puedo encontrar mi pluma porque es demasiado oscura.
Do you realise what the sentence with French words means actually ? Look : I can't find my pen because it [the pen's ink or the pen's colour] is too dark...
Try this : Je n'arrive pas à trouver mon stylo à cause de l'obscurité.
Et je ne vois pas ce que tu veux dire à propos de l'italien par rapport à l'espagnol et au francais...
it becomes even easier to understand, such as the 'f' to 'v' between English and Dutch, in 'find' vs. 'vinden'. And I also have a limited knowledge of the most basic Dutch words, but without that knowledge, I don't even think I would understand "Ik kan mijn pen niet", as an English speaker.
The f--> v occur between ducth and german as well, also some others like f-->p , s--> t and more.
Find the one who's different:
Ik kan niet vinden
I can not find
Ich kann nicht finden
No puedo encontrar
You woudln't understand "Ik kan mijn pen niet" as it doesn't makes some sense, because you've written only the modal verb (can). This would be in english : I can not my pen, (also incomplete). You must put the verb find Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden
I can not find my pen.
this are completely the same except the one (most noticed) difference of syntax in dutch & german than in english:
the infinitive --> the final place of the sentence, but in english it precede the (in this case) the direct object, following the auxiliary:
This is always, the infinitive --> final place after modals, also after certain words such as because Du omdat, Ger weil. In german this tendance is most often, and dutch mostly, but sometimes it will be as english (therefore, for me it has the feeling to be between german and english).
Your sentence is a perfect illustartion of this occurances (infin--> final place after modal & after omdat infin --> final place):
Dutch - Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is*
English - I can my pen not find because it much too dark is
* there's little bit ambiguity what you can dissipate if you will put in "hier": Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het hier veel te donker is.
The similarities are very many!!!
ik = I
kan = can
mijn = my / mine
pen =pen
niet = not
vinden =find (ik vind= I find)
het = it
is = is
It was very interesting to notice that in a text of OLd English from the Xth century what greg put on Antimoon, there was a sentence in the modern english word order (verb immediatly after the auxiliary/modal) and another in the dutch/german word order (verb at the final place). This is interesting because this text was written > 100 years before the Norman Conquest, and the subsequent influece of norman french to the english language. http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t7167.htm
Also relevant, is that in dutch the same word order than in english can be found - as I wrote before, more often than it can be found in german. For example, if you will replace omdat and put want (this doesn't = Eng want, but is also because, as omdat as well) the infinitive verb will not go to the final place, but remain after the other verb. Your sentence with "want" : Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden want het is hier veel te donker
The main place where you can see this syntax differences are in relative clauses, as dat, die, welke etc (Du) daß, welche, die etc (ger) = that, what, which make the infinitive to go to the end of the sentence. After you know this, it isn't so different than english at all.
I understand why you don't see those things, and i find syntax a quite complicated and confusing thing. I've concentrated very much for learn the dutch and german syntx, and when I've started to learn egnlish, I was told that the word order more ressemble the french one, but evidently this is not completely the case, and people here (you as well!!) have told me that my english has french syntax. of course, I won't start to construct english exactly as dutch/german: this woudln't resolve it, btu I must spearatly learn it .
I hope this explanations have helpd, and now I'm get tired, so I will go to my garden!! Bye
As an example of very different syntax, the major Germanic language which I understand best, Dutch.
Dutch - Ik begrijp het niet
Eng - I understand it not
That English structure wouldn't be too unusual in some parts of England.
Porthos wrote:
Dutch - Spreekt u Engels?
Eng - Speak you English?
This sort of structure was fairly normal in English until a few hundred years ago, and can still be found in literary contexts (hymns, for instance). It still exists for modal verbs, and some others, such as 'to dare'.
Porthos wrote:
Dutch - Ik kan mijn pen niet vinden omdat het veel te donker is
English - I can my pen not find because it much too dark is
Compare that to Spanish syntax:
Sp - No puedo encontrar mi pluma porque es demasiado oscura.
Eng - No can find my pen because it is too dark.
The Spanish syntax (a Romance language), is actually much closer to English than the Dutch example is, even though they are both Germanic languages.
In that particular example, yes. But here's another example:
Dutch: ik vond mjn groene pen
English: I found my green pen
Spanish: encontré mi pluma verde
French: j'ai trouvé mon stylo vert
There's also the issue of compound nouns. In Germanic languages, including English, you usually just put the two words together, whereas in Romance languages, you have to use 'de' (at least in French and Spanish). For example, in English you say 'door handle', in German you say 'Türhandgriff', whilst in French, you say 'poignée de porte', and in Spanish you say 'tirador de puerta'.
And there's also the issue of 'split verbs' — in English, we often say things like 'I hang my coat up', 'I turn the light on', 'I blow the candle out', 'I turn the volume down', 'I give the pencil back', 'I push the door to' etc. This is also very common in other Germanic languages, but does not exist in Romance languages.
Porthos wrote:
I find it odd that the languages of the continent can have so much in common, but the one language that developed on the British Isles, happens to have the least in common with the others.
Have you looked at the syntax of Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian, as I suggested?
English is very different from its West Germanic relatives in that it underwent substantial semantic drift, and its syntax and grammar is very different.
It's evident that spanish is different than french, portuguese and italian are not the same, also not as romanian or other romance languages, but I didn't hear native speakers of those languages who constantly say : my language is very different from its Romance relatives etc... to be special or less romance.
English is a germanic language, if you like this or you don't, bad luck if you prefer it would be a romance one, because it is *very* evidently not!!! Maybe it's the idea that latin is superior , germanic is inferior, like stupid status. I hate status and such annoying and ignorantly judgemental dividing things.
Porthos, if you would learn some dutch or german, you will very soon understand why enlgish is a germanic language. Why you want it to not be? You are little bit like the flemish /dutch who maintain that flemish is a separated language based on the fact that there are some few differences of the vocabulary. Also, the dutch want to make their spelling to not be similar with german, while the flemish wish the spelling to be different than in french. This causes some arguments, as it's the same language LOL!!! It's a political, cultural, pride thing, not truly about the language.
English is very different from its West Germanic relatives in that it underwent substantial semantic drift, and its syntax and grammar is very different.
It's evident that spanish is different than french, portuguese and italian are not the same, also not as romanian or other romance languages, but I didn't hear native speakers of those languages who constantly say : my language is very different from its Romance relatives etc... to be special or less romance.
English is a germanic language, if you like this or you don't, bad luck if you prefer it would be a romance one, because it is *very* evidently not!!! Maybe it's the idea that latin is superior , germanic is inferior, like stupid status. I hate status and such annoying and ignorantly judgemental dividing things.
Porthos, if you would learn some dutch or german, you will very soon understand why enlgish is a germanic language. Why you want it to not be? You are little bit like the flemish /dutch who maintain that flemish is a separated language based on the fact that there are some few differences of the vocabulary. Also, the dutch want to make their spelling to not be similar with german, while the flemish wish the spelling to be different than in french. This causes some arguments, as it's the same language LOL!!! It's a political, cultural, pride thing, not truly about the language.
Pauline, you are completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not at all attempting to deny that English is a member of the Germanic languages, or that it is part of the Romance language family. There's absolutely no question as to how it should be classified. Certainly, I can tell right off the bat that my mother language has a lot more in common with West Germanic languages like Dutch, than with North Germanic languages like Swedish, which are almost 100% unintelligable for me. I am saying that English is not nearly as similar to other Germanic languages, as most Romance languages are to each other. Many times you have stated that knowing English makes learning Dutch about as easy as a Spanish speaker learning Portuguese, and I am telling you that there is no way this could be the case, as Spanish is far closer to Portuguese than Dutch is to English. As a Spanish speaker, I understand most written Portuguese, and I can follow a movie somewhat in Italian, and get the gist of a French text, all while not even being fluent in Spanish.
English, genetically, is without a doubt closer to Germanic languages than Romance ones. We've established that. But that does not mean that it has to necessarily be closer to, or bear more resemblance to the languages which share a similar origin. As an example, consider Frisian. You and I had a lengthy discussion on it about a week ago. You doubted that Frisian was closer to English than Dutch, as you could clearly see that it resembled Dutch far more than English. I attempted to explain however that Frisian is classified along with English because they share a similar origin apart from Dutch, as they're part of the Anglo-Frisian branch. That does not mean that they are more similar to each other today, in the modern world, as there are a whole host of possible variables at play which could have shaped the language, resulting in two very different diverging paths of evolution. For 1500 years, Frisian was subordinate to Dutch in a lot of cases, borrowed many Dutch words, and adopted the Dutch spelling system. English over the same period, was influenced by Old Norse, underwent substantial semantic changes, drastically simplified its inflections and grammar system, adopted a stupendous amount of French words, later underwent a great vowel shift, and the list goes on, so that by today, a text in Frisian is almost entirely unintelligable to an English speaker, and vice versa, although Frisian might be understood somewhat by a Dutch speaker.
So, as an English speaker, without knowledge of any other language, you would more than likely understand the Romance words more so than the Germanic ones, for the Romance cognates have retained virtually the same spelling, and have not undergone consonant and or vowel shifts such as the cognates between English and Germanic languages. I don't speak another Germanic language, but I do have a limited knowledge of Dutch and some tid bits from German. I am aware of a lot of the consonant and or vowel shifts, so when attempting to understand a text in say, Dutch, I correct these historical changes and it allows for some clarification. I also know a lot of the most basic words in Dutch, pronouns, articles, basic vocabulary, etc., so I can understand a little. But most English speakers do not know these differences, and wouldn't be able to recognize the cognates, which to our eyes, look completely alien. Sure, by measuring words from a historical linguistic perspective, we can see that "find" and "vinden" share the same root, but most laypersons would not recognize them to be the same word. That is what we are talking about with regard to mutual intelligablilty.
Benjamin, you make excuses for all the present differences between English and its Germanic relatives.
<<This sort of structure was fairly normal in English until a few hundred years ago, and can still be found in literary contexts (hymns, for instance). It still exists for modal verbs, and some others, such as 'to dare'. >>
But I don't care what it was centuries ago. I'm concerned with the ease of understanding a language I'm not educated in. I'm talking about mutual intelligablity, and that pertains only to the present. Because I could technically say that our languages were idenitcal at the Proto-Germanic stage, or hell, even at the Indo-European stage. What I'm concerned with are the similarities and differences between the two languages today[b].
<<Have you looked at the syntax of Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian, as I suggested? >>
No, I tried Googling that, and I didn't meet with much success. If you have some examples on hand, feel free to provide them.
I've heard a lot of people from Norway, Denmark and Sweden find English very easy to learn because the grammar is very similar to their languages (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, of course).
I've learned some of those three languages and was surprised at how closer the English grammar seems to those three languages.
Also, I doubt that the Celtic languages have much influences on the English language. The syntax and grammar of Celtic languages are too different from English. But in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, you can find Celtic speakers use Hiberno English (Ireland), Scottish English or Welsh English which are quite distinct from Standard British English.
For example, in northern Scotland, you will hear "Are you wanting a beer?" more often than "Do you want a beer?" because in Scottish Gaelic, the syntax is "Are you wanting beer?" (A bheil thu ag iarraidh lionn? = lit.: Are-[interr. form] you at wanting beer) _________________ Zoriona tximelata bat bezalakoa da: bilatzen baduzu, hegaldatuko besterik ez da, baina gelditzen bazara, dator eta zure sorbaldan jartzen da.
Last edited by Daniel on Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:49 pm; edited 2 times in total
I've heard a lot of people from Norway, Denmark and Sweden who find English very easy to learn because the grammar is very similar to their languages (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, of course).
I've learned some of those three languages and was surprised at how closer the English grammar seems to those three languages.
Could you give me an example? I'm researching why our syntax is so different from those of our closer relatives. This linguistic research is part of my greater research involving the Celtic displacement theory vs. the Anglo-Saxon assimilation theory. I'm trying to ascertain what is responsible for the differences between English grammar and that of other West Germanic languages. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject:
Porthos wrote:
I'm researching why our syntax is so different from those of our closer relatives. This linguistic research is part of my greater research involving the Celtic displacement theory vs. the Anglo-Saxon assimilation theory. I'm trying to ascertain what is responsible for the differences between English grammar and that of other West Germanic languages.
Genetics researcher and popular science author Stephen Oppenheimer has a theory about that, somewhere on the page below:
Synthesizing the genetic evidence with linguistics, archaeology and the historical record, Oppenheimer shows how long-term Scandinavian trade and immigration contributed the remaining quarter [of the English gene pool] – mostly before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. These migrations may have introduced the earliest forms of English.
Here's a link to another article about his book The Origins of the British. Look for a link to a follow-up containing Oppenheimer's responses to some criticisms of his theories.
I'm researching why our syntax is so different from those of our closer relatives. This linguistic research is part of my greater research involving the Celtic displacement theory vs. the Anglo-Saxon assimilation theory. I'm trying to ascertain what is responsible for the differences between English grammar and that of other West Germanic languages.
Genetics researcher and popular science author Stephen Oppenheimer has a theory about that, somewhere on the page below:
Synthesizing the genetic evidence with linguistics, archaeology and the historical record, Oppenheimer shows how long-term Scandinavian trade and immigration contributed the remaining quarter [of the English gene pool] – mostly before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. These migrations may have introduced the earliest forms of English.
Here's a link to another article about his book The Origins of the British. Look for a link to a follow-up containing Oppenheimer's responses to some criticisms of his theories.
(This isn't an endorsement of Oppenheimer's theories; I just came across this stuff one day.)
I've read his theories, but they just don't seem plausible. He claims that what is today England may never have been Celtic at all, but actually Germanic all along, and that the English language was native to England long before the Anglo-Saxons even got there????? He bases this claim on the fact that there are few Celtic inscriptions in modern England, yet he fails to mention that there are many place names in England of Celtic origin. This assertion rests on the belief that the Belgae were a Germanic tribe, and not Celtic speaking, which is an assumption on his part. The following paragraph does not make sense to me at all:
Quote:
The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.
Who was here when the Romans came?
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.
Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.
Dutch: ik vond mjn groene pen
English: I found my green pen
True, but this is just one example. Consider many others which are completely unintelligable to English speakers.
Eng - All's fair in love and war
Dutch - In liefde en oorlog is alles toegestaan
Eng - All that glitters is not gold
Dutch - Het is niet alles goud wat er blinkt
Eng - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
Dutch - Vreest de Grieken, ook al
brengen zij geschenken
Eng - To err is human
Dutch - Vergissen is menselijk
Eng - Procrastination is the thief of time
Dutch - Uitstel is de dief van de tijd
I can navigate my way around a website in Italian, French, Portuguese, etc, but I have much trouble trying to do the same in Dutch, German, and let alone any North Germanic langauge.[/i] _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
Pauline, you are completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not at all attempting to deny that English is a member of the Germanic languages, or that it is part of the Romance language family. There's absolutely no question as to how it should be classified.
i don't misundertand what you're saying. Very often you put some messages about english isn't as germanic as the other languages in this group, it's more like the romance ones, or another thing like it's celtic etc..
Porthos wrote:
Many times you have stated that knowing English makes learning Dutch about as easy as a Spanish speaker learning Portuguese, and I am telling you that there is no way this could be the case, as Spanish is far closer to Portuguese than Dutch is to English. As a Spanish speaker, I understand most written Portuguese, and I can follow a movie somewhat in Italian, and get the gist of a French text, all while not even being fluent in Spanish.
I can read spanish, portuguese and italain as well, and can compare them for difficulty to understand for french-speaker. I'm learning spanish, but the other ones I havn't. I don't remember that I've many times stated that knowing english makes learning dutch as easy as spanish--> portuguese, in fact this specific opinion I don't remember to have had it. But of course if you're englsih-speaker dutch will be not difficult. German and ducth maybe are similar with the diffierences spanish & Portuguese. English and Dutch as Spanish & french.
I've noticed that for compare, you find some sentences and make the judgement, but if you didn't look to the grammar and more things you havn't sufficient infos for this conclusion. Then you've an opinion based on the impression you get, but this is without true / sufficient depth of knowledge. I don't understand why you don't first read and learn, then after make some suggestions -what you're doing is looking to the written languages and guessing, without to take notice , account of what linguists and other people have told about it.
I understand why you want to know why things are as they are: I like to know such things also, to see and understand espcially the connections, so we don't completely have other ways to approach this, but all the time you've a new proposal about the english language as if nobody has thought about this things until you have suddenly this inspiration and discover a great truth missing and unknown until you have made this revelation.
Quote:
English, genetically, is without a doubt closer to Germanic languages than Romance ones. We've established that. But that does not mean that it has to necessarily be closer to, or bear more resemblance to the languages which share a similar origin.
English is much closer to and bear more resemblance to dutch and german than the romance languages. This is absolutly definite, for sure, unquestionable fact. What exactly you mean genetically? (You mean from where it develped? or the grammar?)
Quote:
by measuring words from a historical linguistic perspective, we can see that "find" and "vinden" share the same root, but most laypersons would not recognize them to be the same word. That is what we are talking about with regard to mutual intelligablilty.
How can't you see the connection "find /vinden"?????
It's so evident!!!! F and V are like partner letters I think, as P-B, T-D, QK-G.. Most of dutch and german infinitive verbs ends "-en" (as spanish ones end -ir, -er, -ar). This is very easy and immediatly recognisable to a person who's basic knowledge of those languages.
ik vind / ich finde / I find are 100% mutually intelligible.
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Benjamin, you make excuses for all the present differences between English and its Germanic relatives.
Porthos, you make excuses for all the present similarities between English and its Germanic relatives e.g. unintelligible when it's clearly inteligible.
I'm researching why our syntax is so different from those of our closer relatives. This linguistic research is part of my greater research involving the Celtic displacement theory vs. the Anglo-Saxon assimilation theory. I'm trying to ascertain what is responsible for the differences between English grammar and that of other West Germanic languages.
Tout un programmme...
If you're interested about what happened in the mid 5th century, modern-English grammar will be of little help. I suggest you focus on things like this :
— Hunta ic eom.
— Je suis chasseur.
— Hwæs ?
— De qui ?
— Cincges.
— Du roi.
— Hu begæst þu cræft þinne ?
— Comment exerces-tu to métier ?
— Ic brede me max & sette hig on stope gehæppre, & getihte hundas mine þæt wildeor hig ehton, oþþæt hig becuman to þam nettam unforsceawodlice & þæt hig swa beon begrynodo, & ic ofslea on þam maxum.
— Je tisse mes filets & les tends en dû lieu, & j'excite mes chiens à poursuivre le gibier pour qu'il tombe dans les filets par mégarde, se faisant ainsi prendre au piège & je les abats dans les rêts.
— Ne canst þu huntian buton mid nettum ?
— Ne sais-tu point chasser sans filet ?
— Gea, butan nettium huntian ic mæg.
— Si ! Je sais chasser sans filet.
— Hu ?
— Comment fais-tu ?
— Mid swiftum hundum ic betæce wildeor.
— Je poursuis le gibier avec des chiens rapides.
Brennus ist wieder am löschen ich habe deshalb es kopiert und jetzt steht es auf dem deutschen Fred. Vielleicht wird Tiorthan mein deutsch verbessern, was natürlich auch gut wäre.
I really fail to understand why Porthos is only interested in knowing why the English language is the way it is WITHOUT looking at its past. Because usually, when you want to know why a language is like this, you'll have to look at what happened in its past...
Porthos wrote:
But I don't care what it was centuries ago. I'm concerned with the ease of understanding a language I'm not educated in. I'm talking about mutual intelligablity, and that pertains only to the present. Because I could technically say that our languages were idenitcal at the Proto-Germanic stage, or hell, even at the Indo-European stage. What I'm concerned with are the similarities and differences between the two languages today.
It would help to know about what happened in the past so you can have a more understanding about what has changed and why. _________________ Zoriona tximelata bat bezalakoa da: bilatzen baduzu, hegaldatuko besterik ez da, baina gelditzen bazara, dator eta zure sorbaldan jartzen da.
I really fail to understand why Porthos is only interested in knowing why the English language is the way it is WITHOUT looking at its past. Because usually, when you want to know why a language is like this, you'll have to look at what happened in its past...
Porthos wrote:
But I don't care what it was centuries ago. I'm concerned with the ease of understanding a language I'm not educated in. I'm talking about mutual intelligablity, and that pertains only to the present. Because I could technically say that our languages were idenitcal at the Proto-Germanic stage, or hell, even at the Indo-European stage. What I'm concerned with are the similarities and differences between the two languages today.
It would help to know about what happened in the past so you can have a more understanding about what has changed and why.
No, to the contrary, all my personal research is being applied to the past, and the historical development of English. What I said to Benjamin is that extinct grammatical rules in English do not help a modern English speaker understand those same sentence structures in a modern foreign language. It's totally irrelavant when speaking of the ease with which a mono-lingual English speaker has in comprehending a foreign language like Dutch.
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i don't misundertand what you're saying. Very often you put some messages about english isn't as germanic as the other languages in this group, it's more like the romance ones, or another thing like it's celtic etc..
I don't claim that it's less "Germanic" per se, but it is an undeniable fact that English has a *much* larger pool of Romance words it makes use of when compared to other Germanic languages. Romance language influenced our spelling as well. English itself is not "closer" to Romance languages, but I still claim that an English speaker has less difficulty in understanding texts in Romance languages than in other Germanic languages. The reasons for this are many, and simple. For one, unlike Romance langauges that tend to share similar syntax, so that the word order is more or less the same between Romance languages, English has a very different syntax from Dutch and German. English lacks all those "en" endings on verbs. We don't have multiple genders. But most importantly, our cognates we share with other Germanic languages are often unrecognizable, while those we share with Romance languages, which do abound in numbers, jump right out at is with the same or similar spelling.
As humans, when we read, we don't read each individual letter, but only the first letter of the word and the last. So for recognition of cognates, the most important letter by far is the first letter. Because of all the numerous consonant shifts between English and its related langauges, we don't recognize these words. And for you, there might not be much of a difference between "I" and "Ich", but for me, I see a one letter word pronounced "aye", and a *three* letter word with a totally different pronounciation. I've done numerous tests on schoolmates, workmates, family members etc, and they don't recognize that these two words are cognates!
Honestly, could you recognize these two "very visible" Indo-European cognates?
Pater - Vader
Padre - Father
Pere - Vater
Looking at these cognates from a linguist's viewpoint, I can easily determine that their cognates and they would be recognizable as so, once I allow for the consonant shifts that the Germanic langauges underwent that Latin and its descendants did not. For instance, I would know to switch "P" to "F/V", and I would know the consonant shift Spanish underwent when evolving from Latin, which was "T" ---> "D". But these small letter changes amount to very big differences, and to the average person without this knowledge, there is no way they would be able to identify "Padre" and "Father" as cognates.
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But of course if you're englsih-speaker dutch will be not difficult. German and ducth maybe are similar with the diffierences spanish & Portuguese. English and Dutch as Spanish & french.
Not even close. The cognates shared between Spanish and French, which are many (share 82% of the same lexicon), are much more readily indentifiable than those between English and Dutch, which are also far fewer. Spanish and French grammar is also far more similar to each other than English is to Dutch and German, which have very distinct grammar systems.
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I understand why you want to know why things are as they are: I like to know such things also, to see and understand espcially the connections, so we don't completely have other ways to approach this, but all the time you've a new proposal about the english language as if nobody has thought about this things until you have suddenly this inspiration and discover a great truth missing and unknown until you have made this revelation.
Haha, no. When I post threads with titles such as "Possible Celtic Substratum in English", it's not because I the great Porthos have suddenly been enlightened with this great revelation, unbeknownst to the rest of the world's academia. It is because I wish to discuss the possibilities of such theories, which are themselves outside of the mainstream theory.
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Also, the dutch want to make their spelling to not be similar with german, while the flemish wish the spelling to be different than in french. This causes some arguments, as it's the same language LOL!!! It's a political, cultural, pride thing, not truly about the language.
ich habe deshalb es kopiert und jetzt steht es auf dem deutschen Fred. Vielleicht wird Tiorthan mein deutsch verbessern, was natürlich auch gut wäre.