3 ms·

"rather than the elliptical vagueness of Romance languages like English" - what?

• theandrewbailey 10y ago
  I had a few problems with that, too. English isn't a romance language (it stole a lot of romance vocabulary, though). I guess that the author eventually gets around to explaining what he means: too much vocabulary that doesn't break down into simpler, understandable words. It reminds me of the linguistic contortions you need to do in order to write like the Thing Explainer.
  • fourthark 10y ago
    Me three. I guess it's better said that those borrowed words don't break down easily for native speakers of English. There may be more concise ways to assemble variable names in Romance languages if you're a native speaker.
• minionslave 10y ago
  I had the same reaction too. After googling it to make sure, english was a germanic language like I always knew. Then I'm like, English might as well be romance because it's riddled with french words.
  • weinzierl 10y ago
    It's not (just) the vocabulary. Besides a the history it's primarily the inflection system that Romance languages have in common. Compare for example English with Spanish, Italian and Portuguese: en es it pt I go voy vado vou He/She goes va va vai We go vamos andiamo vamos They go van vanno vao While the Romance Languages are very similar, English is completely different.