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Since when is English considered a romance language? I thought it was majority Germanic in origin.
by newobj 10y ago
Since when is English considered a romance language? I thought it was majority Germanic in origin.
- dragonwriter 10y agoEnglish is a Germanic language with a strong Romance influence, thanks to the Norman Conquest. (That is to say, you are quite correct that it is not a Romance language.)
- blastrat 10y agoit's always funny to me when people talk about the Norman Conquest with respect to Romance Languages... the Normans were Vikings, Germanic. In terms of Romantic influences, it is the Normans who were conquested by Latinate language :)
- jakub_g 10y agoThis pretty cool map shows distances between languages. English is Germanic and French is Romance but they are quite close. https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among-languages-of-europe/ https://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among...
- kaffeinecoma 10y agoMy guess is he's referring to the large number of romance loanwords that came into the English language as a result of the Norman Invasion.
- korethr 10y agoEnglish is a bastardized munge of a language, truthfully, with both Germanic and Romance parts. Initially it was a Germanic language, but after the Norman invasion of England, a great deal of Romance words were added to the language via the old French that the Normans spoke.