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Or in fact, German kennen/wissen - it's not Germanic languages per se, but English, which developed from a simplified creole spoken by the Saxon conquerors of t
by Vivtek 9y ago
Or in fact, German kennen/wissen - it's not Germanic languages per se, but English, which developed from a simplified creole spoken by the Saxon conquerors of the Angles (they never bothered with all that conjugation stuff, and it stuck).
- barry-cotter 9y agoJust checked whether Dutch distinguishes between kennen and wissen. It doesn't, exactly like English, same for Norwegian and Swedish. That suggests it's a West Germanic thing. While English can fairly be described as a creole it's the influence of Norman French on Old English that makes that a fair description. Old English was IIRC on a dialect continuum between Frisian and Norse.