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As a German, I'm a bit puzzled as to why Latin languages like Spanish and Romanian, are more "similar to English" than German is. I get that English borrows a

As a German, I'm a bit puzzled as to why Latin languages like Spanish and Romanian, are more "similar to English" than German is. I get that English borrows a lot of words from French but overall English and German should have more similar origins than say Portuguese or Catalan. Is this because of our "annoying" grammar (would make sense since Icelandic, another Germanic language with much more complexity in this regard even makes it into Category IV) or because German leaves little room of ambiguity (and thus fun)?

andrewbinstock 9y ago
Surely, the grammar.
- mirceal 9y ago
  haha. no. grammar for some of the latin-based languages is ridiculously hard to master. you have trouble with the grammar even as a native speaker. It's not the grammar.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    Speaking as someone who learned French in school, I agree. Goddamn plus-que-parfait, it's a trap.
    - ternaryoperator 9y ago
      What's the difficulty? The pluperfect is one of the easier tenses in French. Its formation has no exceptions--one of the very rare tenses in French with no exceptions: imperfect + past participle. And its usage directly parallels the pluperfect in English: I had finished my meal when he arrived. J'avais fini mon repas quand il est arrivé.
jccalhoun 9y ago
I took German in high school and as a summer class in grad school to meet the language requirement and have taken it on duolingo. I didn't find the grammar particularly hard once you learn the differences. Capitalizing all nouns makes it easy to identify them and learning verb endings makes it easy to identify verbs in many cases. What is hard for me is the vocabulary. If I haven't memorized it then I usually can't guess its meaning.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > I didn't find the grammar particularly hard once you learn the differences. Then you are either a genius in language learning/grammar or you are not aware of your mistakes (choose for yourself). I say as a native German speaker that even less educated Germans do some really ugly grammar mistakes that you should better avoid, just to give two examples: 1. Using the dative as "Deppengenitiv" (douche's genitive): Some prepositions (such as "wegen") require a genitive; also some (a little bit obscure and old-fashioned) verbs (such as "gedenken") require a genitive object. Uneducated people use them with dative. You are hopefully not uneducated. So the following sentences are WRONG: - Wegen einem Unfall kam ich zu spät zur Arbeit. - Ich gedenke den Verstorbenen. Correct is of course (you guessed it after I gave the rule): - Wegen eines Unfalls kam ich zu spät zur Arbeit. - Ich gedenke der Verstorbenen. 2. Which are the correct principal forms of "hängen" a) hängen - hing - gehangen, b) hängen - hängte - gehängt? Answer: Both are correct, but have different meanings. a) are the correct principal forms of the intransitive verb (i.e. without object) "hängen" and b) are the correct principal forms of the transitive verb (requiring an accusative object) "hängen" So the following sentences are WRONG: - Er hing ein Bild auf. - Die Jacke hängte am Ständer. Correct is - Er hängte ein Bild auf. - Die Jacke hing am Ständer.
  - germanier 9y ago
    I don't think I would call people uneducated and their usage of language dumb and wrong just because it does not follow the usage from one specific point in time long ago. Most things you mentioned have been used by a vast number of people for a significant time now. At some point we need accept that language is constantly evolving. You don't write like Goethe either but I don't call you uneducated for that. Before anyone laments the erosion of our language: The German language has never been so expressive as it is now. Every change gives new ways to precisely choose the way you word something.
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > I don't think I would call people uneducated and their usage of language dumb and wrong just because it does not follow the usage from one specific point in time long ago. Most things you mentioned have been used by a vast number of people for a significant time now. At some point we need accept that language is constantly evolving. You don't write like Goethe either but I don't call you uneducated for that. This is a difference in mentality that I observe all the time between English and German language. In English if lots of speakers make some mistake it becomes "an accepted alternative" and at some time even "correct". For German language the mentality is different: If lots of people make a mistake it (with few exceptions) will still be considered as wrong. Accept it.
why15characters 9y ago
>As a German, I'm a bit puzzled as to why Latin languages like Spanish and Romanian, are more "similar to English" than German is. They aren't, that's a poor assumption being made by the author of the blog post. They are faster to learn, not more similar. The reason they are faster to learn is the people they are basing this data on are almost entirely people who already speak another language, and it is usually French or Spanish. So other romance languages come faster to them, despite German being closer to English.
pera 9y ago
Maybe because almost 2/3 of its vocabulary have French, Latin and Greek origins.
raverbashing 9y ago
They're not "similar to English", they're easier than German to learn 2 genders instead of 3 and some complication on the verb conjugations but overall not too many difficulties. "No gramatical cases" (as in German, but of course the cases exist), no mix and match of ambiguous endings, no separable verbs, no crazy word order, etc
- elbear 9y ago
  Romanian has 3 genders.
- woodpanel 9y ago
  I was quoting the page: "Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours) Languages closely related to English: Afrikaans, ..., French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, ... Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours) Languages similar to English: German" This I understood as a ranking in similarity.
- dailen 9y ago
  I have to agree, English being a Germanic language with similar grammatical structure this does indeed seem inaccurate.
maw 9y ago
I agree that it's oddly phrased. Empirically, it is true that if you start from English you can probably learn Spanish more quickly than German, but it doesn't necessarily follow that Spanish is more similar. After all, Spanish doesn't have our weird Germanic modal verbs, rules about how to structure questions, separable prefixes, and so on.
mirceal 9y ago
it's probably not the grammar. I am no expert in German, but if I were to take a bet it would have to do on how words are built (compound words) and that some of them are not straightforward. It may seem easy for you, but I am guessing it requires a shift in the way you think. also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizit%C3%A4tenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizi...
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
As a native speaker of a Romance language (a.k.a. "latin" language) this puzzles me too. I'm guessing it's the vocabulary. English has imported a lot of Latin roots over hundreds of years. There's also the outcome of the battle of Hastings that may have tilted the results here.

andrewbinstock 9y ago

Surely, the grammar.

mirceal 9y ago
haha. no. grammar for some of the latin-based languages is ridiculously hard to master. you have trouble with the grammar even as a native speaker. It's not the grammar.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  Speaking as someone who learned French in school, I agree. Goddamn plus-que-parfait, it's a trap.
  - ternaryoperator 9y ago
    What's the difficulty? The pluperfect is one of the easier tenses in French. Its formation has no exceptions--one of the very rare tenses in French with no exceptions: imperfect + past participle. And its usage directly parallels the pluperfect in English: I had finished my meal when he arrived. J'avais fini mon repas quand il est arrivé.

jccalhoun 9y ago

I took German in high school and as a summer class in grad school to meet the language requirement and have taken it on duolingo. I didn't find the grammar particularly hard once you learn the differences. Capitalizing all nouns makes it easy to identify them and learning verb endings makes it easy to identify verbs in many cases. What is hard for me is the vocabulary. If I haven't memorized it then I usually can't guess its meaning.

wolfgke 9y ago
> I didn't find the grammar particularly hard once you learn the differences. Then you are either a genius in language learning/grammar or you are not aware of your mistakes (choose for yourself). I say as a native German speaker that even less educated Germans do some really ugly grammar mistakes that you should better avoid, just to give two examples: 1. Using the dative as "Deppengenitiv" (douche's genitive): Some prepositions (such as "wegen") require a genitive; also some (a little bit obscure and old-fashioned) verbs (such as "gedenken") require a genitive object. Uneducated people use them with dative. You are hopefully not uneducated. So the following sentences are WRONG: - Wegen einem Unfall kam ich zu spät zur Arbeit. - Ich gedenke den Verstorbenen. Correct is of course (you guessed it after I gave the rule): - Wegen eines Unfalls kam ich zu spät zur Arbeit. - Ich gedenke der Verstorbenen. 2. Which are the correct principal forms of "hängen" a) hängen - hing - gehangen, b) hängen - hängte - gehängt? Answer: Both are correct, but have different meanings. a) are the correct principal forms of the intransitive verb (i.e. without object) "hängen" and b) are the correct principal forms of the transitive verb (requiring an accusative object) "hängen" So the following sentences are WRONG: - Er hing ein Bild auf. - Die Jacke hängte am Ständer. Correct is - Er hängte ein Bild auf. - Die Jacke hing am Ständer.
- germanier 9y ago
  I don't think I would call people uneducated and their usage of language dumb and wrong just because it does not follow the usage from one specific point in time long ago. Most things you mentioned have been used by a vast number of people for a significant time now. At some point we need accept that language is constantly evolving. You don't write like Goethe either but I don't call you uneducated for that. Before anyone laments the erosion of our language: The German language has never been so expressive as it is now. Every change gives new ways to precisely choose the way you word something.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > I don't think I would call people uneducated and their usage of language dumb and wrong just because it does not follow the usage from one specific point in time long ago. Most things you mentioned have been used by a vast number of people for a significant time now. At some point we need accept that language is constantly evolving. You don't write like Goethe either but I don't call you uneducated for that. This is a difference in mentality that I observe all the time between English and German language. In English if lots of speakers make some mistake it becomes "an accepted alternative" and at some time even "correct". For German language the mentality is different: If lots of people make a mistake it (with few exceptions) will still be considered as wrong. Accept it.

why15characters 9y ago

>As a German, I'm a bit puzzled as to why Latin languages like Spanish and Romanian, are more "similar to English" than German is. They aren't, that's a poor assumption being made by the author of the blog post. They are faster to learn, not more similar. The reason they are faster to learn is the people they are basing this data on are almost entirely people who already speak another language, and it is usually French or Spanish. So other romance languages come faster to them, despite German being closer to English.

pera 9y ago

Maybe because almost 2/3 of its vocabulary have French, Latin and Greek origins.

raverbashing 9y ago

They're not "similar to English", they're easier than German to learn 2 genders instead of 3 and some complication on the verb conjugations but overall not too many difficulties. "No gramatical cases" (as in German, but of course the cases exist), no mix and match of ambiguous endings, no separable verbs, no crazy word order, etc

elbear 9y ago
Romanian has 3 genders.
woodpanel 9y ago
I was quoting the page: "Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours) Languages closely related to English: Afrikaans, ..., French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, ... Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours) Languages similar to English: German" This I understood as a ranking in similarity.
dailen 9y ago
I have to agree, English being a Germanic language with similar grammatical structure this does indeed seem inaccurate.

maw 9y ago

I agree that it's oddly phrased. Empirically, it is true that if you start from English you can probably learn Spanish more quickly than German, but it doesn't necessarily follow that Spanish is more similar. After all, Spanish doesn't have our weird Germanic modal verbs, rules about how to structure questions, separable prefixes, and so on.

mirceal 9y ago

it's probably not the grammar. I am no expert in German, but if I were to take a bet it would have to do on how words are built (compound words) and that some of them are not straightforward. It may seem easy for you, but I am guessing it requires a shift in the way you think. also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizit%C3%A4tenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizi...

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

As a native speaker of a Romance language (a.k.a. "latin" language) this puzzles me too. I'm guessing it's the vocabulary. English has imported a lot of Latin roots over hundreds of years. There's also the outcome of the battle of Hastings that may have tilted the results here.