5 ms·

Those bugs and inconsistencies are really just manifestations of the complicated history of the language. There are few languages which have as many diverse pa

Those bugs and inconsistencies are really just manifestations of the complicated history of the language. There are few languages which have as many diverse parent languages as English has.

oblio 8y ago
No offense, but are you sure about that or are you monolingual? You'd be surprised what rich history even obscure languages have.
- psergeant 8y ago
  This is largely true of European languages: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.gif http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.gif That Norman invasion was a big deal.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    To a certain extent, although that’s a large simplification. There’s a lot more cross-pollination between European languages than on that diagram, most obviously with English nouns being adopted (le weekend, etc) but also in slightly more unexpected ways. For example, Swedish has a fair amount of French vocabulary (’glass’ for ice-cream when all other Nordic languages use ‘is’) because of a desire to integrate with the French court (which lead to Carl ‘Jean-Baptiste’ XIV Johan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XIV_John_of_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XIV_John_of_Sweden ).
  - oblio 8y ago
    Heh. "Rumanian" has 2 roots on that list: proto-Indoeuropean and Latin. In reality, lexical analysis of Romanian shows that it has the following roots: * pre-Indoeuropean (some words with unknown origins, just a handful, but still) * proto-Indoeuropean (another small bunch of words) * Dacian/Thracian (original Indoeuropeans to settle the region; another somewhat small contribution) * Latin (40% but basically the core vocabulary) * Slavic (30%, especially nouns, but rarely verbs) * French (around 20%, imports from the late 18th century onward) * German, Turkish, Hungarian, English, etc. So, you were saying? :) Even if you disregard the minor contributions, there's 2 prehistoric origins (pre-Indoeuropean and proto-Indoeuropean), 2 ancient origins (Dacian and Latin), 1 major medieval influence (Slavic) and 1 major modern influence (French). The European continent had waaaay more invasions than the British Isles, don't forget that ;)
  - empath75 8y ago
    If anything that understates it because there were successive invasions of vikings and Norse after the initial settlement and then a huge second influx of Greek and Latin roots in the early modern period as scholars reintroduced them.
tomcam 8y ago
Absolutely. This is no consolation to non-native (and most native) students, however.
80386 8y ago
It's not so much an issue of parentage as an issue of orthography. Loanwords are often spelled in accordance with the orthographic rules of the source language, and words are generally not respelled to indicate changes in pronunciation. This is fairly unusual within Europe, but not so much in Asia -- Thai and Burmese have large numbers of loans that I don't think were respelled. And then there's Japanese.

Those bugs and inconsistencies are really just manifestations of the complicated history of the language. There are few languages which have as many diverse parent languages as English has.

oblio 8y ago

No offense, but are you sure about that or are you monolingual? You'd be surprised what rich history even obscure languages have.

psergeant 8y ago
This is largely true of European languages: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.gif http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.gif That Norman invasion was a big deal.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  To a certain extent, although that’s a large simplification. There’s a lot more cross-pollination between European languages than on that diagram, most obviously with English nouns being adopted (le weekend, etc) but also in slightly more unexpected ways. For example, Swedish has a fair amount of French vocabulary (’glass’ for ice-cream when all other Nordic languages use ‘is’) because of a desire to integrate with the French court (which lead to Carl ‘Jean-Baptiste’ XIV Johan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XIV_John_of_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XIV_John_of_Sweden ).
- oblio 8y ago
  Heh. "Rumanian" has 2 roots on that list: proto-Indoeuropean and Latin. In reality, lexical analysis of Romanian shows that it has the following roots: * pre-Indoeuropean (some words with unknown origins, just a handful, but still) * proto-Indoeuropean (another small bunch of words) * Dacian/Thracian (original Indoeuropeans to settle the region; another somewhat small contribution) * Latin (40% but basically the core vocabulary) * Slavic (30%, especially nouns, but rarely verbs) * French (around 20%, imports from the late 18th century onward) * German, Turkish, Hungarian, English, etc. So, you were saying? :) Even if you disregard the minor contributions, there's 2 prehistoric origins (pre-Indoeuropean and proto-Indoeuropean), 2 ancient origins (Dacian and Latin), 1 major medieval influence (Slavic) and 1 major modern influence (French). The European continent had waaaay more invasions than the British Isles, don't forget that ;)
- empath75 8y ago
  If anything that understates it because there were successive invasions of vikings and Norse after the initial settlement and then a huge second influx of Greek and Latin roots in the early modern period as scholars reintroduced them.

tomcam 8y ago

Absolutely. This is no consolation to non-native (and most native) students, however.

80386 8y ago

It's not so much an issue of parentage as an issue of orthography. Loanwords are often spelled in accordance with the orthographic rules of the source language, and words are generally not respelled to indicate changes in pronunciation. This is fairly unusual within Europe, but not so much in Asia -- Thai and Burmese have large numbers of loans that I don't think were respelled. And then there's Japanese.