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Wasn't it said that English isn't a language, but a bunch of midget dialects in an overcoat who trap nice languages in alleys, beat them, and rifle their pocket
by Endy 7y ago
Wasn't it said that English isn't a language, but a bunch of midget dialects in an overcoat who trap nice languages in alleys, beat them, and rifle their pockets for loose grammar?
- umanwizard 7y agoActually the presence of non-Anglo-Saxon vocabulary in English is not because of English “stealing” anything, but because England was colonized and ruled by non-English-speaking people for centuries. I.e. saying English stole from French is a bit like saying Hindi, Irish, or Navajo stole from English. Gets the power relations completely backwards.
- empath75 7y agoThat applies to basically French and Norse loan words from the Middle English period. It doesn’t apply to the large number of Latin and Greek loanwords or anything more recent.
- umanwizard 7y agoWell, Latin was the lingua franca in Europe for a very, very long time. So it's a bit like how languages all over the world now have English loanwords. Still not because of English "stealing" anything. You could make a case for the validity of this quip for more recent loanwords, but there are relatively few of those compared to French, Norse, and Latin.