3 ms·

English grammar has diverged a lot from the other Germanic languages, and its vocabulary is about 50/50 Germanic/Romance. And maybe things are different for Spa

by gpvos 7y ago

English grammar has diverged a lot from the other Germanic languages, and its vocabulary is about 50/50 Germanic/Romance. And maybe things are different for Spanish and Italian, but French has had a huge Germanic influence (it is even named after the Franks that ruled it for a long time); e.g., there are many turns of phrase that you can translate word for word.

davidw 7y ago
Exactly; what English shares with German is mostly words from a small village in the year 1000. You can talk about water, bread, beer and brothers, but anything more complex is out of the question. "Complex" and "question" are both latin-origin words for instance. So are "instance" and "origin". I had a vastly easier time learning Italian than German as a native English speaker. Of course there were confounding variables, but I just found Italian to have a lot more that I could latch on to in the modern world.
- dfawcus 7y ago
  'understand' is from German, 'comprehend' is from French. We get 'Fort' from French, but the equivalent concept 'Stronghold' has Germanic root words and construction. What does that prove? Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic.
  - davidw 7y ago
    "Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic." Of those words, the ones with latin origins are: * central * point * remains * core * language * Germanic I guess you can run some statistics on all this, but subjectively, to me, Italian felt much easier to learn because much if it - including the grammar - felt more familiar than German.
    - dfawcus 7y ago
      That is largely down to the choice of multiple words to express similar concepts in English (due to its mongrel roots), and those having subtly different meanings, hence the high information density in English. So in one having access to an expansive enough vocabulary, one will often use fewer of the core words. Partially as a way to remove ambiguity in written English (which can be very difficult), partially to write a shorter sentence than would be the case using Germanic root words alone. For the second phrase you quoted, I could have written 'the heart of the tongue', but that could be read to imply a different meaning.
    - jackjeff 7y ago
      For a native English speaker, Italian is easier to learn than German according to the Foreign Service Institute. https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/ https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/languag...
- dfawcus 7y ago
  I would say that anything harder is not beyond the ask. It is just that our word list is now bigger, meanings have split, and we often use the newer words. We can still say and ask the same things with the old words, but the extra vocabulary makes for richer discourse; and we're now more used to those choices. In a situation where brevity and clarity is necessary (e.g. dangerous environments, modern warfare), the language quickly strips itself to its core - without having to think about it. Even "mind the gap".

by gpvos 7y ago

davidw 7y ago

Exactly; what English shares with German is mostly words from a small village in the year 1000. You can talk about water, bread, beer and brothers, but anything more complex is out of the question. "Complex" and "question" are both latin-origin words for instance. So are "instance" and "origin". I had a vastly easier time learning Italian than German as a native English speaker. Of course there were confounding variables, but I just found Italian to have a lot more that I could latch on to in the modern world.

dfawcus 7y ago
'understand' is from German, 'comprehend' is from French. We get 'Fort' from French, but the equivalent concept 'Stronghold' has Germanic root words and construction. What does that prove? Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic.
- davidw 7y ago
  "Yet your central point remains, the core of the language is Germanic." Of those words, the ones with latin origins are: * central * point * remains * core * language * Germanic I guess you can run some statistics on all this, but subjectively, to me, Italian felt much easier to learn because much if it - including the grammar - felt more familiar than German.
  - dfawcus 7y ago
    That is largely down to the choice of multiple words to express similar concepts in English (due to its mongrel roots), and those having subtly different meanings, hence the high information density in English. So in one having access to an expansive enough vocabulary, one will often use fewer of the core words. Partially as a way to remove ambiguity in written English (which can be very difficult), partially to write a shorter sentence than would be the case using Germanic root words alone. For the second phrase you quoted, I could have written 'the heart of the tongue', but that could be read to imply a different meaning.
  - jackjeff 7y ago
    For a native English speaker, Italian is easier to learn than German according to the Foreign Service Institute. https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/ https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/languag...
dfawcus 7y ago
I would say that anything harder is not beyond the ask. It is just that our word list is now bigger, meanings have split, and we often use the newer words. We can still say and ask the same things with the old words, but the extra vocabulary makes for richer discourse; and we're now more used to those choices. In a situation where brevity and clarity is necessary (e.g. dangerous environments, modern warfare), the language quickly strips itself to its core - without having to think about it. Even "mind the gap".