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Is the national language in your country English, or another language?

by akie 7y ago

toxik 7y ago
It is a different language, notably it's a northern Germanic language so the compatibility is fairly high. It also isn't mutually intelligible with English at all. I should maybe just say it's Swedish.
- gerdesj 7y ago
  English started out life as a Germanic language but has changed somewhat over the last 1500 years. For example scir gerefe which becomes shire reeve and eventually sheriff. Yes, Rosco P Coltrane and company have a job title that is over 1500 years old. A shire is roughly a county in modern terms. For example Devonshire, Lanarkshire, Sir Fynwy etc in Britain. That last is Welsh. Look at words like day, tag, dag and so on in the various Germanic languages. When you see that in English, the letter g morphed into y in a lot of words, it makes sense and of course we have to allow for some rather random spelling in the past and a great vowel shift or two. I live in Yeovil which was recorded as gifle (a fork in a river) in about 900. The nearby river Yeo seems to be named after the town which is named for its location on a feature of the river ... These islands from 55 BC to 1066 AD became a revolving door to various invasions, some of which included Swedes and Danes generally as vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Italians (Romans) and any other tom, dick or harry that could find a boat and fancied duffing up a few Britons and settling down and raise a few apples and chickens! When the Northmen - Norsemen - Normans ie Duke William of Normandy turned up in 1066 they eventually did the job properly and ... eventually became English themselves and simply gave the language a bit of a twist. For example we have both Saxon and Frankish (French) words for many things eg meat: cow and beef, sheep and mutton, chicken and errr chicken, pig and pork. I think that because English has had so many influences in the past that it has developed a certain flexibility that many languages do not. It is also a relatively new language - only 1500 years old! I learned Latin at school for several years, along with French and lived in Germany for 10 years (off and on). English can be warped and twisted and generally abused and yet the meaning remains intact better than some other languages. The ultimate irony here is that I am talking about the new kid language on the block on HN!

Is the national language in your country English, or another language?

by akie 7y ago

Is the national language in your country English, or another language?

It is a different language, notably it's a northern Germanic language so the compatibility is fairly high. It also isn't mutually intelligible with English at all. I should maybe just say it's Swedish.

gerdesj 7y ago
English started out life as a Germanic language but has changed somewhat over the last 1500 years. For example scir gerefe which becomes shire reeve and eventually sheriff. Yes, Rosco P Coltrane and company have a job title that is over 1500 years old. A shire is roughly a county in modern terms. For example Devonshire, Lanarkshire, Sir Fynwy etc in Britain. That last is Welsh. Look at words like day, tag, dag and so on in the various Germanic languages. When you see that in English, the letter g morphed into y in a lot of words, it makes sense and of course we have to allow for some rather random spelling in the past and a great vowel shift or two. I live in Yeovil which was recorded as gifle (a fork in a river) in about 900. The nearby river Yeo seems to be named after the town which is named for its location on a feature of the river ... These islands from 55 BC to 1066 AD became a revolving door to various invasions, some of which included Swedes and Danes generally as vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Italians (Romans) and any other tom, dick or harry that could find a boat and fancied duffing up a few Britons and settling down and raise a few apples and chickens! When the Northmen - Norsemen - Normans ie Duke William of Normandy turned up in 1066 they eventually did the job properly and ... eventually became English themselves and simply gave the language a bit of a twist. For example we have both Saxon and Frankish (French) words for many things eg meat: cow and beef, sheep and mutton, chicken and errr chicken, pig and pork. I think that because English has had so many influences in the past that it has developed a certain flexibility that many languages do not. It is also a relatively new language - only 1500 years old! I learned Latin at school for several years, along with French and lived in Germany for 10 years (off and on). English can be warped and twisted and generally abused and yet the meaning remains intact better than some other languages. The ultimate irony here is that I am talking about the new kid language on the block on HN!