4 ms·

Hamburger is "from Hamburg", not "made from ham", and is borrowed from German. "Frankfurter" (from Frankfurt) and "Wiener" (from Vienna, Wien, in German) have

by wheels 5y ago

Hamburger is "from Hamburg", not "made from ham", and is borrowed from German. "Frankfurter" (from Frankfurt) and "Wiener" (from Vienna, Wien, in German) have the same etymology. All languages have the sort of contradictions that are pointing out there, and English isn't especially bad (in fact, most of the examples there are directly inherited from German). Most of the difficult things in English come from it being a Germanic language with a bunch of French bolted onto it. That's why its spelling is so atrocious and there are a lot of duplicated words with very similar meanings in common use. But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language. (I've occasionally heard that Swedish is the closest in simplicity, also being a Germanic language that's dropped most of the complexity, but isn't quite as inundated with loanwords.) Aside from a couple of concepts (the gerund, specifically, which isn't common in some European language families), most grammatical structures in English have direct equivalents in all other European languages. However, going the other way is difficult: most European languages have formal and informal voices, gendered nouns, some have irregular plurals (German, notably), subtler and more verb tenses (Romance languages), and complex case structures (German and even worse, Slavic languages). If you're a native English speaker that doesn't know what cases are, for example the word for "the" in German changes based on which of the three genders the noun is and how it's used. It could be "die", "der", "das", "den", "dem" or "des", and the endings of words that need to be in agreement with it change as well. The main reason English became the modern lingua franca is the British Empire, but it does help that it's also a very easy language.

schoen 5y ago
> But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language. The deceptive thing, though, is compound tenses and phrasal verbs; in both cases you express a meaning with multiple words that couldn't have been predicted from the meanings of the constituent words alone. These are both pervasive in English and both very tricky for learners, but they often don't feel like "grammar" because they're not inflectional. (Well, phrasal verbs are more like lexicon.)
- wheels 5y ago
  Which European languages don't have compound verb tenses? All of the four I'm reasonably familiar with do. Germanic languages lean on them more than Romance languages (which have a wider breadth of non-complex tenses), but the concept isn't unfamiliar. Again, aside from the gerund, there's an almost one-to-one mapping in usage between English and German tenses. I don't speak any other Germanic languages than those two, but I'd assume that to be more broadly true in that family.
  - schoen 5y ago
    I have the impression that English compound tenses and their nuances are harder than other European languages', although other languages definitely do have them. I eat breakfast I am eating breakfast I ate breakfast I was eating breakfast I have eaten breakfast I have been eating breakfast I had eaten breakfast I had been eating breakfast I would eat breakfast I would be eating breakfast I would have eaten breakfast I would have been eating breakfast I will eat breakfast I am going to eat breakfast I will be eating breakfast I am going to be eating breakfast I will have eaten breakfast I am going to have eaten breakfast I can't think of another European language that would idiomatically use (or maybe even require) quite this range of constructions.
jtsuken 5y ago
"complex case structures" are a useful tool in most languages (German to a lesser extent). They allow you to reshuffle the words in a sentence e.g. "the boat carries the car" without disrupting its meaning.
etripe 5y ago
> I've occasionally heard that Swedish is the closest in simplicity Speaking English and Swedish fluently, I'd say Swedish (and Danish/Norwegian) is simpler grammatically, as it just has the one conjugation per tense regardless of the personal pronoun: I are, you are, we are (är). I were, she were, you were, we were (var). This is why you'll hear Swedes/Scandinavians make typical mistakes like "we was". As an aside, it also seems to me like Swedish culture is more monolithic/conformist and contains a small set of really common idioms and phrases that get you a long way towards being conversational. It shares that aspect with Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands, as opposed to Dutch in Belgium. > English became the modern lingua franca As a second language speaker, I can't help but think poor English is the lingua franca. Not to mention lots of couleur locale in the form of accents.

by wheels 5y ago

schoen 5y ago

> But, blessedly, English does have the simplest grammar of probably any European language. The deceptive thing, though, is compound tenses and phrasal verbs; in both cases you express a meaning with multiple words that couldn't have been predicted from the meanings of the constituent words alone. These are both pervasive in English and both very tricky for learners, but they often don't feel like "grammar" because they're not inflectional. (Well, phrasal verbs are more like lexicon.)

wheels 5y ago
Which European languages don't have compound verb tenses? All of the four I'm reasonably familiar with do. Germanic languages lean on them more than Romance languages (which have a wider breadth of non-complex tenses), but the concept isn't unfamiliar. Again, aside from the gerund, there's an almost one-to-one mapping in usage between English and German tenses. I don't speak any other Germanic languages than those two, but I'd assume that to be more broadly true in that family.
- schoen 5y ago
  I have the impression that English compound tenses and their nuances are harder than other European languages', although other languages definitely do have them. I eat breakfast I am eating breakfast I ate breakfast I was eating breakfast I have eaten breakfast I have been eating breakfast I had eaten breakfast I had been eating breakfast I would eat breakfast I would be eating breakfast I would have eaten breakfast I would have been eating breakfast I will eat breakfast I am going to eat breakfast I will be eating breakfast I am going to be eating breakfast I will have eaten breakfast I am going to have eaten breakfast I can't think of another European language that would idiomatically use (or maybe even require) quite this range of constructions.

jtsuken 5y ago

"complex case structures" are a useful tool in most languages (German to a lesser extent). They allow you to reshuffle the words in a sentence e.g. "the boat carries the car" without disrupting its meaning.

etripe 5y ago

> I've occasionally heard that Swedish is the closest in simplicity Speaking English and Swedish fluently, I'd say Swedish (and Danish/Norwegian) is simpler grammatically, as it just has the one conjugation per tense regardless of the personal pronoun: I are, you are, we are (är). I were, she were, you were, we were (var). This is why you'll hear Swedes/Scandinavians make typical mistakes like "we was". As an aside, it also seems to me like Swedish culture is more monolithic/conformist and contains a small set of really common idioms and phrases that get you a long way towards being conversational. It shares that aspect with Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands, as opposed to Dutch in Belgium. > English became the modern lingua franca As a second language speaker, I can't help but think poor English is the lingua franca. Not to mention lots of couleur locale in the form of accents.