5 ms·

Is English just badly pronounced French [video]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40495393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40495393

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.html https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.h... If so it is equally badly spelled German.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  *spelt.
  - philshem 2y ago
    Nope. https://english.stackexchange.com/a/5714/ https://english.stackexchange.com/a/5714/
    - whatshisface 2y ago
      Long after the sword was smelt In foreign lands did wielder welt. The script upon the scabbard belt Thereupon became misspelt.
      - 73kl4453dz 2y ago
        A missing n?
    - xanderlewis 2y ago
      It was a lighthearted joke.
  - ndileas 2y ago
    personally I prefer wheat.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    "Spelled" is a perfectly cromulent word in UK English (the best English).
    - walthamstow 2y ago
      Interesting. I thought spelt and learnt were UK English.
      - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
        They are UK English, but "spelled" and "learned" are in common usage too. I wouldn't consider it to be an Americanism if I read/heard those versions (I'm English, myself).
- vidarh 2y ago
  German is badly spelt German. Damn High German consonant shift. (E.g.compare ship, schip, Schip, skib, skip vs. Schiff, or day, dag, Dag, dag, vs. Tag etc. - we'd have a far neater, gradual Germanic transition around the North Sea if Low German had "won".
  - kiliantics 2y ago
    The book "fom winde ferfeelt" is basically a book-length version of the joke, written by a brazilian who was frustrated with the inconsistency in the rules of the German language.
theodric 2y ago
With 40%+ Germanic vocabulary (per Braudel), is French rather a Germanic creole?
- bonzini 2y ago
  Is that the vocabulary of Germanic origin and imported from Germanic, or is it just the part of PIE that has not diverged between Latin and Germanic languages?
  - biorach 2y ago
    Mostly the former. Much of what is now France was dominated by speakers of Germanic languages after the fall of the Roman empire. They were eventually assimilated but left a linguistic legacy.
LeonB 2y ago
Here is a different video by the same person (the `robWords` channel) “How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ I learned a lot from this and continue to find words that these lessons apply to.
- rahen 2y ago
  Brilliant video. I would hardly have seen the connection between 'guêpe' and 'wasp' before.
kreyenborgi 2y ago
"that strategy of borrowing a word but giving it a slightly narrower meaning" – I think this happens with most borrowing, into any language. E.g. "opsjon" in Norwegian is from "option" but only means stock/legal options, never used in the common meaning of "choices". (And the video's own example with "les peoples".) But my favorite example is when going into English from Norse, "fjord" has a quite narrow meaning in English, but must have been much broader in Norse when you look at Limfjorden in flat Denmark (more of a sound than a fjord) and Tunhovdfjorden (even Norwegians would think of this as a lake these days)
- agumonkey 2y ago
  this kind of crippled borrowing seems universal though, you only complement your own language where you have a hole
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Well of course, fjords should have a narrow meaning. That's kind of what separates them from bays isn't it?
  - vidarh 2y ago
    The Norwegian words for bay - like vik, bukt, does not necessarily imply broad or open. The main distinction appear to be length. Bukt or gulf are the words mostly use for major bays, but bukt in particular can also be used for very short, narrow inlets, while fjords are used for some of our largest bays. The Oslo fjord for example, is quite broad and open for most of its length. Most of the smaller bays in the fjord are bukter, but the largest, longest of them are also named fjords.
  - atombender 2y ago
    Not really. We have some really wide fjords in Norway; Sognefjorden is 4.5 km wide at its widest. A fjord is technically any body of water carved out by glaciers (inland lakes or coast inlets), but the word fjord is used pretty indiscriminately; lots of fjords are not glacial in origin.
agumonkey 2y ago
The bit about non rhyming poetry forms makes me wonder how brit-pop would have sounded without those "french" structures.
- mauvehaus 2y ago
  Old English poetry tends to have commonality at the beginnings of words (e.g. alliteration) rather than rhyming at the ends of words. Or so I remember from The History of English Podcast. It's now 180 episodes in and talking about Shakespeare. Old English was some episodes back, as you might imagine. As with many others posting here IANALinguist.
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    thanks
cryptonector 2y ago
French is just badly pronounced Latin/Italian. Seriously, French is just a very crassified Romance language. As a near-native French speaker I was shocked one time in Paris at a restaurant where our server was from Italy and pronounce every letter in every French word and I still understood him. Dropping 's's (and leaving behind a circumflex to remind one of the dropped 's')? That's a pretty crass evolution (but see the note at the bottom). Dropping trailing letters in words? Same thing. I understand that "oc" is really the Latin "hoc", meaning "this", and that "oui" is just an evolution -a shortening- of "hoc hic" ("this that"). "Oi" (pronounced "wah" in English) is just a vowel shift. French is often treated as a high-class language, so I say 'crass' mainly to remind people that the evolution of French was really the result of every day people not treating it like a dead language to be preserved.
- trealira 2y ago
  You're totally right, but just a minor correction: the word oui comes from oïl, which was the way to say "yes" in a family of languages called the langues d'oïl.[1] The word oïl is a shortened form of hoc ille in Latin. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Oh thank you for that! I had wondered.
vincent-manis 2y ago
I used to joke with a friend of mine who was of Netherlands descent by saying that Dutch is misspelled English. (And, yes, I'm aware of the several rounds of orthographic reforms that Dutch has experienced.)

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.html https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.h... If so it is equally badly spelled German.

xanderlewis 2y ago
*spelt.
- philshem 2y ago
  Nope. https://english.stackexchange.com/a/5714/ https://english.stackexchange.com/a/5714/
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Long after the sword was smelt In foreign lands did wielder welt. The script upon the scabbard belt Thereupon became misspelt.
    - 73kl4453dz 2y ago
      A missing n?
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    It was a lighthearted joke.
- ndileas 2y ago
  personally I prefer wheat.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  "Spelled" is a perfectly cromulent word in UK English (the best English).
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    Interesting. I thought spelt and learnt were UK English.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      They are UK English, but "spelled" and "learned" are in common usage too. I wouldn't consider it to be an Americanism if I read/heard those versions (I'm English, myself).
vidarh 2y ago
German is badly spelt German. Damn High German consonant shift. (E.g.compare ship, schip, Schip, skib, skip vs. Schiff, or day, dag, Dag, dag, vs. Tag etc. - we'd have a far neater, gradual Germanic transition around the North Sea if Low German had "won".
- kiliantics 2y ago
  The book "fom winde ferfeelt" is basically a book-length version of the joke, written by a brazilian who was frustrated with the inconsistency in the rules of the German language.

theodric 2y ago

With 40%+ Germanic vocabulary (per Braudel), is French rather a Germanic creole?

bonzini 2y ago
Is that the vocabulary of Germanic origin and imported from Germanic, or is it just the part of PIE that has not diverged between Latin and Germanic languages?
- biorach 2y ago
  Mostly the former. Much of what is now France was dominated by speakers of Germanic languages after the fall of the Roman empire. They were eventually assimilated but left a linguistic legacy.

LeonB 2y ago

Here is a different video by the same person (the `robWords` channel) “How to translate French words WITHOUT KNOWING FRENCH (3 clever tricks)” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGaA3PC9tQ I learned a lot from this and continue to find words that these lessons apply to.

rahen 2y ago
Brilliant video. I would hardly have seen the connection between 'guêpe' and 'wasp' before.

kreyenborgi 2y ago

"that strategy of borrowing a word but giving it a slightly narrower meaning" – I think this happens with most borrowing, into any language. E.g. "opsjon" in Norwegian is from "option" but only means stock/legal options, never used in the common meaning of "choices". (And the video's own example with "les peoples".) But my favorite example is when going into English from Norse, "fjord" has a quite narrow meaning in English, but must have been much broader in Norse when you look at Limfjorden in flat Denmark (more of a sound than a fjord) and Tunhovdfjorden (even Norwegians would think of this as a lake these days)

agumonkey 2y ago
this kind of crippled borrowing seems universal though, you only complement your own language where you have a hole
readthenotes1 2y ago
Well of course, fjords should have a narrow meaning. That's kind of what separates them from bays isn't it?
- vidarh 2y ago
  The Norwegian words for bay - like vik, bukt, does not necessarily imply broad or open. The main distinction appear to be length. Bukt or gulf are the words mostly use for major bays, but bukt in particular can also be used for very short, narrow inlets, while fjords are used for some of our largest bays. The Oslo fjord for example, is quite broad and open for most of its length. Most of the smaller bays in the fjord are bukter, but the largest, longest of them are also named fjords.
- atombender 2y ago
  Not really. We have some really wide fjords in Norway; Sognefjorden is 4.5 km wide at its widest. A fjord is technically any body of water carved out by glaciers (inland lakes or coast inlets), but the word fjord is used pretty indiscriminately; lots of fjords are not glacial in origin.

agumonkey 2y ago

The bit about non rhyming poetry forms makes me wonder how brit-pop would have sounded without those "french" structures.

mauvehaus 2y ago
Old English poetry tends to have commonality at the beginnings of words (e.g. alliteration) rather than rhyming at the ends of words. Or so I remember from The History of English Podcast. It's now 180 episodes in and talking about Shakespeare. Old English was some episodes back, as you might imagine. As with many others posting here IANALinguist.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  thanks

cryptonector 2y ago

French is just badly pronounced Latin/Italian. Seriously, French is just a very crassified Romance language. As a near-native French speaker I was shocked one time in Paris at a restaurant where our server was from Italy and pronounce every letter in every French word and I still understood him. Dropping 's's (and leaving behind a circumflex to remind one of the dropped 's')? That's a pretty crass evolution (but see the note at the bottom). Dropping trailing letters in words? Same thing. I understand that "oc" is really the Latin "hoc", meaning "this", and that "oui" is just an evolution -a shortening- of "hoc hic" ("this that"). "Oi" (pronounced "wah" in English) is just a vowel shift. French is often treated as a high-class language, so I say 'crass' mainly to remind people that the evolution of French was really the result of every day people not treating it like a dead language to be preserved.

trealira 2y ago
You're totally right, but just a minor correction: the word oui comes from oïl, which was the way to say "yes" in a family of languages called the langues d'oïl.[1] The word oïl is a shortened form of hoc ille in Latin. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Oh thank you for that! I had wondered.

vincent-manis 2y ago

I used to joke with a friend of mine who was of Netherlands descent by saying that Dutch is misspelled English. (And, yes, I'm aware of the several rounds of orthographic reforms that Dutch has experienced.)