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I say this as a native English speaker… but I speak South African English (or something similar), and I’ve heard that this expression is due to Afrikaans influe
by bradrn 2y ago
I say this as a native English speaker… but I speak South African English (or something similar), and I’ve heard that this expression is due to Afrikaans influence!
- stavros 2y agoThat's probably because Afrikaans is Dutch, and Dutch is German.
- bradrn 2y agoWell, ‘is’ isn’t quite the right word… but they’re all closely related languages, yes, which is why I mentioned it.
- stavros 2y agoYep, I was being liberal with "is" there, but hopefully the point came across.
- jessekv 2y agoDutch is German, and English is French.
- stavros 2y agoEnglish is French and German.
- jessekv 2y agoAnd therefore, Dutch is English :D
- stavros 2y agoNo, English and Dutch are distant cousins.
- jessekv 2y agoHaha ok- but then so is German. Dutch has Low Franconian origins, and the more you learn about it, the weirder it gets. Also, it did not have the consonant shift- e.g. water (en) vs water (nl) vs wasser (de). That said, after centuries of relative stability, modern Dutch is absorbing English words as fast as it can. Who knows if it is still recognisable in 50 years.
- stavros 2y agoI don't know, I think maybe Dutch and German are more estranged siblings. English is a weird case because the German part is very German, but then the non-German part is pretty big!
- yapyap 2y agoAfrikaans is Dutch yes, Dutch is not German. Learn your languages before spreading unwise nonsense on the internet.
- carlmr 2y agoNot OP here. You're right, but you could be more charitable in your reading of the previous comment. While it's wrong at the micro level it's not even nonsense on the macro level. Dutch and German are at the very least very related. They share a lot of constructs and words. There's no reason to be so disrespectful.