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"English isn’t a dialect of French. The grammatical structure of English is almost entirely Germanic and no amount of sophistry can change that." It might be
by weinzierl 1y ago
"English isn’t a dialect of French. The grammatical structure of English is almost entirely Germanic and no amount of sophistry can change that."
It might be seen as a dialect of German but with the heavy influence English had on the German language in the past decades it's more that German is like an English dialect now.
- kelipso 1y agoI wouldn’t say historically a dialect of German. English and German are both Germanic languages, so closely related languages not dialects of either.
- weinzierl 1y agoYou are right, of course. My point was more that German nowadays borrows more from English than vice versa. I should not have written "historically" (and have deleted it since), because that is obviously wrong. What I meant to say is that over time the direction of influence switched around.
- z500 1y agoExcept it didn't get those Germanic qualities by borrowing them from German, it got them by shared heritage.
- nkrisc 1y agoGerman and English are related, but not that closely. The Germanic language groups are not the same as German the (modern) language. English is more closely related to Frisian than German.
- weinzierl 1y agoYou are right, see my comment to kelipso.