Roots of English language

From: Anti-imperialist Fighter (ai_at_anti-imperialist.net)
Date: 09/08/04 

Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 02:24:42 -0700

Zim wrote:
>
> "Anti-imperialist Fighter" <ai@anti-imperialist.net> wrote...
> > Linguist speaking: English is a Germanic language. Old English was the
> > product of the languages of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in northern
> > Germany and southern Denmark and eastern Netherlands. English is
> > *related* to German, and Dutch, and Danish, and Swedish, and especially
> > Frisian (straight up from Old Saxon). Approximately 1/2 of English is
> > French *borrowings* or loan words that went in during the rule of Norman
> > Kings from 1066? to 1500?, during which time tons of French language
> > poured into English, along with lots of Latin loans. The French also
> > brought a lot of good cooking to the Isle, too. ;)
>
> I grew up around Spanish and know quite a bit and took 2 years of German in
> high school. I'll admit that English has some grammatical resemblance to
> German, but overall I think the majority of its vocabulary resembles
> Spanish.

That's the Latin/French you are seeing there. A lot of the
scientific/medical, etc. terms. Actually the roots are about even
between German and French I think, and then some Latin, and then a
spinkling of a ton of other loans too - run "amok" - Tagalog I think.
"imbroglio" - Italian. Coyote, tomato = Aztec. Actually, there are
about a ton of them, esp Greek, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Spanish loans.

  But English truly is unique, a language completely unto its own,
> and I think it has the largest vocabulary of any language on earth.

Actually we linguists think it is sort of sinister cuz it is
Microsoft-like in trying to assimilate the world to its Borgness.

  I
> just love English's large vocabulary and ability to adopt words from any
> other language and even invent them when necessary.

It's cool, there is usually a word for something. What is weird though
if you study Linguistics is there are some concepts we don't have
English words for.

 I enjoy the way
> Spanish sounds, but its vocabulary is much more limited than English - for
> example, AFAIK Spanish has only one word, "mal", to use to describe either
> bad or evil.

I think "evil" is a Spanish word.

  German is very hard to pronounce and just sounds sinister.

It's guttural.

> Like Italian, Spanish is very beautiful when sung. I don't know how it
> might sound to non-European ears, but I don't think English sounds a bit
> like German.

None of us has any idea of what our native language sounds like to
another speaker, which is a weird concept right there.

  But I do remember hearing Dutch being played on a background
> television set in a movie I saw, and if you're not listening closely it
> does sound quite a bit like English, at least in its rhythm.

As a matter of fact, no other language sounds more like English,
although look at a Bergman movie sometime to see how Swedish sounds = a
lot like English too. Dutch is actually a really beautiful language -
it sounds like German, Italian and French together. I hear it from time
to time.

   And for those
> speaking Spanish, they always have a way of making whatever they're saying
> sound like the most important thing in the world, even if they're reciting
> a telephone book.

They are rather emotional people. :) Try a relationship with a Latin
woman sometime. On second thought, maybe not. :)

The most beautiful sexy incredible Spanish I ever heard was Bogotan
Colombian Spanish. It is absolutely out of this world and it is really
divergent. The Spanish of Catalan, Spain is also very odd. Argentina
too. You often don't think they are speaking Spanish! (Due to accent). 

-- 
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