Re: Languages in Europe - Who understands what ?

From: ?ystein (oystein_at_nettkjenning.com)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: 28 Nov 2004 15:20:00 -0800

"Frank F. Matthews" <frankfmatthews@houston.rr.com> wrote in message news:<zaaqd.47147$KQ2.37895@fe2.texas.rr.com>...
> nospam wrote:
>
> >>I simply cannot see that. There is little connection between English and
> >>German today. As far as I can tell the Germanic designation is based
> >>completely on historical information and has little relationship to the
> >>current structure of the languages.
> >
> > Sorry bub, you are wrong. Try taking a German or French class.
> > English has borrowed quite a bit from both languages. Except for
> > those damned der/die/das (and related) articles, German is not too
> > difficult for English speakers to learn due to the similarity.
> >
>
> Perhaps for you. I found French much easier and, in many ways, more
> like English. The French vocabulary also helped a great deal for Russian.

You make this sound like a matter of personal taste. The origins of
the English language is very well documented scientificly.

The origin of English comes from the Anglo Saxians that imigrated to
what is today Britain from what is today Sothern Mainland og Denmark
and nothern Germany and continued by theinfluence of Viking invations
(read: the Scandinavians).

Then there has been a great influence of invations from the south,
first the Romans, then the Normannians (is that the right word in
English?)

Today the structure is Germanic, but English often has a double set of
glossary, one Germanic word and one Roman. Freedom and Liberty is one
exsample (guess what Freiheit in German, frihed in Danish, Frihet or
Fridom in Norwegain (Bokmål and Nynorsk) means.

I am Norwegian, I have lived in Denmark and traveled a lot in
Northumbria and Scotland. It is facinating to hear how Danish the
accent of the English dialect the speak in those areas sounds. The
glossary are closer to the Scandinavian languages too. They say bairns
instead of Children (barn in Norwegain, børn in Danish), to kenn
instead of to know (at kenne in Danish, å kjenne in Norwegian) etc.
This is very sensible, because the Romans only got as far north as
outside Newcastle u.t. I also find it interesting that the destinction
between "may" and "can" in English have the same meaning and almost
the same spelling as in Danish "maa" and "kan", while German and
Norwegian also have similar written words, but theese words have less
corresponding meanings.

Jan

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