9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 9 of 9 02 January 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged |
Papashaw1 wrote:
Or the relative lack of complexity? All those things I listed above
can't be done in English but can be done in other
Germanic languages. Dutch also lost their equivalent of tharf, I think English has
expanded the number of pseudo
modals (supposed to, about to, have to, be able to, want to, had better/best/rather) when
compared to other
Germanic languages. |
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Tharf survived as "durven" in Dutch, but it underwent semantic drift and now means "to
dare". For to be able to Dutch uses "kunnen" and for be allowed to we use "mogen"
(cognate to English "may").
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