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Why English is hard to learn | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4514 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 81 of 84 26 July 2012 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, as far as I know, the only contribution of the Phoenicians was the use of their adapted alphabet. It's said that they sailed as far as England, but that would've been centuries before Rome even dreamed of setting foot there.
No, I don't believe all of those cultures ever fully conquered England, nor compelled every citizen to speak a new language. Even the Normans didn't exactly replace English with their own tongue, and it took centuries to unite the United Kingdom. Even today, Irish and Welsh remain alive. It's the intermingling of so many competing language branches in such a confined space that, I believe, smoothed off some of their features and simplified the final product (at least in some ways). The British Isles are not alone in being bumped up against different languages, I know. It's just an observation of mine. :) Edited by Hertz on 26 July 2012 at 5:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 82 of 84 26 July 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
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There is very little 'celtic' linguistic influence on the English language and most
words (like whiskey, claymore, sporran) came into English in the early modern period or later. Although I can't really accept it as true, the proto-English theory - http://www.proto- english.org - does raise some interesting questions about the reasons why the celtic languages of Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland, etc. have had so little impact on English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4514 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 83 of 84 26 July 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
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That's a fascinating theory. If there is merit to the idea that the Celtic culture was not unified by a single language, that could create the same kind of linguistic crossroads that I have in mind: a multitude of people with various native languages, each speaking some kind of lingua franca as a second language.
It's the same kind of thing you might see in a classroom where everybody speaks the same second language but nobody speaks it well. Verbs get simplified, tenses get mixed up or blended, and gender is haphazard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 84 of 84 26 July 2012 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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If your theory were true, why haven't Welsh and Gaelic been watered down? You must admit they have some very peculiar grammatical features that are not always easy to grasp (declension, lenition, umlaut...).
Moreover, English was only simplified after the Norman conquest in 1066. Before, it was pretty much the same inflecting Anglo-Saxon as in the times of the Angles and the Jutes. It seems to me that only the Norman language has really had an influence on English, while the Celtic influence seems to be neglectible. Old Norse influence, however, is interesting, because the Vikings imported the personal pronoun "they" and the verb form "are" as well as other words, but I don't think they really had an influence on the morphology of Anglo-Saxon. The loss of inflection stems from the Norman conquest. Compare Beowulf and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and you'll see what I mean. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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