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How Germanic is English? | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 9 of 54 09 November 2010 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||
Other Germanic aspects of English pronunciation include the short/long vowel distinction, frequent consonant clusters (e.g. "strengths"), and its stress/inonation patterns which much more resemble Dutch and German than any Romance language. Edited by Levi on 09 November 2010 at 6:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5563 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 10 of 54 09 November 2010 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pedants always try and insist on "John and I" as being correct for the subject, and the forbidding of double negatives, Which are Germanic traits, whereas French happily uses "John and me" and double negatives.
It surprises me because the French parts of the language are usually considered the more sophisticated or elitist, but here most normal ordinary folk seem to instinctively adopt the French usage. Edited by schoenewaelder on 09 November 2010 at 2:53pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| celticrover Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 5209 days ago 10 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, French, Russian | Message 11 of 54 09 November 2010 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's nothing pedantic about insisting on "John and I" and the forbidding of double negatives.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 54 10 November 2010 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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If most native speakers consistently disregard certain rules then it becomes pedantic to tell them that they should change their habits. There may be a phase where the speakers are divided among those who follow the old rule and those that follow a new one, and only time will tell which faction wins. But personally I think that "John and me" will win (exactly the same thing is actually happening in Danish), and then at some point it becomes a lost case to try to convince people that it is wrong.
The double negatives are less likely to win because they are associated with certain types of American English. The problem is of course what to do with nominal phrases within the scope of a negation (positive "there are some/a few apples left", but negatively either "there aren't any apples left" or "there are no apples left"). The point is that English has got an indefinit pronoun "any" which can be used both in positive contexts with the meaning 'every' and in interrogative/negative contexts with the meaning "none". In this situation some varieties of English have dropped the ambiguous 'any' and instead combined the negation "not" with the clearly negative word "no": "there ain't no apples left". Which actually is a quite logical reaction. In other words the occurrence of double negatives is based on specific conditions in English, and it is not something that connects English with other Germanic languages. Afrikaans double "nie" is of course another case, but with no implications for the English 'double' negation, and in German the 'pure' negation "nicht" is consistently excluded when the sentence contains another negative term ("er hat nicht Äpfel (sondern Birnen) gekauft" vs. "er hat keine Äpfel"). The nearest thing to the English situation is actually Danish, where we in 'correct' Danish have the positive form "Der er nogle æbler tilbage", but a competition in the negative case between "der er ikke nogen æbler tilbage" and "der er ingen æbler tilbage". But in practice most Danes mix "nogle" and "nogen" in speech - and often also in writing. Therefore we aren't tempted to insert a negative form. Instead we use the negative/interrogative form even in positive sentences, which of course is scorned by purists. It might also be worth having a look at the situation in French, where the primordial negation "ne" long ago has been coupled with expressions that literally meant small amounts of something (Ancient French "ne mie", "ne goutte", but now only "ne pas", cfr. "ne rien", "ne jamais" ('not already more')). But these purely emphatic words have in the proces become negative in themselves, so now the original negation "ne" is being pushed out, at least in spoken French. In other words: the French double negation is under severe pressure. Edited by Iversen on 10 November 2010 at 3:02pm 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5238 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 54 10 November 2010 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think double negatives have already won in many forms of casual speech in American English. Not that they're used commonly, but that they are used and there isn't a whole lot of people who upon hearing someone use a double negative who say, "Oh my goodness, I don't understand at all what you mean because that double negative operates on mathematical principles and that makes it an affirmative statement."
Using double negatives in formal writing will continue to be frowned upon, I'm sure, because formal writing is nearly by definition pedantic. The form John and I is losing out. It tends to carry an air of snobbishness when a speaker uses it. But as a sort of strange way that snobbishness tries to work its way back in, there's a certain popularity now for people to say "between you and I." That's one that hurts my ears to hear it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6109 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 54 10 November 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Don't forget that English has maintained a more conservative phonology. We still have interdental fricatives, that have become plosives in nearly all Germanic languages.
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6375 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 54 11 November 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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The language is 100% Germanic. It just has lots of French, Latin, and Greek loan words
which we pronounce differently to suite English phonology. Edited by zerothinking on 11 November 2010 at 7:37am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5125 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 16 of 54 22 November 2010 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm curious to know if English could function if we took out all the Romance vocabulary.
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