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Which came first? | ||
Tags: Diagram | Indo-European Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| adoggie Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6533 days ago 160 posts - 159 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 1 of 6 01 February 2007 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Which language, of English, German, and Norwegian, came first? All three of them have certain similarities, and I'm wondering which one is the ancestor of them all.
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 2 of 6 01 February 2007 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah, grasshopper, you have not yet seen the light. None of the modern languages are ancestors of any other. They might come from a single common ancestor, but that ancestor is not any one of the existing modern languages. Look at the Romance languages -- French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian are all desecended from Latin, but none of them is Latin.
However, if you want to know when they divided, you might want to check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6689 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 3 of 6 02 February 2007 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe they're never ancestors but one has to appear first, right? Edited by justinwilliams on 02 February 2007 at 12:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 6 02 February 2007 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you mean which one is the most conservative and has remained in its present form the longest? Probably German. English was a different language as little as 500-600 years ago. Edited by Captain Haddock on 02 February 2007 at 3:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 02 February 2007 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
If look at the link I put up, you would see a nice chart that shows roughly when the languages divided, and which might be considered the most modern. Edited by Raincrowlee on 02 February 2007 at 5:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| adoggie Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6533 days ago 160 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 6 of 6 09 February 2007 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the links!
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