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How close is Gaelic to English? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5337 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 41 10 May 2010 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Just a random question.
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| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5348 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 2 of 41 10 May 2010 at 3:37am | IP Logged | ||
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By this do you mean Irish?
There's Scots Gaelic and Irish. They're not a million miles from each other, but a bit different. English and Irish are very different. One is a Celtic language, the other Germanic. I once got laughed at at a conference for saying I spoke Irish. Then I spoke Irish and they realised I wasn't just speaking English with an Irish accent. For example: English: The man is sitting in the tree Irish: Tá an fear ag suí sa chrann. So as you see, pretty different. English is much more simialar to French or Spanish. Even Russian has more similar words than Irish has to it. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 41 10 May 2010 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||
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The Celtic languages are on a branch of Indo-European that diverged from the rest a very long time ago. Though I
haven't studied it, my guess is that Irish and Scottish Gaelic are as different from English as Russian or Persian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 41 10 May 2010 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
Russian seems more like English to me than Persian or Gaelic do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 41 10 May 2010 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, some linguists believe the Germanic and Balto-Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family to be more closely related to each other than to other branches, which would make English more closely related to Russian than to Gaelic. However, the Gaelic languages have of course been influenced by English more than Russian and Persian have.
If you're going to learn Irish or Scottish Gaelic, you won't find much similarity to English. You'll find more similarity than with Chinese or Arabic at least, but for the most part the grammar and vocabulary will be completely different from English. One thing you'll have to get used to is putting the verb at the beginning of every sentence. Edited by Levi on 10 May 2010 at 4:11am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5337 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 41 10 May 2010 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Really I meant either of the Gaelic languages.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 41 10 May 2010 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||
The Gaelic languages are sufficiently similar to each other that they're roughly equally distant from English. The Irish Gaelic wikipedia page on Irish Gaelic should give you a tiny taste of the language and its distance from English. Looking at sound shifts, you'll find that Gaelic is quite far from Latin, Greek, and the modern Germanic and Romance languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5337 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 41 10 May 2010 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Gaelic seems like an amusing language, maybe I'll learn the Irish (or maybe even
Scottish) branch of it after Latin and German. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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