English-like grammar? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

English-like grammar?
Tags: Linguistic relationships \| Grammar \| English
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24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3 Next >>

Derian
Triglot
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Message 9 of 24

09 June 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged

Volte wrote:

The Germanic languages are most similar to English overall,

Perhaps it's got something to do with English being a Germanic language too... hmmm.....
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Ubik
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Message 10 of 24

09 June 2010 at 8:35pm | IP Logged

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

For a moment there, I felt tempted to say that not even a madman could create a language like English :-)But to be serious, I cannot imagine there are any language that has a grammar which is identical to the English grammar, but the Scandinavian languages and Dutch would come farly close. We have the genders of course, which are only visible in the personal pronouns in English, but other than that I would think they are as close as you get.

A madman DID create the English language...or what we know of it in terms of the lexicon of words anyway. W.C. Minor, the biggest contributor to the OED, was living at the Broadmoor Insane Asylum when he contributed the majority of the words to the dictionary.
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Volte
Tetraglot
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Message 11 of 24

09 June 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged

Derian wrote:

Volte wrote:

The Germanic languages are most similar to English overall,

Perhaps it's got something to do with English being a Germanic language too... hmmm.....

Obviously it does. I decided saying "the Germanic languages other than English" was unnecessary on this forum; do you think otherwise?

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Aquila123
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Message 12 of 24

09 June 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged

Perpaps Afrikaans???

Norwegian/danish/swedish have many similarities, especially in the tense system of verbs and basic word order.
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Derian
Triglot
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Message 13 of 24

09 June 2010 at 10:40pm | IP Logged

Volte wrote:

I decided saying "the Germanic languages other than English" was unnecessary on this forum; do you think otherwise?

Nope :)
But simply "the other Germanic languages" would be fine. :))
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michamotor
Tetraglot
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Message 14 of 24

09 June 2010 at 10:51pm | IP Logged

When I think of all the different tenses that exist in English, I wouldn´t say that English and German grammar are very similar.
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Iversen
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Message 15 of 24

10 June 2010 at 12:27pm | IP Logged

In my opinion the weirdest thing about English is the 'double' verbal system, where compounds forms built on the present participle compete with simple forms/forms based on the past participle. Of course most other Indoeuropean language have present participles (some have more than one), but not in such a prominent way.

Another weird thing is the use of "to do" in negative sentences and questions - why did English develop that system? Similar constructions are found in Low German/Platt, maybe also in Frisian which I haven't studied, but not in such a consistent way.

There are of course other quirks in English, but these two are important ones that define the core of its sentence structures. It doesn't really make sense to look for "another English" - but searching for analogue construction principles in other languages on specific points may be relevant.

Thanks to Ubik for the tip about W. C. Minor

Edited by Iversen on 10 June 2010 at 12:38pm
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Romanist
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Message 16 of 24

10 June 2010 at 1:25pm | IP Logged

michamotor wrote:

When I think of all the different tenses that exist in English, I wouldn´t say that English and German grammar are very similar.

True. But I would say it is sentence structure which really makes English and German different.

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