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How Germanic is English? | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5304 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 17 of 54 22 November 2010 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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"John and me" and especially "me and John" both sound kinda grating to me, and I never try to speak formally unless the situation calls for it.
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| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5477 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 18 of 54 22 November 2010 at 8:42am | IP Logged | ||
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For me "Me and John" is a bit more natural than "John and I", which is much more natural
than "John and me". I think it may have something to do with the way we emphasize (maybe?) pronouns in English. For example, the phrase "it's me/her/him/us" sounds unmarked to my ears, whereas the corresponding, more 'correct', "it's I/she/he/we" sounds downright unnatural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 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 19 of 54 22 November 2010 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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The problem about "me and John" versus "John and me/I" is not specific for English - it is not even restricted to Germanic languages, so it has no bearing on the question of this thread: "How Germanic is English?". Actually the only really un-Germanic thing would be not to have a discussion about this construction. Edited by Iversen on 22 November 2010 at 3:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5341 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 20 of 54 22 November 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
It was very naughty of me to include that bit of baiting in my post, but presumably which particular construction is normally used in English reflects the Germanic or French heritage? Or what do the Welsh say? Because I've got another one. The pronounciation, or not, of an initial "h". Anyway, my rigourous analysis of these two features suggests to me it is 50:50. edit: oops, just remembered that the Normans pronounced initial "h". Those h-droppers must have come over with a later boatload. Edited by schoenewaelder on 23 November 2010 at 10:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 54 22 November 2010 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Strictly speaking it is wrong. It's comparable to saying "Avec John et je" or "Il a dit à Jane et je que...". English still makes a basic inflectional distinction with the subject pronouns except "you" and "it" but many native speakers obviously don't fully grasp the distinction when we see frequent usage of these types of sentences. It likely arises as a hyper-correction among some native speakers who either misinterpreted or never got a full explanation of the difference between the nominative and non-nominative forms of pronouns. The likely trigger is that because we are often taught that sentences such as "John and me are brothers" are incorrect but not explained why, some native speakers generalize the entire instance whereby they begin believing that after "and", one can never use "me". This explains why some people insist that it's correct to use "I appreciate what our mom did for my brother and I" or "Between you and I..." etc. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5101 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 23 of 54 22 November 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
This discussion somehow it reminded me of Patricia O'Conner's very readable book "Woe is I," whose title is a reference to a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet:
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| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5341 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 24 of 54 23 November 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Just a couple more random thoughts.
1. Presumably Scots is more Germanic than English ? I don't know much about the structure though. 2. Isn't it a bit odd that English and some/all the other Gemanic languages underwent such major vowel shifts? Edited by schoenewaelder on 23 November 2010 at 11:07am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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