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English ,the less Germanic of the ... ? | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3916 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 52 01 February 2014 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow...What a great knowlegde of your native language. Congratulations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4502 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 18 of 52 01 February 2014 at 10:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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SOV in subclauses is Dutch/German only - not used in Swedish or Norwegian.
The full infinitive in Swedish is att äta, att betala, att fara - the same construction as in English. That construction is definitely Germanic. Verbs in Norwegian end in -e usually rather than -a. OVS word order is not always used for emphasis, but is mandatory in Dutch, German and Swedish under certain circumstances. I agree with your general point 1e4e6 but I am going to quibble with the examples because they don't make sense. Edited by tarvos on 01 February 2014 at 10:05am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4328 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 19 of 52 01 February 2014 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Well there is always Anglish for the purists. Poul Anderson's essay "Uncleftish Beholding" on atomic theory is suitably nerdish. Edited by patrickwilken on 01 February 2014 at 12:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3827 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 20 of 52 01 February 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is the exact same with Mandarin Chinese compared to other Sino languages. 的得地 are pronounced the same even though in other dialects, they are said differently. Tone Sandhi is nonexistent nearly unlike Cantonese even which doesn't have tone sandhi really, but where the word for "Mr" triggers a tone change in certain situations even and lord forbid Taiwanese Hokkien where each word must agree in tone in an entire sentence through some confusing paradigm. Many older Chinese pronunciations are actually closer to other dialects instead of Mandarin. But Classical reading negates the sound changes. Measure words (the equivalent of gender) are being ignored in Mandarin nowadays. I said "San wan fan" and "san tiao yu" but I overheard a native speaker saying "San ge fan" "San ge yu", everything is now 个. Only 5-6 vowels unlike the 11 in Cantonese, 4 tones unlike the 6-9 in Cantonese. There are half as many aspect words as Cantonese, and fewer grammatical triggers for analytical constructions, no reflexive prefixes to change the meaning of a word, no use of measure words as pseudo articles like Cantonese etc. On English, English is one of those languages where NATIVE/DIALECTAL speakers actually REGULARIZE and SIMPLIFY their own language. German dialects have more irregular plurals and vowel umlauts in comparatives and many more irregular bits than standard and plenty of pronunciation changes wie "sandhi". But English dialectal (when left to their own devices) speakers say "I did that good" "He has eated" "He is older/farther (not elder/further). Nigh/Near/Next is now Near/Nearer/Nearest, they use -s for every single plural and -ed for every past tense, and don't shift the pronunciation of either based on the previous consonant or vowel. etc. but a Bavarian would actually make things more irregular and regional. Our regular plurals just tag on an -s. And vowel changes are nearly nonexistent, likewise, Mandarin has hardly any of the irregular tonal changes that certain words might trigger lexically in other dialects. The only immediate word is 不 where the tone rises instead of falls if it comes before the copula. But other dialects have tons more. Mandarin is pretty much what English will become. I don't care that English has no cases, conjugations, or gender, but it would please me if it stayed like Icelandic or even German, or evolved into some isolating yet very specific language like Vietnamese, Thai, or Cantonese. Those language may not inflect at all but they have many techniques involving no inflection such as emotional particles, honorifics, measure words, word order, and more "specification" (Which would be like the "be" vs "have" perfect, "be" vs "worth" passive, "this that and yonder" in Western tongues). But it is not some Cambodian nor is it even Norwegian at the least, English is just "null", just plain as heck. Mandarin has gone even further. Persian is in just a bad situation as English, and Indonesian is kaputt! Note: I don't really mind the extra vocab that is borrowed. Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have an equal amount of borrowed words from Chinese as English from everything else combined. But I would think that native functional prefixes and suffixes for word derivation would be extremely helpful. People say "friend" instead of "befriend" now! Edited by Stolan on 01 February 2014 at 9:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4463 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 21 of 52 02 February 2014 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
In many variants of Spanish and in Italian, you can use the simple verbal form more often than not instead of the progressive form: ¿Qué haces? -Como. In Brazilian Portuguese and English: What do you do? - I eat Que faz? - Como would sound dated or poetic with the meaning of What are you doing? I'm eating. - O que está fazendo? -Estou comendo. Edited by Medulin on 02 February 2014 at 2:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4463 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 22 of 52 02 February 2014 at 2:00am | IP Logged | |||||
In Nynorsk it's perfectly permitted (if not preferred) to use the -a infinitive: å verta ''to become'' Here is the distribution of infinitive endings in Norwegian dialects: 
Jamvekt (''split infinitive'") means some verbs take -a while others take -e (this is also allowed in Nynorsk, so, for example, one can write å byrja ''to begin'' and å snakke ''to speak'' even in the same sentence if they wish). Edited by Medulin on 02 February 2014 at 2:06am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3827 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 23 of 52 03 February 2014 at 2:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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One thing I am come to add back is the big question of why English grammar is the way it is.
We have been told the usual viking impact had something to do with it by John McWhorter, and the others claim some Norman Creole hypothesis, but by the time of Middle English, the only truly big thing that we are familiar with that is missing is gender. V2 was there, so was inalienable and alienable possession, marking for the past participle form, to be vs have perfect, "worth" passive, fully functioning modal verbs that were not defective, thou vs ye, no useless do-support, more ways to form plurals (kine for cow, treen for tree), etc. The real divergence took place for me around the great vowel shift where several vowels were lost (American English is down to 10 vowels, while German still has 16 and Swedish/Norwegian 17-19) And the lack of "whither, whence" also occurred thereafter and features were lost even in the late 17th century. I don't think it was just some Viking or Norman invasion of sorts. Something really happened along the way that caused a failure on the part of native speakers to transmit grammar and many more across long generation, and it is continuing. I mean, why do our native or dialectal speakers simplify their own language? We used to distinguish between verbs that are naturally imperfect and thus could not take the progressive, but now people say "I am knowing this", and I heard someone say "oxes" just to rub it in. If we were losing stuff that was being replaced at a steady rate, we would be speaking something like a conservative Austronesian language (not Indonesian, not even Tongan) or Cambodian (18 vowels, 12 diphthongs) which are uninflecting languages with plenty of specifications. But English is null. Edited by Stolan on 03 February 2014 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4417 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 24 of 52 03 February 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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In English, we often use the verb "to be" where German would demand werden (to become). I'm not sure if
this observation holds true with other Germanic languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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