Re: English a romance language, not germanic?!

In article <slrnfle2ar.u77.mightymartianca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
AC <mightymartianca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:50:06 -0000,
Robert Grumbine <bobg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <timberwoof.spam-CF9364.00035605122007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Timberwoof <timberwoof.spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[trim]

If you were to actually study Modern English, Middle English, Old
English; Modern High German, Middle High German, and older varieties;
Modern French, Middle French, and Latin; then you'd realize the form of
the lineage. Yes, there's a lot of French in English. That comes from
the Norman Conquest. I spoke French and German before I learned English.
Both languages were helpful, but English is more similar to German than
it is to French. (I will grant you that the war words are all French.
Even the German war words are French.)

Blitzkrieg (krieg itself) is French? How?

Came up recently in another group, and I'll repeat: mere vocabulary
can't be the basis for deciding language change. If it were, every
time I learned a new word, I'd be speaking a different language.

josephus there is an interesting writer. As long as I don't know
much about what he's writing about, he seems a reasonable science-oriented
poster. As he get closer to things I know about, I see a lot of
almost, but not really correct, to what he says. Plus the occasional
wildly incorrect, as here.

Actually this idea that English is somehow more French than Germanic is
something I've heard since I was a kid, and I've put it in with "Columbus
discovered the world was round"-style urban myth memes. The confusion seems
largely to stem from people thinking that just because our dictionaries are
dominated by Romance words, somehow that makes English some sort of French
derivative.

Interesting. I've never heard it before the last couple of months.

I think, however, a more careful reading of dictionaries would show
rather fewer true romance language words. Consider scientist, for
instance. The dictionary at hand lists it as Latin. Problem is, no
Latin ever used the word. It was an invention by Whewell, in English,
in the 1800s. It has some superficial connection/similarity to the
word the Latins did use (scientia), but that's all. It's an english
word. As is telephone English, rather than Greek. No Greek used it
until after its invention in English.

w.r.t. french it can be even more a disconnect. iirc, supposedly
most words ending -cion or -tion are french-derived. Ok. But
then consider 'Californication' (from the song). The French language
purity police would not accept such a word, I'm confident. Even
if the -tion is 'french', the notion of using it freely as an
affix is very english.

Not too long ago, I carried out the exercise of writing a couple
of paragraphs and then tracking down the sources of all the words.
1/2 the words (as novel words, no points for 19 uses of 'the') weren't
english-based. (I credited eigenvalue to German). But 3/4ths of the
one syllable words were english-based. (Ransack was Norse, surprise).
And the english (germanic) fraction rises markedly if you go by
usage rather than vocabulary.
--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences

.

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