Why is English so weirdly different from other languages?

TIDE-HSV

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That is a very interesting article. Languages are my hobby. With English, several years of Latin and being fluent in German, I have an excellent platform to attack other European languages. (I haven't bothered with the Slavic because of the orthography, and, well, I didn't have to.) I read and write Norwegian, the bokmål form, 90% of the literature, broadcasts, etc. It's very interesting to note the commonalities with English and, OTOH, with German. It validates most of what he wrote. One thing was in error, though. Recent genetic studies have shown the Norse did not come as invaders, taking English wives. On the contrary, they came as settlers and brought their wives. Nevertheless, Norse did elide into English, so the result is the same. A large number of British and those who trace their ancestries to there carry what's called the "Frisian gene." This gene became isolated to the population of that small country between Holland and Germany on the North Sea, which is really no longer a country. When they came, with the Angles and the Jutes, to England, they brought it along with them. In fact, it is my primary genetic subclade.

The only fault I find with the article is that he doesn't make clear that, by dropping declensions, genders and endings, we have substituted word order in English. IOW, we have gone from being an "inflected" language to a "distributive" one. In German, I can change word order around and not raise a German eyebrow. The sentence's meaning remains the same. Do the same in English and you sound crazy. Our order of vowels must stay the same - I-A-O. IOW, clip-clop, wishy-washy, etc., never the reverse. In addition our adjectives follow very strict rules or the sentence isn't English. Here are a couple of links which explain this further...

LINK and LINK
 

DzynKingRTR

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English is so complicated we have to take classes on it for 12 years of school and then another year in college. In Georgia, they makes us take a test after that first year of college to see if we don't have to take even more classes. I doubt any other country makes you do this
 

TIDE-HSV

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One further thought - I'm always amazed at the homogeneity of English around the world. Sure there are pockets here and there where their English is hard to understand - Cockneys, Cotswolds, Souse, etc., but these are exceptions which prove the rule. I understand an Australian without difficulty, for example. This is in contrast to many other European countries. Someone from Hamburg cannot understand someone from Stuttgart, if they are speaking their native dialects. Even more extreme in Norwegian, I mentioned the bokmål form, which is heavily influenced by the long Danish occupation. As a consequence, where the influence was much less in the West, they spoke dialects incomprehensible to the east. There was a movement to codify these dialects into a language and it was called "Nynorsk." ("New Norwegian") This is a misnomer, since it's really "old" Norwegian. I struggle with it. Then, I picked up a friend in the western part who speaks and writes a dialect that my friends who speak standard bokmål can't understand. In fact, I have a friend from Bergen who writes fluent English, bokmål, and nynorsk. He doesn't even begin to know some of the words my new friend uses. (She also writes good English, thank God.) They only live about 25 miles apart. That just doesn't happen with English. In fact, because of the dialectical problem in Norway, English has pervaded as a working second language. All road signs, instructions, menus, etc. are printed in bokmål and English...
 

Tidewater

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Here is an interesting BBC series on the history of the English language.
English is a bland of Celtic,* Latin, German/Frisian,** Norwegian and French.


* "Crag," meaning, "rock," is one of the few Celtic holdovers from the repeated invasions.

** "Mist" and "frost" are a Frisian words still used today.
 

TIDE-HSV

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Here is an interesting BBC series on the history of the English language.
English is a bland of Celtic,* Latin, German/Frisian,** Norwegian and French.


* "Crag," meaning, "rock," is one of the few Celtic holdovers from the repeated invasions.

** "Mist" and "frost" are a Frisian words still used today.
Yet the Irish bequeathed a broad swatch of middle America their peculiar pronunciation of English... :D
 

CharminTide

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That is a very interesting article. Languages are my hobby. With English, several years of Latin and being fluent in German, I have an excellent platform to attack other European languages. (I haven't bothered with the Slavic because of the orthography, and, well, I didn't have to.) I read and write Norwegian, the bokmål form, 90% of the literature, broadcasts, etc. It's very interesting to note the commonalities with English and, OTOH, with German. It validates most of what he wrote. One thing was in error, though. Recent genetic studies have shown the Norse did not come as invaders, taking English wives. On the contrary, they came as settlers and brought their wives. Nevertheless, Norse did elide into English, so the result is the same. A large number of British and those who trace their ancestries to there carry what's called the "Frisian gene." This gene became isolated to the population of that small country between Holland and Germany on the North Sea, which is really no longer a country. When they came, with the Angles and the Jutes, to England, they brought it along with them. In fact, it is my primary genetic subclade.

The only fault I find with the article is that he doesn't make clear that, by dropping declensions, genders and endings, we have substituted word order in English. IOW, we have gone from being an "inflected" language to a "distributive" one. In German, I can change word order around and not raise a German eyebrow. The sentence's meaning remains the same. Do the same in English and you sound crazy. Our order of vowels must stay the same - I-A-O. IOW, clip-clop, wishy-washy, etc., never the reverse. In addition our adjectives follow very strict rules or the sentence isn't English. Here are a couple of links which explain this further...

LINK and LINK
Thanks for those links -- very interesting stuff for linguistic nerds.

Comparing English regionalization to European dialects is pretty eye-opening. Cockney English or a deep Southern accent can be difficult to understand because of pronunciation differences, but the structure and vocabulary aren't dramatically different. Someone born and raised in California may never have heard "yon" and "thither" before, but that's a far cry from the differences between German dialects. My significant other is from Stuttgart, and it's fascinating how different his speech is from someone who grew up in, say, Hamburg or Berlin. When Germans get together, I've noticed they tend to spend an inordinate amount of time making light of each other's dialects.
 

TIDE-HSV

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Thanks for those links -- very interesting stuff for linguistic nerds.

Comparing English regionalization to European dialects is pretty eye-opening. Cockney English or a deep Southern accent can be difficult to understand because of pronunciation differences, but the structure and vocabulary aren't dramatically different. Someone born and raised in California may never have heard "yon" and "thither" before, but that's a far cry from the differences between German dialects. My significant other is from Stuttgart, and it's fascinating how different his speech is from someone who grew up in, say, Hamburg or Berlin. When Germans get together, I've noticed they tend to spend an inordinate amount of time making light of each other's dialects.
They do like to ridicule and the Swabians come in for more than their fair share of it. BTW, "yonder" is ancient in English and is present in German as "jener," (pronounced approximately as "yayner). Except for the Berliner dialect, Eastern German is the basis for Hochdeutsch, considered the standard for the country. I once had a friend originally from the Rhineland express resentment towards the pre-wall downfall refugees, speaking in her Mainzer accent. She complained about all of the free perks they received, plus "they speak perfect German, by definition."
 

LA4Bama

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Interesting article. There is plenty to learn from here, but I would point out on another level the author is very intent on pushing an interpretation of language that is post-modern. He even has a manifesto in a recent book. LINK I agree with part of his work. He is trying to refute earlier forms of linguistics that define one's perception more or less solely in terms of language. This is solid. However, like a lot of contemporary academics, he doesn't just do his work. For some reason he feels justified in turning his scholarly work into a political statement. This forced, ideological slant leads him to some weird and I think even silly conclusions. For example, in the OP's article, he asked why we don't rendered "monosodium glutamate" as "one-salt gluten acid." Kind of a dumb comment from a linguist, and anyway it is just based on a misunderstanding (I guess) since sodium is not salt, but a specific elemental salt -- Na on the periodic table. But behind this misunderstanding there is a deeper issue; he seems to have little grasp of the need for conceptually clear language and the way that expands and transforms our common sense metaphorical language.

Similarly strange for a linguist (but not a post-modern) he conflates formality and abstraction. Formality (his example is the feeling that "regal" is superior to "kingly") is a way of indicating elevation, importance, respect, sublimity, etc. The capacity to name and grasp specific "abstract" properties is not formality, yet he seems to reduce it to formality. Any language can express formality, but abstraction is something that only progressively became expressible as language evolved to handle increasingly complex conception. Latin as the language of learning in Medieval Europe was very far advanced in this (having itself been adapted to deal with Greek conceptuality), so adding it to any language such as English would likely increase that capacity. But the author seems to deny this. The example he uses is to compare "ambulate" to "walk". It is true if we are talking about formality, that "ambulate" seems pretentious but adds no additional meaning (though even here he ignores the humbler form "amble" for some reason). But on the matter of abstraction, ambulate from Latin gives us "ambulatory," which names the abstract property of "being able to walk," so we can name exactly that property and also the class of things with the ability. To conflate formality with abstraction is just to completely miss the point about what abstraction is.

So while there is lots to learn from here, be aware this author has an agenda that goes beyond his scholarly contribution, and in my opinion distorts that contribution. He seems intent on being not only a scholar but a celebrity. There is a post-modern resentment of the Western civilization underlying some of his conclusions.
 
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cuda.1973

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Worked with a guy, who spent time in Germany.

"Speaking German, with a Bavarian accent, is like speaking with a disease of the throat."

I had to take his word for it. Says the guy with a family that comes from the country which has dozens of ways to say "pasta e fagioli".

(So many ways, that we will fight with someone, that doesn't say it the "right" way.)

Fehgeddaboutit.
 

TIDE-HSV

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Interesting article. There is plenty to learn from here, but I would point out on another level the author is very intent on pushing an interpretation of language that is post-modern. He even has a manifesto in a recent book. LINK I agree with part of his work. He is trying to refute earlier forms of linguistics that define one's perception more or less solely in terms of language. This is solid. However, like a lot of contemporary academics, he doesn't just do his work. For some reason he feels justified in turning his scholarly work into a political statement. This forced, ideological slant leads him to some weird and I think even silly conclusions. For example, in the OP's article, he asked why we don't rendered "monosodium glutamate" as "one-salt gluten acid." Kind of a dumb comment from a linguist, and anyway it is just based on a misunderstanding (I guess) since sodium is not salt, but a specific elemental salt -- Na on the periodic table. But behind this misunderstanding there is a deeper issue; he seems to have little grasp of the need for conceptually clear language and the way that expands and transforms our common sense metaphorical language.

Similarly strange for a linguist (but not a post-modern) he conflates formality and abstraction. Formality (his example is the feeling that "regal" is superior to "kingly") is a way of indicating elevation, importance, respect, sublimity, etc. The capacity to name and grasp specific "abstract" properties is not formality, yet he seems to reduce it to formality. Any language can express formality, but abstraction is something that only progressively became expressible as language evolved to handle increasingly complex conception. Latin as the language of learning in Medieval Europe was very far advanced in this (having itself been adapted to deal with Greek conceptuality), so adding it to any language such as English would likely increase that capacity. But the author seems to deny this. The example he uses is to compare "ambulate" to "walk". It is true if we are talking about formality, that "ambulate" seems pretentious but adds no additional meaning (though even here he ignores the humbler form "amble" for some reason). But on the matter of abstraction, ambulate from Latin gives us "ambulatory," which names the abstract property of "being able to walk," so we can name exactly that property and also the class of things with the ability. To conflate formality with abstraction is just to completely miss the point about what abstraction is.

So while there is lots to learn from here, be aware this author has an agenda that goes beyond his scholarly contribution, and in my opinion distorts that contribution. He seems intent on being not only a scholar but a celebrity. There is a post-modern resentment of the Western civilization underlying some of his conclusions.
I noticed his slant but there's still a lot of good stuff I've studied for decades...
 

Jessica4Bama

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I find this fascinating. I admire people who can speak multiple languages. I'm not smart enough to do so.

Now my question is, why do British and Australian singers sound like Americans when they sing?
 

uafanataum

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I find this fascinating. I admire people who can speak multiple languages. I'm not smart enough to do so.

Now my question is, why do British and Australian singers sound like Americans when they sing?
Because we said it right the first time.
 

TIDE-HSV

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I find this fascinating. I admire people who can speak multiple languages. I'm not smart enough to do so.

Now my question is, why do British and Australian singers sound like Americans when they sing?
For the biggest market. Why did Charlize Theron, whose first language is Afrikaans learn impeccable American English? :D
 

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