Difference between revisions of "Talk:English language"
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English is not both a Romance and Germanic language. It is a Germanic language, specifically a West Germanic language. However, English can correctly be called the "least Germanic" of Germanic languages, due to its heavy borrowing from French after the Norman Conquest of 1066. | English is not both a Romance and Germanic language. It is a Germanic language, specifically a West Germanic language. However, English can correctly be called the "least Germanic" of Germanic languages, due to its heavy borrowing from French after the Norman Conquest of 1066. | ||
| − | Don't want to niggle about this -- since I'm a linguist by training, I know what you are saying, but I want to put this in plain language that non-linguists can understand. Yes, English in orgin is a West Germanic language, but some of its parts are grafts, as it were-- our pronoun system comes from Danish, and many of our syntactical habits (use of auxilliary verbs, for instance) come from French. In terms of the lexicon, Saxon-era words are a small minority (though predominant in the 1st decile of most commonly-used words), French the big contributor, followed by Latin, Greek, and other modern languages. So I want to give a sense that English is really a language with a mixed heritage, getting more mixed all the time, which is its strength! But I don't want to write something that sounds too technical. | + | ::Don't want to niggle about this -- since I'm a linguist by training, I know what you are saying, but I want to put this in plain language that non-linguists can understand. Yes, English in orgin is a West Germanic language, but some of its parts are grafts, as it were-- our pronoun system comes from Danish, and many of our syntactical habits (use of auxilliary verbs, for instance) come from French. In terms of the lexicon, Saxon-era words are a small minority (though predominant in the 1st decile of most commonly-used words), French the big contributor, followed by Latin, Greek, and other modern languages. So I want to give a sense that English is really a language with a mixed heritage, getting more mixed all the time, which is its strength! But I don't want to write something that sounds too technical. |
| − | [[User:Boethius|Boethius]] 18:07, 14 March 2007 (EDT) | + | ::[[User:Boethius|Boethius]] 18:07, 14 March 2007 (EDT) |
Revision as of 22:07, March 14, 2007
English is not the "language" of the United States, but rather the most commonly used language in the U.S. ColinR 20:09, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
English is not both a Romance and Germanic language. It is a Germanic language, specifically a West Germanic language. However, English can correctly be called the "least Germanic" of Germanic languages, due to its heavy borrowing from French after the Norman Conquest of 1066.
- Don't want to niggle about this -- since I'm a linguist by training, I know what you are saying, but I want to put this in plain language that non-linguists can understand. Yes, English in orgin is a West Germanic language, but some of its parts are grafts, as it were-- our pronoun system comes from Danish, and many of our syntactical habits (use of auxilliary verbs, for instance) come from French. In terms of the lexicon, Saxon-era words are a small minority (though predominant in the 1st decile of most commonly-used words), French the big contributor, followed by Latin, Greek, and other modern languages. So I want to give a sense that English is really a language with a mixed heritage, getting more mixed all the time, which is its strength! But I don't want to write something that sounds too technical.
- Boethius 18:07, 14 March 2007 (EDT)