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post #76 of 81
8/28/09 at 3:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Orpheus View Post
Genetically, both English and Swedish are Germanic languages, so they are more "related" than English and French - though English has many, many loan words from French, French is actually a daughter language of Latin, whereas English is not. So from a linguistic perspective English is similar to Swedish. Sorry for being snobby, linguistics has always interested me.
well put
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post #77 of 81
9/1/09 at 4:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Orpheus View Post
Genetically, both English and Swedish are Germanic languages, so they are more "related" than English and French - though English has many, many loan words from French, French is actually a daughter language of Latin, whereas English is not. So from a linguistic perspective English is similar to Swedish.

Sorry for being snobby, linguistics has always interested me.

Yes although english has buried roots in Germanic languages, French had a much greater influence on the language and is more closely related due to the fact that the French occupied Britain for quite some time after 1066 hence the many similarities.
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post #78 of 81
9/1/09 at 4:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by skyman View Post
French had a much greater influence on the language and is more closely related
dunno where you heard that... a possible way to analyze the relatedness of languages would be to note the progress of those learning English as a second language... IME dutch, german, or swedish speakers have a much better accent and greater fluency than french speakers. besides, english is technically a germanic language, not a romance language. another bit of evidence against your claim deals with the morphology of english. you can attach the "native" german suffix 'ness' anywhere that the french suffix 'ity' is grammatical, but you can't always attach 'ity' where 'ness' is acceptable. ex. 1a. curiosity 1b. curiousness 2a. humorlessness 2b. *humorlessity there are probably other examples like this, so it could be argued that the grammar of english is more germanic at heart.
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post #79 of 81
9/1/09 at 5:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bach View Post
dunno where you heard that...

a possible way to analyze the relatedness of languages would be to note the progress of those learning English as a second language... IME dutch, german, or swedish speakers have a much better accent and greater fluency than french speakers. besides, english is technically a germanic language, not a romance language.

another bit of evidence against your claim deals with the morphology of english. you can attach the "native" german suffix 'ness' anywhere that the french suffix 'ity' is grammatical, but you can't always attach 'ity' where 'ness' is acceptable.

ex.

1a. curiosity
1b. curiousness

2a. humorlessness
2b. *humorlessity

there are probably other examples like this, so it could be argued that the grammar of english is more germanic at heart.

Not trying to disrespect your obvious knowledge in previous posts,
I was taught about the relations between french and english in my english lessons in school, a good few years ago now.
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post #80 of 81
9/1/09 at 5:51pm
I'm also American, I speak Portuguese pretty fluently after living in Brazil for a few years, and I studied Spanish in HS and college (it helped with learning Portuguese).
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post #81 of 81
9/1/09 at 10:20pm
I'm American. My Dad's Norwegian, Mom's German, Fiancee's Turkish, and I've learned all those. I took some Spanish in High school, so I'll call that 4.5 languages

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucky Strike View Post
Being Norwegian, I also understand Swedish and Danish quite well, the Scandinavian languages are quite close.

+1 on this. My job requires me to correspond with colleagues speaking Danish, Swedish and (gulp) Icelandic all day long, and I get by just fine (Icelandic is the trickiest by far).
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