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Is English a “creole Language”?

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#81

Post by munificent »

indigo945 wrote: post #71
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

> Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic.

Are you measuring by fraction of words in a word list, or fraction of words in a typical utterance? Word usage is highly non-uniform, so you'll get very different ratios between the former and latter.

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#82

Post by kragen »

mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

the question is not really whether english is germanic (it's clearly germanic! nobody disagrees!) but whether it's a creole

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#83

Post by secretmark »

indigo945 wrote: post #71
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

The most frequently used words are almost all Germanic. There are a lot of technical words with Latin or Greek etymologies that are hardly used in quotidian conversation.

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#84

Post by patall »

indigo945 wrote: post #71
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

Which 'aspect' is supposed to be missing in Germanic language verbs? Because I can say those three example forms (aspect tenses?) in both Swedish and German without any limitation.

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#85

Post by dangitman »

blueyes wrote: post #75
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

And it's closer to Frisian than Dutch. If the Battle of Hastings hadn't happened, these languages would be easily and mutually comprehensible. But that just shows that English descends from a branch of West Germanic. It changed gradually over time, kept a core Germanic vocabulary for its basic terms, and borrowed a lot from other languages as it needed more complex concepts, moreso than Modern High German which allow…

[dead]

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#86

Post by geocar »

indigo945 wrote: post #71
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

> Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense:

What exactly do you mean by "aspect"?

> there is a distinction between "I played tennis"/"I have played tennis"/"I was playing tennis".

Sure:

-- (I) played (Tennis) ~~ jugué

-- (When I) played (Tennis) ~~ jugaba

-- (When I've) played (Tennis) ~~ jugado

English (like German) might say they need auxiliary words to explain what's going on, and Spanish people might say they're just conjugating the verb differently, but I think this is just because things are written down;

Because, if I say any of these sentences in Spanish or English rapidly enough, someone who does not know the language will not know where each word begins and ends, and it may just sound like English "conjugates" at the beginning of words and Spanish "conjugates" at the end. What's the real difference here?

> But it's a much more interesting problem to figure out why [English is] not considered a Romance language than you imply.

I think most of the time people talk about the "rules" of a language, we're not really talking about something that will help acquire the language (or be better understood): we're really just yapping about geography and time.

So what do you think would be different if English was more widely considered a Romance language?

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#87

Post by larkost »

inanutshellus wrote: post #76
geocar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I was walking with a friend around Amsterdam and a man walked up to me and asked me where something was (a nearby restaurant), I answered in English with directions and he thanked me, then a moment later this exchange happened: - Wait! You can speak Netherlands? - No. Sorry. - But you can! I am speaking it! - No you're not! You're speaking English! He just blinked and walked off, probably assuming I…

Very much reminds me of a Kids in the Hall skit from ages ago. Two guys are at a party, one says "hello", the other says -- in perfect English -- "Sorry I don't understand you, I don't speak English. please don't beat me up." The first guy assumes it's a joke and plays along until he gets annoyed at the perfect accent and responses ("no really, I don't understand what you're saying, nor what I'm saying, I've just pra…

When I was a kid my boychoir hosted a choir from Estonia (this was before the fall of the Iron Curtain, so this was a big deal), and I remember when I was trying to help out back-stage at their concert and one of the Estonian boys needed help, but the only thing he could say was "I don't speak English", in a perfect midwestern accent (the Estonian choir director had drilled his entire choir on that one phrase). The cognitive dissonance was hard to deal with.

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#89

Post by enragedcacti »

indigo945 wrote: post #71
mise_en_place wrote: post #63

It's closer to Dutch or German. I had no issue understanding transit signage in Amsterdam. The difficult words are calques and idioms that don't directly translate, i.e. opponthoud . Exit is uitgang , literally an "outgoing". Entrance is ingang , ingoing.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

> This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1]

I think that's complicated by the fact that many english words of latin origin were inherited from a germanic source and thus from an intelligibility standpoint the overlap between english and dutch or german is partially additive with latin. e.g. [1]

Unfortunately the source is dead, but at one point a study ranked english/german as 60% lexical similarity compared to english/french at 27% [2]. Anecdotally, I think dutch and german are easier for an english speaker because of comparatively more overlap in simple words. Heavy use of compound words in dutch/german also gives an english listener a better chance of recognizing part of the word and inferring the meaning from context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_Latinates_of_G...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity

Re: Is English a “creole Language”?

#90

Post by jonstewart »

secretmark wrote: post #83
indigo945 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much debatable. Only around one in four English words is Germanic in origin, whereas half of English words are Latinic or Romanic. [1] Some properties of English's grammar are also more similar to Romance languages than Germanic ones. For example, whereas Germanic languages only mark tense on verbs, English verbs (like Spanish verbs) are marked with aspect in addition to tense: there is a distinction bet…

The most frequently used words are almost all Germanic. There are a lot of technical words with Latin or Greek etymologies that are hardly used in quotidian conversation.

> quotidian

iswydt

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