Weird English

#1

Post by mayiplease » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

Re: Weird English

#2

Post by mdturnerphys » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

For those interested in the development of the English language, I highly recommend this podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/

Re: Weird English

#3

Post by mathieuh » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:56 AM UTC

People always seem to complain about the etymological spelling of English but I love it. I love being able to look at a word and quickly know what its likely origin language was and get an idea of its meaning.

N.B. I'm not a prescriptivist and I don't really care how you spell something as long as I can make it out. I'm just interested in languages and think it's really cool that looking at English words is like peering into history.

Fair, it makes it more difficult for learners, but I'm not sure how relevant that is for a language unless you debase languages to being simply brutal ways of conveying meaning.

Re: Weird English

#4

Post by bencollier49 » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

I take the (facetious) position that English people don't learn other languages because we already learned at least two, if not three.

cf. Uncleftish Beholding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

Re: Weird English

#5

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

bencollier49 wrote: post #4

I take the (facetious) position that English people don't learn other languages because we already learned at least two, if not three. cf. Uncleftish Beholding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

Indeed. I greatly enjoyed the recent Jeopardy category, "BOOK TITLES EN FRANCAIS". Essentially, "What is the English name of the novel when given the French title?" I aced it. Can I speak French? Hardly. Has enough Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and other bits of Romantic verbiage seeped into my brain seemingly via osmosis over the course of my 3.5 decades to allow me to read basic French? Surprisingly, even to me, the answer is yes.

Re: Weird English

#6

Post by causi » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

I highly recommend McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

Re: Weird English

#7

Post by eesmith » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

mathieuh wrote: post #3

People always seem to complain about the etymological spelling of English but I love it. I love being able to look at a word and quickly know what its likely origin language was and get an idea of its meaning. N.B. I'm not a prescriptivist and I don't really care how you spell something as long as I can make it out. I'm just interested in languages and think it's really cool that looking at English words is like peer…

Does that make you especially dislike the "intentional meddling" of "snobs" on English?

Look at the word "island" and you might think it comes from the Latin "isle". This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.

Re: Weird English

#8

Post by rvba » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 9:55 AM UTC

What I find interesting is that English speakers will rather invent a new language than use an already existing one.

Klingon, Dothraki, the belter language in "The expanse" - all tv shows try hard to create something new.

And I dont think politics is the reason here.

Re: Weird English

#9

Post by marginalia_nu » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #5

bencollier49 wrote: post #4

I take the (facetious) position that English people don't learn other languages because we already learned at least two, if not three. cf. Uncleftish Beholding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

Indeed. I greatly enjoyed the recent Jeopardy category, "BOOK TITLES EN FRANCAIS". Essentially, "What is the English name of the novel when given the French title?" I aced it. Can I speak French? Hardly. Has enough Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and other bits of Romantic verbiage seeped into my brain seemingly via osmosis over the course of my 3.5 decades to allow me to read basic French? Surprisingly, even to me,…

Many European languages are interlinked like that. I found learning a bit of Latin on top of my passable English and my native Swedish opened up romance languages to a honestly pretty crazy degree.

Knowing the simple glue-words like demonstratives, pronouns and interrogatives means I can get the gist of it in a way I couldn't before. In a strange way looking at these languages feels like looking like the close relatives of my native Swedish does (i.e. Norwegian and Danish). It's different, but in many cases I have so many of the basic pieces the rest can be inferred from context with reasonable accuracy.

Re: Weird English

#10

Post by jan_Inkepa » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #7

mathieuh wrote: post #3

People always seem to complain about the etymological spelling of English but I love it. I love being able to look at a word and quickly know what its likely origin language was and get an idea of its meaning. N.B. I'm not a prescriptivist and I don't really care how you spell something as long as I can make it out. I'm just interested in languages and think it's really cool that looking at English words is like peer…

Does that make you especially dislike the "intentional meddling" of "snobs" on English? Look at the word "island" and you might think it comes from the Latin "isle". This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.

>This is a false etymology created by "snobs" who considered "yland" to be a corruption of the Latin, rather than a word with Proto-Germanic roots.

Do you have a reference for the top-down-because-of-snob-ness rather than more organic cross-polination/interference of similar words? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/island#Etymology gives it as being due to interference from the French-derived 'isle' (rather than from Latin, i.e. 'insula'), as does https://www.etymonline.com/word/island.