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But that is not English's fault, of course. And that is not to say that English has no grammar, which is a ludicrous claim.
Sorry, I should have qualified that statement. Whether one language is easier than another depends on where you're coming from. Of course for most speakers of European languages, English is easier than Arabic or Chinese. I was speaking more from an absolute sense. For someone coming from a totally unrelated background, English is as easy or as hard as another language. What you gain by not having to memorize case endings and conjugations, you lose by having to memorize spellings that do not clearly map onto pronunciations.
English is SVO like all Romance languages while Old Norse was much freer, Old Norse had 3 genders and English has none (apart from pronouns), Old Norse had 4 cases and English has none (like all Romance languages), Old Norse had much more compound words and an higher degree of weak/strong paradigms, a distinction completely blurred in English (which retains "irregular" verbs).
In fact, while Old Norse had an influx in lexicon, English has close to no Germanic influence in the grammar.
English had freer word order like Old Norse.
English had genders like Old Norse.
English had cases like Old Norse.
English had compound words and strong/weak verbs to the same degree as Old Norse.
Then consider that all the things you state are hallmarks of Old Norse: free word order, gender, and cases, are also characteristic of Classical Latin, and indeed all Indo-European languages.
Over the course of time it changed these things. As did the linguistic descendants of Old Norse. One could say if reduced grammatical inflection is a clue that English is a grammatical signature of the distancing of English from its Old Norse roots, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are even less 'Old Norse' than English.
And as for your last statement, I can only conclude you know virtually nothing about the history and development of Indo-European languages. Go study Latin, Old English, Old Norse, then get back to us.
Last edited by ABQConvict; 03-14-2015 at 11:58 AM..
English had compound words and strong/weak verbs to the same degree as Old Norse.
Then consider that all the things you state are hallmarks of Old Norse: free word order, gender, and cases, are also characteristic of Classical Latin, and indeed all Indo-European languages.
Over the course of time it changed these things. As did the linguistic descendants of Old Norse. One could say if reduced grammatical inflection is a clue that English is a grammatical signature of the distancing of English from its Old Norse roots, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are even less 'Old Norse' than English.
And as for your last statement, I can only conclude you know virtually nothing about the history and development of Indo-European languages. Go study Latin, Old English, Old Norse, then get back to us.
I have studied enough Latin and Ancient Greek to know them, thank you.
All of you keep on focusing just on my reply without seeing whom I answered to.
There's no doubt that English has evolved and there's no doubt that in the past it had cases, genders, genders' agreement, longer compounds etc, but all these characteristics got lost in the evolution of English, an evolution heavily influenced by French brought by Normans (who were of Viking descent, ironic).
English is a sort of "bridge" between Germanic and Romance world because, even though it's a Germanic language, it has also a considerable influence by Romance languages.
My question: how important was the French influence on the English grammar?
Then, answering to Saibot, the considerable difficult of English in spelling is enormously eased by the huge English exposure each of us has.
I achieved a C1 level without knowing a single symbol of IPA or knowing the basics of phonetics.
At the same time, English grammar is nonetheless much simpler than any other European languages, though we can agree that to master English up to a proficient level (let's say C1 and/or above), it takes a considerable amount of time and effort.
French is on a negative slope because the French do not value those who speak their language, they prefer valuing people from other cultures. You will be surprised to find out that "nos ancetres les gaulois" (our ancestors the Gauls ) love English more than the language of Moliere !
French actually is gaining speakers. If african demographics continue the way they are there will be close to 800 million French speakers in 30 years, up from 250 million. I guess unless they decide to stop speaking french.
French is on a negative slope because the French do not value those who speak their language, they prefer valuing people from other cultures. You will be surprised to find out that "nos ancetres les gaulois" (our ancestors the Gauls ) love English more than the language of Moliere !
French is on a negative slope because the French do not value those who speak their language, they prefer valuing people from other cultures. You will be surprised to find out that "nos ancetres les gaulois" (our ancestors the Gauls ) love English more than the language of Moliere !
Lol.
French is pretty much the second most important language in the world. It's the official/working language of pretty much every single relevant international organization(WTO, OECD, ICC etc. You name it), it's one of the most useful languages in almost every academic field, and it's got tremendous cultural impact.
French actually is gaining speakers. If african demographics continue the way they are there will be close to 800 million French speakers in 30 years, up from 250 million. I guess unless they decide to stop speaking french.
Lord, if you knew how many African countries are upset about French political interference in African domestic affairs to the point people want to get rid of French as a national language.
Rwanda chose English after Habyarimana's regime was destroyed in the mid- 1990s.
In Cote d'ivoire , Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande backed imposed at gun point criminal muslim leader allassane ouattara as president. The guy was born in Burkina Faso and never had the Ivorian citizenship.
The 10 -year civil war led to a genocide against the Guere' people under the watch of UN and French troops.
See
1. ReadingFromUN-backed Forces Slaughter Christians in Ivory Coast
Quote:
Backed by French and United Nations military forces, and approved by President Barack Obama, Muslim militias loyal to opposition leader Alassane Ouattara are on a rampage in the Ivory Coast that, according to news reports and officials, has left over a thousand Christians dead so far in an effort to oust current President Laurent Gbagbo.
English is a sort of "bridge" between Germanic and Romance world because, even though it's a Germanic language,
The construct of English is Old Norse for sure. English still has about 3,500 words directly from Old Norse, as a Swedish speaker who has learnt English will tell you. English adopted words from French confusing many people. The language was formed in south east Scotland.
Most of the words of English are French, Latin and Greek in origin.
3500 from Old Norse? Not true, impossible to determine.
Old Norse is after all, Indoeuropean, so most of those words are uncertain.
In the same way, you can say that France has 20.000 words that have the same origin that in Old Norse (Indoeruopean).
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