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Location: Near Tours, France about 47°10'N 0°25'E
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Quote:
Originally Posted by overdrive1979
That's interesting.
As a native Spaniard who have learned some English and French, I would have to say that Dutch does not seem too difficult to me when writting, In a way, it reminds me to English, although I have never learned Dutch.
I love the way it sounds too.
I agree. As a french speaker whose only known germanic language is English I always find it extremely useful to know english to be able to catch so much of written Dutch when I am in Netherlands or Belgium. Even the sounds and rythms of dutch do remind me those of English. I did not experienced it in the same extend with German. To me it is often Germany/Austria which are the exceptions among Germanic countries rather than England.
These statistics do not say anything about to what linguistic group English belongs. It just say about the proportions of different etymologies of the words from English dictionary...
The same done for Dutch or German would give high proportions of words with non-germanic origins (so much technical or specific words have been borowed from romance to germanic languages. English is not an exception.
What is telling about English belonging clear belonging to the Germanic languages group (like any other germanic language) is not the the etymology of the total numbers of words from a dictionary but:
- The gramatical structure of the language
- The genealogic tree of the language
- The proportion of germanic etymology in current speech
Easthome, stop dreaming your language is somehow half-French
In a usual average English speech, words with pure germanic etymology make up at least 80%
English is as germanic as Dutch or German are.
Correct, for someone like me who speaks both English and Dutch, I know that they are very similar. Although a lot of French words were incorporated into the English language especially during Norman rule, but the grammar and the way to speak English or the style remained pretty much Germanic. Not only Dutch resemble English, but Frisian and Scandinavian languages as well. Many simple English words are actually of Scandinavian derivation, such as the, their, them, etc... the influence is directly linked to the Viking period. Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha! English is not half-French(Easthome makes laugh, really!), the language which I know that is closest to French in my opinion is Italian.
These statistics do not say anything about to what linguistic group English belongs. It just say about the proportions of different etymologies of the words from English dictionary...
The same done for Dutch or German would give high proportions of words with non-germanic origins (so much technical or specific words have been borowed from romance to germanic languages. English is not an exception.
What is telling about English belonging clear belonging to the Germanic languages group (like any other germanic language) is not the the etymology of the total numbers of words from a dictionary but:
- The gramatical structure of the language
- The genealogic tree of the language
- The proportion of germanic etymology in current speech
Easthome, stop dreaming your language is somehow half-French
In a usual average English speech, words with pure germanic etymology make up at least 80%
English is as germanic as Dutch or German are.
Here's a song by a musician from Piteå who sings in my local Northern Swedish dialect, Pitemål (or Bonshka, in dialect). Might be interesting for other scandinavian speakers!
Scots is a Germanic language and about 30% of the Scottish population can speak it - but it is essentially a variation of English - but don't tell them!
…and Scots Gaelic is related to Irish. An entirely different language.
I thought that English (like a lot of other languages) was not any particular 'type' of language but a mix of Latin, German, French, Scandinavian, Celtic etc? I know there are many similar English words to German but isn't there also many English words similar to say Spanish? Aren't all english words that end tion exactly the same as the Spanish words apart from in Spanish they end cion? eg tradition / tradicion, exception / excepcion, conversation / conversacion (there are many). Also Isn't there Latin in just about all European languages? Of course being English I am afraid I am no expert on the matter of languages!!
The basic structure and the important words (life, love, house, see, do, etc.) are Germanic and many embellishments and technical terms are Latin and French. While Germanic words make up only about 25% of the word count of modern English dictionaries, they are about 80% of the words actually used.
Yes, no comparison whatsoever.
Italian, Spanish, French, Catalan and Romansch are mutual intelligible because they come straight from Vulgar Latin, plus the modern influence of Latin, as Latin was the language of culture until quite recently.
Germanic languages, and I'm not including English, come from remote Germanic languages that were very different 2000 years ago (Old Norse, East Germanic or Ostrogoth, Visigoth) plus the fact that those languages did not have the cultural legacy of Latin.
I bought some new shaving cream recently, and on the back, it has explanations in English, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish, and Finnish. Instead of having separate sections with their own languages, they just put 'S/N/DK' and one explanation in one language (not sure which).
That's quite common on product descriptions here, if one word is significantly different in the other language they just put an / to it, like for example this content description from a spice bought at ICA (a supermarket chain operating in Sweden and Norway). It says: "contents: chilipeppar, cayennepeppar, vitlök, rosmarin och spiskummin/karve"
That product is Swedish but also intended for Norwegian stores, but one of the contents had a name that was significantly different in Norwegian so they also put the Norwegian word "karve" there with a /.
This is the Danish dialect spoken on the island Bornholm, and is considered to be the Danish dialect that is the most understandable to non-Danes. Its very closely related to Scanian (southern Swedish dialect), and I find it very, very easy to understand except for the Bornholmish words that are their own, but the rest of it is very easy and reminds alot of Scanian, much more so than standard Danish.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
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Where do you think Standard Dutch is spoken? I noticed there too many dialects there in The Netherlands and in Flemish Belgium as well.
I guess how different is West Flemish dialect spoken in western Belgium from those Dutch dialects spoken next to the border with Germany.
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