Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What ? No ! Gallo, which is the second language of Brittany is a Latin dialect and a part of langue d'oil. But Briton is definitely a celtic language :
Looks like a romance language right ? Stop saying non-sense and use google to double check first please.
By the way there is a revival of Briton in Brittany, plenty of school offer it as a second language.
Briton, modern day Briton (France), is a Romance dialect.
It might have been Celtic 20 centuries ago.
There are no Celtic languages in continental Europe, Latin acted as a road roller.
Briton, modern day Briton (France), is a Romance dialect.
It might have been Celtic 20 centuries ago.
There are no Celtic languages in continental Europe, Latin acted as a road roller.
Briton, modern day Briton (France), is a Romance dialect.
It might have been Celtic 20 centuries ago.
There are no Celtic languages in continental Europe, Latin acted as a road roller.
Truly astounding what?
You said that French was mostly Germanic, is that what they teach you at HS in Maryland?
Not what I said at all Cocorico. I said it has Germanic influence and have provided a plethora of sources that I worked with while taking a graduate-level class focusing on the subject. Arguing that a language has Germanic influence is much different from claiming that it is "mostly" Germanic. I can draw only two conclusions from your above sentence: that you are either being purposely facetious, or that you didn't read the thread. I suspect the former.
That being said, Breton is a Celtic language, and quite undeniably so. If you can offer any evidence at all that Breton is a "Romance dialect" or that the language "might have been Celtic 20 centuries ago" I will be eager to read it.
Anyway, to answer to the poster: nobody cares, on the contrary, it's very useful so as to communicate with other Europeans whether we don't know their languages.
English is quite easy, much better than German or Russian as lingua franca.
Truly astounding what?
You said that French was mostly Germanic, is that what they teach you at HS in Maryland?
Well neither English is mostly germanic. The english by ancestry are mostly proto-europeans of pre-germanic heritage (native britons), and British language is half influenced by french and latin. So English are nowhere germanic.
Yes, English has an Anglo-Saxon influence, perhaps 30 percent.
There's no such thing as pre-germanic, native Britons were not pre-germanic.
English are cultural Germanic, as Germans.
English is not dominant in Europe actually. Every country in Europe has its own language and the only countries that have English as its official language are the UK, Ireland and Malta. The rest all have their own languages and most don't intend on learning English... If anything st people from the poorer end of Europe tend to learn German because Germany/Switzerland/Austria all provide more opportunities for them than any English speaking country. Low unemployment, strong economy, high living standards.
I don't think the OP is suggesting that English is replacing the native languages within Germany, France, Italy, or Spain. The poster is describing English as the international language and the fact that Europeans might resent this dominance. Students the world over are learning English but rarely do they speak a second foreign language. As an American who speaks 4 languages and who studied in Europe for several years, I know that English is the only compulsory foreign language in most European countries. In France, English isn't officially required because the French government would have to admit that English is the global language instead of French; nevertheless, 95% of French students choose English as their first foreign language, while few French people I've met can speak more than 5 words of German, Spanish, Mandarin or Italian.
I totally disagree with you about "people at the poorer end [of Europe] learning German because Germany/Switz./Austria provide more opportunities for them." Yes, the strong economies of the German-speaking countries attract many young Europeans today because of high unemployment in the EU. They must learn German in order to integrate, but they all come to Germany and Austria with English as their working foreign language -- and they end up working in German and Austrian companies that require knowledge of English (or that officially operate in English). Young Europeans I meet, from Spain to Poland, speak English as their foreign language but often their French, German, Italian etc. is poor. There are exceptions: Finland has two official languages, so Finns speak Finnish as well as Swedish and English. In Spain, Catalans speak Castilian Spanish as well as Catalan. In Belgium, educated people speak the two official languages, Dutch (Flemish) and French. But all Europeans take years of English classes in school. German is no international language, even in Europe. It is rather marginal, and even young Poles and Czechs tend to speak much better English than German these days (it was different in 1980, when Russian and German were more important in eastern Europe). Today, German only becomes necessary when you want to work in a German-speaking country.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.