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If premise is that Latin-Germanic cultures merged (not seamlessly of course) starting from roughly the year 800 in what soon became Europe and such people (however divided or united amongst themselves) by the 1800s conquered the world, then, yes, maybe there is an argument there, even if not everyone will agree.
But the purely linguistic one is certainly a bit silly.
English is, virtually, two languages spoken by people who code switch. There is formal English of Latin origin, and informal English of Germanic origin, and they have been blended so long, they observe the same rules of grammar so they can be code-switched easily. Consider the difference:
(Latinate) Avoid calculating the productivity of your juvenile poultry until the proper process of incubation has been completely materialized.
(Germanic) Don't count your chickens until they hatch.
English is a Germanic language. Might as well call Dutch and German Romance as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
English is, virtually, two languages spoken by people who code switch. There is formal English of Latin origin, and informal English of Germanic origin, and they have been blended so long, they observe the same rules of grammar so they can be code-switched easily. Consider the difference:
(Latinate) Avoid calculating the productivity of your juvenile poultry until the proper process of incubation has been completely materialized.
(Germanic) Don't count your chickens until they hatch.
Even still, it is impossible to string together English sentences without using Germania words. "the", "he", "your", "of", etc.
It isn't totally stupid. the vocabulary of English is almost entirely Latin based. I mean most of the words that we speak on a percentage basis are not Latin based, but most of the words in the language by percentage are based on Latin.
This is how I would have written the bolded part: most of the words in the dictionary by percentage are based on Latin.
The words used in the most common speech and the grammar indicate a languages origin and affiliation, not the corpus of vocabulary in a dictionary which is an artificial. If the OED editors decided to add every word in the Japanese language to the OED tomorrow, would we say, "Well, there is a plurality of Japanese vocabulary in the English language, English must be a Japonic language."
It is the state of the living language that defines it. I would not argue that words borrowed from Latin sources have had a gret impact on English, but if one is going to say that English is a Romance language, then most European languages would have to be thought of as Romance languages, if to a lesser degree than English, especially when taking into account the vocabulary used to discuss academic subjects, such as this very one on linguistics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
(Latinate) Avoid calculating the productivity of your juvenile poultry until the proper process of incubation has been completely materialized.
(Germanic) Don't count your chickens until they hatch.
This is how I would have written the bolded part: most of the words in the dictionary by percentage are based on Latin.
The words used in the most common speech and the grammar indicate a languages origin and affiliation, not the corpus of vocabulary in a dictionary which is an artificial. If the OED editors decided to add every word in the Japanese language to the OED tomorrow, would we say, "Well, there is a plurality of Japanese vocabulary in the English language, English must be a Japonic language."
Does that mean that the barbarian Germanic peoples to your north (the Americans) will eventually topple your empire and rule you for centuries?
That's a risk....
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