A Stupid question.

[Peter Hickman]

Fortunately, my newsreader now automates this. -10 points to a poster
each time he uses the word *virii.

Brilliant, you are going to mark down anyone who agrees with you, even
your own posts.

What intellect!

 

[Andre Wisniewski]

German added that 'beta' (double s), confused the hell out of my mother
when she returned home.

Germans can't handle this, too.

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

PH> Brilliant, you are going to mark down anyone who agrees with
PH> you, even your own posts.

First, people whose posts I read tend to accumulate positive points
very quickly; many of the knowledgable regulars here have scores well
over 500. Tad McLellan or Uri Guttman, for instance, could each
produce 50 posts with "virii" in them and still be scored positive -
even if they made no other posts in the interim; but Purl Gurl's posts
have, alas, been scored so far into the negative that I no longer see
them unless they're direct replies to one of my posts.

My own posts aren't scored at all: presumably if I made the post, I
want to see it.

Charlton

 

[Ala Qumsieh]

You don't speak german, do you?

I am trilingual, but German is not one of the languages I speak,
unfortunately.

Here's my reasoning why I *think* English is more complicated than
German. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Both German and English are
derived from the same origins, and hence are grammatically very similar.
English was more influenced by other languages like French and Spanish
due to the larger role of the British empire in history. There are more
countries that speak English, than German, and hence more variations in
spelling, dialect and newly introduced words.

I am not a linguist, or a historian. So, my analysis might be a bit too
naive.

--Ala

 

[Tassilo v. Parseval]

Also sprach Ala Qumsieh:

I am trilingual, but German is not one of the languages I speak,
unfortunately.

Here's my reasoning why I *think* English is more complicated than
German. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Both German and English are
derived from the same origins, and hence are grammatically very similar.

They are lexically similar (and that even to a limited extent only).
German's grammar however has not much ressemblance with that of English.
It's mostly the Latin grammar where nouns have a gender and a casus
according to which they are declined (declination of nouns is something
that has been dropped in most Roman languages whereas German still has
it). Verbs and their treatment obey similar rules as in Roman languages,
only that German just has conditional and indicative mode (and is thus
lacking the subjunctive). Especially when it comes to verbs, English and
German have nothing in common. The result from all that is that German
word ordering is looser than in most other European languages (with the
exception of some Eastern European languages, most notably Russian).

When it comes to learning, German tends to have both a steeper and
longer learning curve than English. While English might have a large
corpus of words, it needs much more practice to build a correct German
sentence. It has to do with the amount of real-time computation that has
to be carried out by the speaker (figuring out the gender of a noun, its
casus in the given context, based on that its specific declination; verb
forms, which are different for each tense, must match the grammatical
person of the subject). Once a sentence has more than a subject and a
predicate (German sentences can be arbitrarily long, quite unlike in
English where a stylistical threshold for the length of sentences
exists), all bets are off when it comes to word order: of all possible
permutations of a list words, a certain percentage is valid of which
maybe 10% really mean what the speaker intended to say. Add or take away
one word, and suddenly the words might need to be rearranged.

English was more influenced by other languages like French and Spanish
due to the larger role of the British empire in history. There are more
countries that speak English, than German, and hence more variations in
spelling, dialect and newly introduced words.

And particularly a lot of simplifications have made it into English
which, as far as I know, has rarely happened to German. Another factor
is that German is mostly spoken by native speakers whereas everyone
nowadays learns English.

One field in which English is arguably harder than German is phonetics.
Seeing a German word written will usually allow you to say it properly
(some exceptions exist but those can be reduced to a few general rules
of exception).

Tassilo

 

[Brad Baxter]

Also sprach Ala Qumsieh: ---8<---

And particularly a lot of simplifications have made it into English
which, as far as I know, has rarely happened to German. Another factor
is that German is mostly spoken by native speakers whereas everyone
nowadays learns English.

One field in which English is arguably harder than German is phonetics.
Seeing a German word written will usually allow you to say it properly
(some exceptions exist but those can be reduced to a few general rules
of exception).

Ya'll talkin' 'bout English?

http://www.gagirl.com/southern/south.html

A past university system chancellor (a Brit) liked relate that he was
present when the Georgia legislature debated that English should be the
official language of the state. He listened, and listened ...

Brad

 

[Tassilo v. Parseval]

Also sprach Brad Baxter:

Ya'll talkin' 'bout English?

Yes, with a bias towards written English, maybe.

http://www.gagirl.com/southern/south.html

That's about a dialect. Most languages have distinct dialects. Those
usually manifest in spoken language. Many of the terms on this page
merely differ in pronounciation. A Southener apparently tends to stretch
certain syllables or swallow parts of an expression as in

liar => lar
is it => zit

I bet that someone from Houston, TX could still exchange letters with a
Scot from Glasgow (or from Aberdeen for that matter, so that both might
be in the oil business).

There are only few dialects that also exist in written form. I've seen
newspapers in Luxembourg written in 'Letzeburgisch' which is a German
dialect that Germans will usually not understand.

Tassilo

 

[Ian Wilson]

English was more influenced by other languages like French and Spanish
due to the larger role of the British empire in history.

AFAIK English was influenced by French largely because England was
invaded by Normans from France in 1066. After the usual round of
genocide and subjugation, the provincial Norman variety of French
remained the official language of English government for hundreds of
years. This was long before the British Empire came into existence.

Just my two farthings worth.

 

[Chris Mattern]

AFAIK English was influenced by French largely because England was
invaded by Normans from France in 1066. After the usual round of
genocide and subjugation, the provincial Norman variety of French
remained the official language of English government for hundreds of
years. This was long before the British Empire came into existence.

Just my two farthings worth.

Yep. English before the Norman Invasion is now literally a foreign
language to us; we can't read things like Beowulf unless they are
translated. But English after the Normans were integrated is readable,
if difficult. The Canterbury Tales can be read if they are just
annotated for the modern reader.
--
Christopher Mattern

"Which one you figure tracked us?"
"The ugly one, sir."
"...Could you be more specific?"

 

[Andre Wisniewski]

There are only few dialects that also exist in written form. I've seen
newspapers in Luxembourg written in 'Letzeburgisch' which is a German
dialect that Germans will usually not understand.

Switzerdutsch (spoken by swiss) is also difficult to understand.

Many germans are able to understand the spoken but not the written words.

In many regions germans not only use a different pronunciation but also a
different grammar.
e.g. in regular german 'Du hättest mir auch etwas mitbringen können'
looks, spoken by a friend of mine:
'Dau hätts mia ooch wat mett kunn bränge'

 

[Andre Wisniewski]

One field in which English is arguably harder than German is phonetics.
Seeing a German word written will usually allow you to say it properly
(some exceptions exist but those can be reduced to a few general rules
of exception).

That's the greatest problem all germans have: The pronounciation of 'th'.
So all but some scots aren't able to speak the german 'ch'.

 

[Matt Garrish]

Yep. English before the Norman Invasion is now literally a foreign
language to us; we can't read things like Beowulf unless they are
translated. But English after the Normans were integrated is readable,
if difficult. The Canterbury Tales can be read if they are just
annotated for the modern reader.
--

And the Norman nobility would have spoken Latin, not French (and English is
much closer phonetically to German than French, etc., etc., etc.). Let's not
get too carried away in our attempts to simplify the evolution of the
language.

Matt

 

[Chris Mattern]

And the Norman nobility would have spoken Latin, not French

Not really; some of the more educated nobles might speak Latin, and
certainly most writing would be done in Latin--but it would be far
from a foregone conclusion that a given noble could write. They
would've used Norman French in everyday conversation. And certainly
the Norman soldiery, far more present than the relative handful of
nobles, would've spoken nothing else.

(and English
is much closer phonetically to German than French, etc., etc., etc.).

Well, of course; English still remains at its base a Germanic language.
But the absorption of Norman French into the language changed it
dramatically, turning it into something fairly close to what we call
"English" today.

Let's not get too carried away in our attempts to simplify the evolution
of the language.

Don't mean to--certainly the influence of Norman French wasn't the
only big change to the English language. Shall we talk about the
Great Vowel Shift?
--
Christopher Mattern

"Which one you figure tracked us?"
"The ugly one, sir."
"...Could you be more specific?"

 

[Ben Morrow]

Well, of course; English still remains at its base a Germanic language.
But the absorption of Norman French into the language changed it
dramatically, turning it into something fairly close to what we call
"English" today.

Far more than simply the absorbtion of Norman French: when a number of
peoples are thrown together with no common language they will develop a
very simplified form of communication called a 'pidgin', with no real
grammar. When the next generation of children are born, and grow up
hearing this, however, something rather remarkable happens: they
spontaneously invent a language with the same vocabulary but a complete,
if simple, grammar, called a 'creole'. This is the main reason for
English having lost the complications of its Germanic roots.

Ben

 

[Matt Garrish]

Not really; some of the more educated nobles might speak Latin, and
certainly most writing would be done in Latin--but it would be far
from a foregone conclusion that a given noble could write. They
would've used Norman French in everyday conversation. And certainly
the Norman soldiery, far more present than the relative handful of
nobles, would've spoken nothing else.

Oops, that was a lost train of thought. Obviously very few people would have
spoken Latin, but it was the written language of the elite. Regardless, it's
still too simple to say that Normand "French" is the base for Middle English
(and subsequently Modern English), which is what I was responding to. Yes it
had an influence, but that does not mean that English is derived from it.

Rather than keep this totally off-topic conversation going, though, I'd
simply point anyone interested to this site:
http://www.anglo-norman.net/an-intro.html

Matt

 

[Thomas Russler]

Oops, that was a lost train of thought. Obviously very few people would have
spoken Latin, but it was the written language of the elite. Regardless, it's
still too simple to say that Normand "French" is the base for Middle English
(and subsequently Modern English), which is what I was responding to. Yes it
had an influence, but that does not mean that English is derived from it.

Rather than keep this totally off-topic conversation going, though, I'd
simply point anyone interested to this site:
http://www.anglo-norman.net/an-intro.html

Matt

This is useful too:

http://www.danshort.com/ie/timeline.htm