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New York Times: A United Kingdom? Maybe

English has almost 80-90% of its vocabalury from latin.
Nope; it's roughly 25% French, 25% Latin, and 25% Germanic. Fun fact: of the 100 words most commonly used today, four don't come from Old English, and only one (#76, 'number') derives from Latin. The other three are from Norse.

For fun, you can listen to West Frisian radio here: http://www.omropfryslan.nl/ Click on Radio up at the top, then select "Harkje Live". It's mostly incomprehensible, but you hear the odd word, and you also get the strange feeling that you should understand what's being said. And then you occasionally get an entire phrase that is recognisable, like 'That is correct'-- that one shocked me.

At its extreme Sweden was claimed to be the "officina gentium", the workshop of peoples, and everything in biblical history supposedly occurred in Sweden, never mind that the original language of man wasn't Hebrew, but Swedish.
That would make some sense of the otherwise surprising claim I've heard that Swedish linguists of that time made: namely that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew, the serpent French-- and God Swedish!
 
That would make some sense of the otherwise surprising claim I've heard that Swedish linguists of that time made: namely that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew, the serpent French-- and God Swedish!
Yeah, that guy.
The problem is historians can't make up their mind if it was entirely serious (it's possible) or a spoof on the others.:)
 
Taliesin's Historical Principle: all else being equal, the most fun possibility is true.

It serves me well so far, and I'm sure European History Quarterly will come around soon. :D

Another fun fact: all our really rude words were adopted from Dutch sailors in the sixteenth century.
 
No-one could deny that English is a Germanic language, but I had to laugh at this example:

English: Submarine. [under sea]
German: Unterseeboot [undersea boat]

What you have there is two words with similar meanings, one Germanic, the other Latin. How is that evidence for English being Germanic? You might as well say:

English: See you soon.
French: Au revoir.

And conclude that English is a Romance language...

By the way, the French word joli means "pretty", not "jolly". Also, as I understand it, dark hair is common among Celts - dark hair and pale eyes, strikingly.
 
No-one could deny that English is a Germanic language, but I had to laugh at this example:



What you have there is two words with similar meanings, one Germanic, the other Latin. How is that evidence for English being Germanic? You might as well say:

English: See you soon.
French: Au revoir.

And conclude that English is a Romance language...

By the way, the French word joli means "pretty", not "jolly". Also, as I understand it, dark hair is common among Celts - dark hair and pale eyes, strikingly.

I think you missed his point, which was that the common words/phrases/examples were Germanic, but the modern/specialized ones were from Latin.

Verbose said:
But the Belagae weren't Germanic speakers as far as most linguists seem to agree.

And besides, there seems to be good reason to consider the Roman use of "Germanic" as a geographical term (living east of the Rhine), and not a linguistic/cultural one. A lot of the Germanic tribes from Caesar dealt with would seem to have spoken Celtic languages.

Hey, you'll get no argument from me; I was just explaining. I don't think it makes much sense at all.
 
Where I live has a rich history of different peoples with the towns and villages having a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Viking names in the main. The vikings certainly didn't have a minor impact here, probably half of the peninsula was once in their control under a semi-independent parliment to boot.

Its might be worth considering however that the NE corner of the peninsula (Wallasey) is named after the Anglo-Saxon word for foreigner/stranger. It would seem strange to refer to a population who spoke the same language and came from the same background as foreign. As far as I can tell the peninsula contains at least 5 places with either Old Irish or Old Welsh names, so the notion that no celtic placenames survive in England may not be entirely accurate.
 
It is true, however, that English absorbed little from the native Celtic language, probably no more than thirty words. In comparison, 200-odd Norse additions make the Vikings look much more influential.
 
langur7.jpg


Nature 426 435-9 2003

Thanks. A beautiful diagram of the Indo-European family.
 
I think so. I haven't actually read the article (couldn't find it on Nature) but it was an image used in a recent lecture. It shows how many languages are related. I think the red numbers are years before present. The longer the line, the more change has occurred so Italian looks like a very unchanged language. I think the little numbers are bootstrap numbers, which is from what I understand, a degree of certainty that that is where the branch should be. Some of these might seem a bit low but languages exchange words with each other even if they're not closely related. English and French have exchanged words, for example.
 
Actually, if that's the case with the line length, it's not accurate. Italian experienced major changes over the years, and Sardinian is shown as being more changed. When it's actually one of the 2 (uncontested) least changed Romance languages.

Maybe a line with many short pieces just represents the splitting of a language into smaller ones?
 
For fun, you can listen to West Frisian radio here: http://www.omropfryslan.nl/ Click on Radio up at the top, then select "Harkje Live". It's mostly incomprehensible, but you hear the odd word, and you also get the strange feeling that you should understand what's being said. And then you occasionally get an entire phrase that is recognisable, like 'That is correct'-- that one shocked me.
I once heard that Frisian is the language that resembles old-english most. One guy even made a Frisian-Japanese dictionary so people from Japan could use it to study old English :rolleyes:
 
Some of the wilder modern interpretations are trying to claim a considerable influence on Bronze Age Scandinavia directly from the Mycenian civilisation. They claim that there are similarities in symbolism between them not found anywhere else.

All interpretations about these things tend to have to be speculative in any case.

An interesting example of common symbolism is that Europeans had dragons and so did the Chinese. Was it contact - I don't think so but I don't know... It may have just been chance.
 
For fun, you can listen to West Frisian radio here: http://www.omropfryslan.nl/ Click on Radio up at the top, then select "Harkje Live". It's mostly incomprehensible, but you hear the odd word, and you also get the strange feeling that you should understand what's being said. And then you occasionally get an entire phrase that is recognisable, like 'That is correct'-- that one shocked me.

Hey, I understood every single word I heard at that radio so far!!

Spoiler :
It's true that the fact that what is broadcasted currently is an American rock song might have helped me somewhat... :mischief:
 
I once heard that Frisian is the language that resembles old-english most. One guy even made a Frisian-Japanese dictionary so people from Japan could use it to study old English :rolleyes:

Sranan, at least on the tree I posted, is more related. Whatever that is anyway... :S
 
Might be extinct...? :hmm:

Edit:
Sranan Tongo is a creole language spoken by most people in Suriname. It is the mother tongue of about 100,000 people in Suriname who are descendants of slaves brought from Africa during the colonial period. It is also the lingua franca between ethnic groups. Many Sranan Tongo speakers also live in the Netherlands.Speakers: Sranan Tongo is a creole language spoken by most people in Suriname. It is the mother tongue of about 100,000 people in Suriname who are descendants of slaves brought from Africa during the colonial period. It is also the lingua franca between ethnic groups. Many Sranan Tongo speakers also live in the Netherlands.
 
Also, as I understand it, dark hair is common among Celts - dark hair and pale eyes, strikingly.

And here I heard that it was common for Celts to have fair hair and dark eyes. It probably just goes to show that such attempts at reconstructing what was an ancient Celt like (or any other elusive people) are very unreliable. Especially more so, because it's very debated who the Celts were: an ethnicity, a high caste with the same genetic/ethnic origin, a wide culture adopted by different people that didn't share the same origin, a mixture of all of the above, etc.?

More on topic, I always had a strong disliking of History as told from the perspective of people A invaded people B, therefor people B were all killed and nowadays we all descend from A. It seems to me that the current populations of most of Europe are genetically related to those that already were there thousands of years ago, and subsequent invasions and language changes only had limited impact in the genetic pool. It wasn't until modern times, that travel and communications improvement and industrial economic development allowed for mass scale immigration I think.

Btw, weren't there earlier genetic studies that very much related the present population of the British Isles with that of Northern Spain and Portugal, which is also traditionally considered as pre-roman Celts?
Nowadays both regions may seem very different, but Iberia is historically split in two greater geographic and cultural areas: the wet, mountainous and atlantic north, and the hotter, plainer and mediterranean south, and until the modern nation states, Iberia looks like a mini-Europe, with the North strongly linked with Northern Europe, and the South linked to the mediterranean.
 
An interesting example of common symbolism is that Europeans had dragons and so did the Chinese. Was it contact - I don't think so but I don't know... It may have just been chance.

Problem is, European dragons and Chinese dragons aren't really very similar, either in meaning or in general appearance - at least in my opinion! Chinese dragons are basically long versions of Chinese lions, which aren't a whole lot like real lions, either.
 
It is true, however, that English absorbed little from the native Celtic language, probably no more than thirty words. In comparison, 200-odd Norse additions make the Vikings look much more influential.

I wouldn't find that suprising to be honest if the traditional view is followed. The Celts may have been here the longest but their control of England ended long ago. An invading group often impose their control over a region by renaming the places it controls and supplanting the language.

I'm not saying Celtic was more important however, merely that celtic names do appear in England, and populations of Celts did survive there for some time. That said though the Norse who made up the Viking part of the Peninsula came there after being exiled from Ireland, so its entirely possible that the Irish placenames date from that period.
 
Problem is, European dragons and Chinese dragons aren't really very similar, either in meaning or in general appearance - at least in my opinion! Chinese dragons are basically long versions of Chinese lions, which aren't a whole lot like real lions, either.

And the position they occupy in each region's folklore is also different: the european dragon is generally a malevolent creature, while in the Far East, at least to my knowledge that isn't so. Also, the european dragon origins lie perhaps in Persia or the Near East, and I believe there are also dragon-like creatures in other parts of Asia, including India. So, I'd say there are these weird creatures in the mythology and folklore of many cultures, which we conveniently group in the general category "Dragon", but maybe they don't have much in common...
 
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