Is English language more Romance or Germanic ? (test your abilities)

That's indeed how it works. Not to belabor the obvious, but some of the adjectives are probably not commonly used down at the bar as, for example, words like nebulous or diurnal or sanguine. Others are common usage for everyone. You get your molars removed by an oral surgeon, not a mouth surgeon. Some of these have morphed into nouns, too. You go to an optician to get your glasses, not an eye-tician. :)

True, but I have found nebulous to be a fairly ordinary word, often used metaphorically to refer to ideas or plans that are not easy to understand or that are not as logical as they could have been.

Other occupational examples include a cardiac surgeon, who works on hearts, an aquatic coach, who coaches athletes engaged in water-related sports, an equine caretaker, who takes care of horses, and a domestic worker, who works in a house as e.g. a maid.

Formerly, many Germanic/Latin pairings were used in Chemistry, for example:

Iron/Ferric and Ferrous
Tin/Stannic
Gold/Auric
Silver/Argentic
Copper/Cupric

When I took Chemistry about 10-15 years ago in the USA, I was told that this usage was deprecated and that one should use the plain English noun, such as Iron, either alone or with an oxidation number if such number is relevant.

Old style: Ferric Oxide
New style: Iron(III) Oxide
 
The backbone of English is clearly Germanic, as has been mentioned, but there is indeed a huge percentage of French-derived vocabulary. I don't speak any languages other than English, but I do know I can often 'get the gist' of French texts, newspapers, etc because of these commonalities. French being a Romance tongue, this actually means I can pick out more from Spanish or Italian writings than German equivalents.

When verbalised, however, things are very different. I definitely think accents in Scandinavian languages, particularly Danish, are the most familiar sounding.

As Angela said, neither I nor anybody I know would be able to understand the original, Old English manuscript of Beowulf.

The huge change in our language in the Middle English period is incredibly fascinating though. Most people seem to take it as a given that the change occurred because French was 'foisted' on the poor, suppressed natives, but surely if that was the case we'd all speak French. I'd say it was more believable that the melding of Old English and Old French was more a product of increased migration, particularly after the Plantagenet ascension to the throne, and the gradual drift of Norman-descended Francophones into lower levels of English society - primogeniture can't benefit everyone, after all.
 
The everyday's english is certainly form germanic origin .
But when people say that a majority of the vocabulary is close to french , so come from latin ,
they forget that :
1) latin was very close to gaulish
2) gaulish was also spoken in England
So English as French could have a strong legacy form the gaulish language .
 
Modern English is more Romantic.

Old and to degree Middle English certainly wasn't. Hence why certain older fashioned than modern dialects (of which rp is the least qualified to be called old) in the UK are compared to Germanic languages such as Norwegian by foreigners from such areas. A comparison an actual trained German linguist agreed to.
 
A Romance speaker here. English is definitely Germanic. It's the easiest non-Romance language for us all because of the profound French/Latin influence and because its grammar was mostly very simplified roughly in the same general direction that the Romance languages went (e.g. loss of all noun declensions, more strict SVO word order, some similar periphrastic verb tenses, etc.). But it still works and sounds like a Germanic language: the phonology, the structure of the morphology and syntax, the basic vocabulary (and that's what really matters 80% of the times) is mostly from the Germanic "core". Besides, a language's classification is never determined on the basis of general lexicon, or even of basic lexicon. There are languages that underwent profound "relexification" even in the very basic vocabulary, but they don't "switch" to another language family because of that. Their structure remains the same, the vocabulary is just much more flexible and changeable.
 
Watch this video by Canadian linguist Paul. He makes an excellent approach of theme of this thread:

 
By the time of Chaucer the English is intelligible. Yes, my professor, a sadist, made us read it in the original.
img_57781.jpg



Beowulf? Absolutely not.

introduction-to-beowulf-11-728.jpg
 
By the time of Chaucer the English is intelligible. Yes, my professor, a sadist, made us read it in the original.
img_57781.jpg



Beowulf? Absolutely not.

introduction-to-beowulf-11-728.jpg
I believe your suffering must have been similar to mine. I was obliged to read the Galician-Portuguese troubadour songs produced during the period from the end of the twelfth century to the middle of the fourteenth century in the literature classes of the second year of high school. An unforgettable torture. LOL.
 
I believe your suffering must have been similar to mine. I was obliged to read the Galician-Portuguese troubadour songs produced during the period from the end of the twelfth century to the middle of the fourteenth century in the literature classes of the second year of high school. An unforgettable torture. LOL.

I hear you. :) It almost ruined Chaucer for me. I've since re-read him in "modern" English, and it was such a pleasure. I love his "voice": the wry, wise, witty, sensual personality which shines out in "The Canterbury Tales".
 
Same way I suffered through the Homer's epic tales, the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original. I could read Classical Greek with no problem. Homer I needed a dictionary.
 
BTW, I watched Stieg Larsson's film trilogy in the original Swedish. A lot of common Swedish/English words that I recognized on the fly.
 
English was a Danish dialect, later creoled by French. Yes, I mean to be provokative and hopefully funny, but listen:
English: The Helmsman said to them, that they should listen, grab the railing by their hands, and hold fast instead of talking, and also hoist the fore sail.
Danish: Hjælmsmanden sagde til dem, at de skulle lytte, gribe rælingen med deres hænder, og holde fast istedet for at tale, og også hejse for sejlet.
English: after that he took a stick, and goes out on the bowsprit to fish a flounder.
Danish: efter det tog han en stok, og går ud på bovsprydet for at fiske en flynder.

There is something about it, someone posted this link before. Interesting: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121127094111.htm
 
Same way I suffered through the Homer's epic tales, the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original. I could read Classical Greek with no problem. Homer I needed a dictionary.
I read it in a Danish translation, it didnt make it much better. I couldnt understand half of it. Mostly because the descriptions and connotations were so alien. Im equally alianated by modern Brazilian poems, such as "Desafinado", and maybe because of the same reason. Alien connotations and symbolic images. Whereas I do understand those of Thomas Grey, Schiller and Goethe.
 
I and some friends came out of a Danish Nightclub in Arhus, some years ago, and whilst we were talking among ourselves, a couple of locals came over to us, and said we thought you were speaking Dannish, as our broad accents are from the North East of England. He could not believe we were English as some of our sounds, and phrases we were using, were exactly the same as he was using. Most people from my area, speak very fast among friends, but then have to talk completely different and slower, to other's from different area's.
 
English was a Danish dialect, later creoled by French. Yes, I mean to be provokative and hopefully funny, but listen:
English: The Helmsman said to them, that they should listen, grab the railing by their hands, and hold fast instead of talking, and also hoist the fore sail.
Danish: Hjælmsmanden sagde til dem, at de skulle lytte, gribe rælingen med deres hænder, og holde fast istedet for at tale, og også hejse for sejlet.
English: after that he took a stick, and goes out on the bowsprit to fish a flounder.
Danish: efter det tog han en stok, og går ud på bovsprydet for at fiske en flynder.

There is something about it, someone posted this link before. Interesting: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121127094111.htm

Or... English is a French dialect, in which some remnants of Danish survived.

English : The choice of specific phrases traduces an evident desire on the part of Jensen to present English as a Danish dialect.
French : Le choix de phrases spécifiques traduit un désir évident de la part de Jensen de présenter l'anglais comme un dialecte danois.

Just kidding, of course. My real feeling is that for all the vocab it inherited from French, English remains essentially Germanic, particularly in its spoken forms. Most of the English words instantly identified by French speakers in script will go unrecognized when the said script is read out loud to them. The very different patterns of stressing make for most of the difficulty we Frenchies have with oral English. Besides, most of the words used in everyday basic conversation are Germanic in origin - unlike those polysyllabic words, essentially Romance, you find in scientific papers.
 
Both the Danish examples and French examples are relatively understandable, though the French one is easier to understand. But that's probably due to Canadian curriculum. English is still pretty "Germanic" but it definitely has a lot of outside influences.
 
Duarte:
"Ondas do mar de Vigo, se vistes meu amigo,
ondas do mar levado, se vistes meu amado"

Hahahaha... I had to read them as well. But I enjoyed them, beautiful ancient verses from the time Galician and Portuguese were the same language (I believe they still are).
 
Old English was verbally based, Beowulf, etc was mostly recited by bards, as with most, Old English was the sound, and voice of the illiterate.
To translate these sounds into writing is nigh on impossible, without hearing the dialects in which they were heard. Most of the surviving early manuscripts were written by educated Monks etc who understood Latin, which they mostly translated.

Today it will be impossible to understand the full understanding of these old English records unless you hear how they were originally spoken, many of the old records and Anglo Saxon words are understandable if they are spoken in the right enviroment, or regions, where dialects still retain and recognise many sounds and meanings which are seeminly unfamiliar to people outside of the area, same with the early translations, Shakespear uses a middle English Dialect I believe, but even he at that time would have difficulty understanding a lot of the Accents further North or away from his area.

An example of a similar problem is todays subtitles, They are not recording what is actually spoken, they reflect the writers understanding of what is being said and heard, and often much is missed, just as the early Anglo Saxon translations no doubt had been effected by the Latin educated Monks who mainly were the ones doing the translating, and interpretations.

The English Language is more Germanic, but English itself needs to be understood, to understand this

Another prime example is the wording on the famous 'Alfred jewel' Translated by academics as 'Alfred ordered me to be made' but where I live in the North East of England, we still use the very similar sounds it seems to state, which gives a very different meaning to, AElfred Mec Heht Gewyrcan .

In my dialect Heht and Gewyrcan, are similar to our todays use of Hed/Het, Worken/Wirken. ( 'Ge' of gewyrcan as used today in modern German, is silent in English now ) which translates in my dialect as ' Alfred had me working". We still use a long 'A' sound, as in the 'AE' of AElfred/Alfred and 'en' for ing etc, these are just two of thousands of dialect differences we have.
,
A very different translation from the recognised statement. Although it is very difficult for me to translate my sounds, they are identical/recognisable as the very same sounds as Heht , and Wyrcan, Heaht/Hed/Het (had )Worken/Wirken ( working ). If you heard me say that phrase you would imediately recognise they are the same.

This reads to me, "Alfred had me working", meaning the jewel/Aestle itself was made to work, ie point to read, or write, as in teaching etc. ie 'had me working' would mean exactly that.

The Jewel,s purpose supports exactly that, as used in reading,teaching, or writing, and at least in my own opinion was not meant to read ' Alfred had me made'. Although he orderd his bishops to receive them, this may be his personal one due to where it was found and his associated history there at the time. If this view was accepted it would represent, a more realistic voice from the past,from Alfred and I believe this is why it was made.

If he had ordered it to be 'made' In my opinion it would of used a word such as Macht/Macken, modern German Made/Makes, to reflect this, as Gewyrcan means to work , and use. its not a static term. In my dialect these would be Mak/Maken/Mad, not Make/Making/Made.

It then would possibly of read, AELFRED MEC HEHT MACHEN/MACHT, or the similar A/S regional word for Made/make.

Incidently the more I look at the image on the Aelfred Jewel. I believe he could be holding two complete Aestels, as they look like ties with bows, ( shoelace knots ), rather in my opinion mistakenly, in the form of Blossening branches. They could either way both, indicate meaning spreading, teaching learning, and may actually depict the image of Alfred himself, Anglo Saxon artwork nearly always had hidden meanings )

Even today for me an Englishman, I have to write English very differently, and it is very different to what and the way I speak, this is because of our UK education system.
 
Last edited:

This thread has been viewed 72155 times.

Back
Top