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The Lounge
Art, Music, History, and Linguistics
English is not normal, says John McWhorter
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[QUOTE="N1206, post: 6826497, member: 659058"] Well we have a few 'double u' words. Vacuum and continuum. But those come from Latin, I think. And I think McWhorter was just trolling with his comments about Fries. The DUTCH can't understand their Friesland countrymen, so no, Fries is not the closest thing English has to a sister language. Dutch is far closer. Once you get over the changes in how vowel sounds are written (oe is English oo, and oo is English long o, for example) you really start to see where English words come from. We have 'night' in English and 'nacht' in Dutch--but in Dutch you HEAR those silent English letters. You also begin to see where we ALL borrowed. In English we have 'way'; The Dutch have 'weg', I suspect from German roots. In English we have 'manner' and in Dutch 'manier' -- both by way of French from the Latin. Dutch retained the 'continental' object-subject-verb construction like French in proper speech, though; whereas English jettisoned THAT. English: I gave it to him Dutch: Ik heb het naar hem gegeven (I have it to him given) French: Je la lui a donne (I it to him gave) Love or hate the guys who created the first English dictionaries, they made spellings reflect word origins. That gives us a LOT of spelling rules that other languages who didn't do that, or didn't borrow so extensively, don't have. Most of his McWhorter's article is sensible enough. But Fries? no. Scots (and yes, that is real and distinct from Scottish English) or Dutch. Frieslanders speak a language like back-haller West Virginian or outport Newfinese. If you didn't grow up there, you can't understand it. [/QUOTE]
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English is not normal, says John McWhorter
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