For those who enjoy language (not Njorl)

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the nature of language, specifically focusing on wordplay and the characteristics of the English language compared to other languages. Participants explore the origins, influences, and structural aspects of English, as well as the prevalence of puns and linguistic creativity.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants share humorous plays on words, highlighting the creativity found in language.
  • One participant notes that English is an amalgam language, incorporating elements from various linguistic sources, which may facilitate wordplay.
  • Others challenge the assertion that English is primarily Germanic, suggesting that its vocabulary is significantly influenced by Latin and French.
  • A participant argues that the structure of English is Germanic, while its vocabulary is derived from multiple languages, including Norman French.
  • There is a discussion about the ability of speakers of different languages, such as Dutch and German, to understand each other, with varying opinions on the similarities and differences between these languages and English.
  • Some participants express skepticism about the claim that English is equal parts German and Latin, with calls for evidence to support such assertions.
  • References to linguistic studies and historical migrations are made to support claims about the evolution and composition of the English language.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the linguistic classification of English, its influences, and the extent to which it can be considered Germanic or Latin. No consensus is reached regarding these points, and the discussion remains unresolved.

Contextual Notes

Some participants reference linguistic family trees and historical migrations to support their arguments, indicating a complex interplay of influences in the development of English. There are unresolved questions about the definitions and classifications of language families.

  • #31
Ok Monique, how did you make your post wider than everybody else's? I find its breadth intimidating and I'm irrationally swayed by it.

Njorl
 
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  • #32
Originally posted by Andre
Auto is uncommon in German. Man sprecht von eine Personen Kraft Wagen oder PKW. Es gibt auch Last Kraft Wagens, LKW, natürlich
Well suits me, then we have English: car, Dutch: wagen, German: wagen.. doesn't make a difference, does it? :P

Posted by Njorl: Ok Monique, how did you make your post wider than everybody else's? I find its breadth intimidating and I'm irrationally swayed by it.
I don't know what you mean, but I am glad it adds some weight to my words ;P
 
  • #33
Originally posted by Njorl
Ok Monique, how did you make your post wider than everybody else's? I find its breadth intimidating and I'm irrationally swayed by it.

Njorl
Njorl, you are not supposed to be enjoying this thread!
 
  • #34
English is a Germanic language, but over 50% of it's vocabulary is derived from Latin either through direct borrowings or through borrowings from the Romance languages esp. French. This is because of the Norman invasion and the heavy influence of French culture on English culture in the following centuries as well as the fact that Latin was the lingua franca in medieval Europe and thus most written works were in Latin.

There are also numerous borrwings from other languages especially Old Norse and Danish due to the Viking attacks, settlemnts, invasions, etc. and the periods when England was under the rulership of Scandinavian kings (i.e. Sveyn Forkbeard and Canute the Great).

All this means that few word in an English dictionary come striaght from Old English, IIRC only 5-10%, but this small group makes up the most commonly used words in the English language.
 
  • #35
Also, more precisely, English is a West Germanic language. Other languages in this group are Dutch and German. There is also East Germanic, which is now extinct, but included the language of the goths. North Germanic encompasses the Scandanavian languages.
 
  • #36
Originally posted by Lonewolf
Also, more precisely, English is a West Germanic language. Other languages in this group are Dutch and German. There is also East Germanic, which is now extinct, but included the language of the goths. North Germanic encompasses the Scandanavian languages.
Except Finnish (and Estonian, and Lappish, ...), which are related to Hungarian and are not Indo-European languages at all.
 
  • #37
Except Finnish (and Estonian, and Lappish, ...), which are related to Hungarian and are not Indo-European languages at all.

But of course :wink:
 
  • #38
So take THAT Monique! Nanny nanny boo boo!

- Warren
 
  • #39
Originally posted by chroot
So take THAT Monique! Nanny nanny boo boo!

- Warren
[b(]

But still I hold my point that English is not THAT much related to German. And I still don't see the connection with those wordplays :)
 
  • #40
J.R.R. Tolkien

... and not to forget that the author of Lord of the Rings was really fascinated by Finnish, and included many words in his trilogy which are Finnish (or closely resemble Finnish) - perhaps y'all even know these words, but don't recognise their origin?

Who knows, if Lord of the Rings is a smash hit in India, perhaps Hindi will have some Finnish loan words, via English, courtesy of Tolkien?
 
  • #41


Originally posted by Nereid
... and not to forget that the author of Lord of the Rings was really fascinated by Finnish, and included many words in his trilogy which are Finnish (or closely resemble Finnish) - perhaps y'all even know these words, but don't recognise their origin?

Who knows, if Lord of the Rings is a smash hit in India, perhaps Hindi will have some Finnish loan words, via English, courtesy of Tolkien?
Name some?
 
  • #42
Originally posted by chroot
Monique,I challenge you: find me a word in English that is NOT similar to a German or Latin word.

- Warren
Code: 
English: present  money purse      flower car  woman lady boy
Dutch:   geschenk geld  handtas    bloem  auto vrouw dame jongen
German:  geschenk geld  handtasche blume  auto frau  dame junge
You didn't congratulate me yet
 
  • #43
Originally posted by Monique
[b(]

But still I hold my point that English is not THAT much related to German. And I still don't see the connection with those wordplays :)

English nad German are both members of the West Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages, though the west Germanic group is often further subdividd into Anglo-Frisian (English and Frisian) and Netherlandic-German (Dutch, Flemish, Low German, High German, Yiddish and Afrikaans). So they are reasonably well related, though the most obvious difference aprt from the different vocabulary is the loss of inflection in English.
 
  • #44
Originally posted by Monique
You didn't congratulate me yet
There, there, congratulations. Oh, and your use of the [b(] smiley was pretty cute, too.

- Warren
 
  • #45


Originally posted by Monique
Name some?
"As his career attests, Tolkien loved languages: the more mellifluous and grammatically complex the better. As a young man, Tolkien learned a variety of medieval Germanic languages, including Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic. He also discovered to his delight the Celtic language Welsh, which was to eventually become the inspiration for his "younger" Elvish language Sindarin. Another turning point, however, came when he obtained a copy of a Finnish grammar. "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me" he wrote years later. This interest in Finnish would lead not only to his use of the Kalevala, as detailed above, but also to the form and details of his "high" Elvish language, Quenya.

One of the most obvious signs of Finnish influence on Quenya lies in its words. Tolkien borrowed some Quenya words directly from Finnish: for example, tul- "to come," derives from the Finnish verb of the same meaning, tulla. Similarly, the Quenya word for "path," tië, finds an exact counterpart in the Finnish word tie, "road." Other loans are evident, but less direct: for example, the Quenya word for "gift," anna, probably derives from the Finnish verb root anta-/anna-, meaning "to give." Helge Kåre Fauskangor, a Norwegian Tolkien enthusiast and a prodigious scholar of Tolkien's Elvish languages, has suggested that even the name Quenya (derived from the Quenya verb quen, "to speak") may owe its origin to the medieval Scandinavian word for Finns, cwenas, kven. Still other Quenya words look tantalizingly Finnish, albeit with a shift in meaning: for example, Quenya cirja is phonologically identical to the Finnish word for "book," kirja. But the Quenya word means not "book" but "high-prowed ship." Perhaps for Tolkien, as for his millions of readers afterward, books are truly "ships" of the imagination.

Tolkien's real indebtedness to Finnish, however, becomes apparent when we look at the grammar with which he endowed his high Elvish language. Like Finnish, Quenya is rich in suffixes that alter the meaning of the noun or verb to which they are attached. Many Quenya suffixes are drawn directly from Finnish. Finnish is also an agglutinative language, which means that it may add multiple suffixes to its words to further augment or refine their meanings. Noun suffixes can be used to convey location, number (singular or plural), and even ownership. Thus, for instance, the Finnish word kirjoissani is made up of the following parts: kirja (the noun "book"), -i- (a plural marker), -ssa (a case ending meaning "in"), and -ni (a possessive marker meaning "my"). Together, these syllables express the same meaning as the English phrase "in my books." Tolkien's Quenya follows its source closely, although it requires that the suffixes be added in a different order. Thus the Quenya parmanyassen can be broken down into the components parma ("book"),nya- ("my"), -sse- ("in"), and -n (plural marker)."

From:
http://www.amscan.org/tolkien.html
 
  • #46
And really, my opinion that English and German are similar is due to some childhood experience. My mother traveled to Germany a few times, and brought back as a gift some Lego toys, and also a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales in German. This was my first exposure to the German language.

The Lego set included townspeople -- little plastic people with little plastic nurse's uniforms and little plastic farm animals and so on. The Legos came with a sort of "instruction manual," telling the owner about the various pieces and showing examples of how to build a little miniature town out of them. It was all in German, but it was written for a very young child -- probably five or six years old -- and I was fascinated that I could actually understand just about all of it, even having never seen German before. Words like Doktor, for example, provided enough context for me to figure out the words for "in" and "are" and so on.

So, in my mind, German and English seem deeply related, even though they definitely have some glaring differences. Das ist alle lächelnden gelben Plastikgesichter für mich.

- Warren
 
  • #47
André:
Auto is uncommon in German. Man sprecht von eine Personen Kraft Wagen oder PKW. Es gibt auch Last Kraft Wagens, LKW, natürlich
I think my German uncle calls it an auto...PKW, LKW not to be confused with BMW? or VW

Ik wil graag het koets...het gouden koets, dat is, en sommige snOepje


Njorl
Ok Monique, how did you make your post wider than everybody else's? I find its breadth intimidating and I'm irrationally swayed by it.

I think Monique has magic powers...
 
  • #48
monique:
You didn't congratulate me yet

Hier, heb sommige bloemen...

@}-->-->-----
@}-->-->-------

NQ ;)
 
  • #49
Well, Chroot, when my mother came back from Germany
she brought Smurfs which were unknown at the time. In Germany
they were known as Schlumpfs or some such consonant-laden word...
 
  • #50
Ah, that smurfette... she certainly had her, uh, hands full...

- Warren
 
  • #51
Linguistic etiology and the study of female mitrochondrial DNA may indicate that we (arguably) all share a common genetic makeup as well as a common language root. 10’s of thousands of years ago in a cave our ancestors may have been speaking and using words we would recognize today. I guess “ma-ma” would be one of them. I suspect “no” would be commonly used by our ancestral females, as “please” would be by their male companions.
 
  • #52
Originally posted by Monique
Njorl, you are not supposed to be enjoying this thread!

It's alright... I've stopped sulking now.

Anyway, what about the swear words we have in English, F*** and c***...these are old Anglo-Saxon words I believe, dating back to well before 1066. And Thursday is a Norse word - Thor's day.

We also have quite a few indian words such as pjamas, veranda..
Arabic such as the insult bint, algebra ...

I can think of loads more but have to go now..
 
  • #53
Originally posted by Adrian Baker
And Thursday is a Norse word - Thor's day.
I remember my boss telling me one day the meaning of all the day-names.. I wish I could remember it still..

Sunday: day of the sun
Monday: day of the moon (moonday)
Tuesday: Tiu's day, also Tyr: norse god of war
Wednesday: Wodan's day, also Odin: norse god of god of war, poetry, wisdom, and death
Thursday: Thor's day: norse god of thunder
Friday: Freya's day: norse goddess of sex, fertility, war, and wealth
Saturday: Saturn's day: Roman and Italic god of agriculture
 
  • #54
Originally posted by NileQueen
André:
I think my German uncle calls it an auto...PKW, LKW not to be confused with BMW? or VW

Ik wil graag het koets...het gouden koets, dat is, en sommige snOepje

Originally posted by Chroot Das ist alle lächelnden gelben Plastikgesichter für mich.
That is all smiling yellow plastic faces for me. !? :smile: :smile: :smile: like that? :wink:
 
  • #55
Originally posted by Monique
I remember my boss telling me one day the meaning of all the day-names.. I wish I could remember it still..

Sunday: day of the sun
Monday: day of the moon (moonday)
Tuesday: Tiu's day, also Tyr: norse god of war
Wednesday: Wodan's day, also Odin: norse god of god of war, poetry, wisdom, and death
Thursday: Thor's day: norse god of thunder
Friday: Freya's day: norse goddess of sex, fertility, war, and wealth
Saturday: Saturn's day: Roman and Italic god of agriculture

The seven days of the week come to us from ancient Babylonian science. Each day refers to a moving body in the sky ie Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

These meanings got lost in some languages, but in English we still have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and in French we have Mardi, Mecredi, Vendredi and Jeudi.

Because the planets were such an influence on ancient thought we have sayings dating back to ancient Astrology such as a Mercurial temperament, or a Jovial character.

They also gave us the 360 degrees in a circle. They were pretty good scientists and mathematicians it appears.