Posted on 06/09/2015 6:37:00 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
First, the greed: invasion and theft. The Romans invaded Britain in the 1st Century AD and brought their alphabet; in the 7th Century, the Angles and Saxons took over, along with their language. Starting in the 9th Century, Vikings occupied parts of England and brought some words (including they, displacing the Old English hie).
Then the Norman French conquered in 1066 – and replaced much of the vocabulary with French, including words which over time became beef, pork, invade, tongue and person.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
“The Dutch determined our grammar structure.”
Frisians?
I’m not sure. It’s just been noted that the English language is very similar to Dutch in its grammar rules. It’s assumed it came from them when they ruled England for a bit.
Wait ‘til the BBC finds out that across the pond English is being replaced by Spanglish and Ebonics.
My personal favorite is the fact that when a house burns down it also burns up.
And flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.
The letter "a" can have at least six distinct sounds, as represented by the words Able, Apple, All, Arrow, About, Any. These sounds can vary according to accent and dialect. For example, I pronounce Mary, Marry and Merry exactly the same, but there are those who pronounce each of these words differently.
GHOTI.......
I like English because it’s the perfect language for singing. It has a certain neutrality but with just the right amount of germanic crispness. Somehow the basic sound of English just seems well suited to music. I wonder if this is my bias and conditioning talking or if there’s any objective analysis out there that has concluded the same thing.
A friend from Germany said his thinking changed when he learned English. It is so loose, so free, so fluid in a way that German certainly is not. Words can be made up and changed. It is amazingly flexible. I teach ESL adults and kids English, and tutor other subjects as well. I think it is a wonderful language. You can see the history of the people as you study it - “Oh, this is from Norwegian. That is French, that’s why you don’t pronounce the last 4 letters.” Etc.
We have about 100,000 words and THEN the jargon from the different sciences, etc. Spanish - every letter is always pronounced the same, and it is spelled phonetically. There are also about 40,000 words total.
I’ll take English any day to any other language I’ve studied (about 5).
It really makes me mad when I have to fill out a form and it asks for my gender instead of sex. If I am in a rotten mood I will scratch out the word 'gender" and write in "sex."
Or you could raise the house up.
Or raze it down.
It’s the perfect language for writing, too - Shakespeare certainly used it well.
Say, your uncle wouldn’t be named “Bob”, would he? ;-)
Have you ever stopped to think that just maybe, you like sex?
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew
“I’m not sure. It’s just been noted that the English language is very similar to Dutch in its grammar rules. It’s assumed it came from them when they ruled England for a bit.”
Following the Roman period, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, Belgians came across along probably others.
I remember reading that Olde English took on pronunciation most close to Frisian. Frisia is a region of Holland.
Modern English adds Nordic influences, French, Spanish, even Native American and beyond.
Words from the far reaches of the British Empires flowed back to the home islands.
Grammar is one aspect. Pronunciation is another, and Vocabulary yet another.
My grandfather is said to have learned some “Olde English” as a schoolboy, and showed us but I cannot remember.
I studied German, and can see many similarities in vocabulary and pronunciations.
I agree. English also fits nicely around chords/chord changes and notes.
True, and for similar reasons probably. I just googled up this brief analysis of why English is good for songwriting:
http://howtowritebetter.net/why-english-is-the-first-language-of-music/
They mention that English is full of short words that pack a lot of meaning and has lots of words that end in a variety of handy vowel sounds for rhyming.
English seems to have a compactness and efficiency that lets you turn a nice crisp phrase more readily than other languages.
Only problem is we would probably end up with 75 letters.
The number would depend on how many different variations we chose to represent.
Another potential problem is dialectal: even within the same country, different dialects and accents use different pronunciations. Which pronunciations do we follow in devising a "phonetic" alphabet? I imagine a range of solutions, each of which sacrifices something.
Even so, I probably would prefer an English alphabet that at least better represented different vowels.
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