BS: Germans--No offense intended !

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 11:01 AM

Let us remember that English was originally German. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 12:58 PM

Nobody "was originally" anything other than what they are. "The English" are descended from Germans, French, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Indians, Jamaicans...

And as is true for everyone else, our first human ancestors lived in Africa.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 01:52 PM

I meant the English language.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Noreen
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 02:11 PM

Likewise Kim, your statement is a long way from the truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:01 PM

Is English not a derivative of the old Saxon languages? Indeed, when I was in school, those smart people told me that English is a Germanic language as opposed to a Romance language like French or Spanish.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:10 PM

A derivative of Saxon and so forth; but also of many other languages, including especially French, but also numerous others, such as Latin, Irish, Dutch, Hindi...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:15 PM

German is likewise a Germanic language. They're not derivatives but evolved (and continue to do so) from common language branches.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:18 PM

Hindi? That's a new one on me.

Merriam-Webster

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:29 PM

Kim C, look up "bungalow" for example...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:34 PM

Bungalow, cot, dungarees, thug, curry, loot, shampoo... And here's a link to a site with a few more Hindi words in daily use in English. (And the number is currently growing.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:53 PM

Bungalow, cot, dungarees, thug, curry, loot, shampoo

You'll rarely hear these words in North America. Having grown up in England I use tons of absorbed words to the amusement of folks around me. Some stick-- 'gobsmacked' is becoming common here in Canada, but others just cause raised eyebrows. English loves to absorb and expand, but some words stay longer than others and in the US in particular words come in from (for instance) Mexico and then cross the pond to become common in England.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:02 PM

You'll rarely hear these words in North America.

Possibly true - but we were talking about English...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:09 PM

I think just about all languages are influenced by other languages as time goes by. I don't deny that - although I think that influence doesn't necessarily denote derivation. I'm saying that historically speaking, the earliest spoken English was a Saxon/Germanic language. Then the Normans came along and threw some French in there. As more and more people came into contact with other languages, even MORE words got thrown into the mix. And it's still going.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:30 PM

I think if you stuck a page of Spanish or Italian in front of me I could probably get the gist of it - but German, no, I wouldn't have a clue.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:35 PM

But, Kevin, German is MUCH easier than Spanish!

You can believe me! I can read German easily, but Spanish is quite hard ;-) ;-) ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:39 PM

Really? Try these on for size:

Die Musik ist zu laut.

Bringen Sie mir mein Bier.

Mein Vater ist nicht hier.

Ich trinke eine tasse Kaffe.

Habst du Salz und Pfeffer? Milch und Zucker? Rotwein? Weisswein?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:41 PM

Kim, last one is wrong, it is "Hast" not "Habst" ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:50 PM

(thanks! I'm still learning.)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 05:55 PM

Kim, so am I, my English is far from perfect...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 06:41 PM

On the other hand, as quoted in this thread:

"Freude schoene gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium. Wir betreten, feuertrunken, himmlische dein Heiligtum."

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Metchosin
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 09:07 PM

ah but.... If you can say, "It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht" ye a'richt ye ken.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 03:55 AM

As in so many Mudcat discussion all of you are right most of the time. You just use words differently.

As BigPinkLady has said, English, like German (or even Icelandic), is classified as a Germanic language, that is both have a common precursor. The inclusion of new words from completely different languages does not change this classification for it is based on different criteria.

A romanic language could integrate the very same word from, for instance, Hindi, but treat it differently according to its basic rules.

The similarity of words or the percentages of words taken from other languages surely determines the ease with which we can read in a language we don't know (though I tend to believe that my ability to read in Italian and Spanish without ever having learned them comes from my knowledge of French, and not from a similarity to German). But it is irrelevant with regard to the classification of languages.

I don't know of an example and maybe there isn't one, but two languages could share 90% of their vocabulary and still be classified differently.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:19 AM

When I first started learning German I was very much surprised at its similarity to English. Like many native English speakers I had been deluded into thinking that it's a very difficult language, and I do not think that's true. Of course any new language is a challenge to learn, especially as an adult. But just about everything I had ever heard about German turned out not to be true. It's actually quite a lovely language, and I have had great fun learning it.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:21 AM

A toppeewallah admonishing his punkawallah while taking his tiffin doesn't make English a Hindi language.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:51 AM

I think I shall retire to my bungalow and put on my dungarees, Memsahib.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: OldPossum
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 01:35 PM

Wolfgang: Danish and Norwegian are classified as two different languages, and they share more than 90% of their vocabulary. I have heard that only about 600 words are different in the two languages, the rest are fundamentally the same, not counting variations in spelling and pronounciation, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 04:23 PM

Strange things can happen when frontiers divide a language. Serbo-Croat was one language, now it's treated as two. Urdu and Hindi are I believe essentially the same language, but the first in written in Arabic Script, and the second in Indian script, so though speakers can understand each other, when they are communicating in writing they are likely to resort to using English...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 04:40 PM

Serbo-Croat was forced into one language by Tito - before that there were two languages. And now, as Yougoslavia is no more (and Tito is no more as well) the original two languages are used again.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 05:04 PM

Surely the process treating Serbo-Croats as two dialects of one language would have started well before Tito, even before the setting up of Yugoslavia in 1919?

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 05:11 PM

As far as I know from several [Ex-]Yugoslavian/Serbian/Croatian colleagues Tito created the Serbocroatian language and forbid the use of Serbian and Croatian (with quite hard punishments...)

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 06:21 PM

Serbo-Croatian Profile - this site seems to sum up the situation fairly well. And the same site has stuff about all kinds of other languages in an accessible way.

There's a saying that a language is a dialect that has an army. Linguistic boundaries very rarely coincide naturally with political boundaries.

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: MudGuard
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:04 AM

All I get from that "Serbo-Croatian Profile" Website is a "Server not found"...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Amergin
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:14 AM

Art...that was hilarious....I love it...


isn't it funny how some people will piss and moan about anything? sigh...

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 02:48 AM

McGrath - Urdu and Hindi are different languages.
Urdu (from turk. ordu = army, regiment), with Turkic base, is the lingua franca of the big field camps of the Mughul conquest of Northern India, incorporating a lot of words from Hindi, Persian, and other languages of the area.
In Pakistan the share of Hindi words is bigger than in Afghanistan, where Persian has a bigger share.
(Information about 40 years old, when I started my studies.)

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 06:55 AM

Yes Mudguard,it appears that site isn't accessible today. The Mudcat evidently isn't the only site with these problemes. It's "The UCLA Language Material Project", which has some very handy stuff on it.

As for Urdu and Hindi, I'm going by what I've been told and have read. Here is a site which goes into the similarities and differences:

"At the level of the colloquial language that is spoken spontaneously or is heard in Bollywood movies, Hindi and Urdu are virtually the identical language. Thus,

gãv meñ voh lajavab hai.
[There is no one like him in the village.]

They are, however, written in two different scripts, Urdu in the Perso-Arabic script and Hindi in the Devanagari script of Sanskrit..."

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 09:45 AM

Amergin,

You are correct. I've always felt that just because something might not be P.C. exactly it can still be brilliant, guffaw provoking, completely hilarious, and even funny !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Germans--No offense intended !
From: GUEST,Casual Observer
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 09:56 AM

Not particularly offensive, but not particularly funny either. It's a pretty old joke by now. People were saying it about Pat Buchanan several years ago.

I suppose one could substitute "Russian" or "Chinese" for "German." Or maybe even "Italian" if one wanted to cast a fascist slant.