Not related to Antartic English but I am a proponent of the theory introduced by Professor Faarlund [1] that English should be categorized as a North Germanic language like Swedish and not West Germanic like Dutch and German.
[1] "Language of the Vikings" by Faarlund
The fact that Anglophone countries don't have language regulator bodies id mind-boggling.
Basically schools marking down your work for mistakes can't refer to anything as the source of truth other than "this private entity, sometimes in a foreign country, published a book that says so" or just "it's common knowledge".
No bureaucracy would be able to keep up with the hundreds of new words that get added every year.
Somehow other languages manage.
There's also quite some benefit for a org with official capacity to declare, against the wishes of some individuals, that say "santorum", "bromance" or "trumpgret" are not in fact English words.
Genuinely curious: how do other languages manage? Surely societies adopt words, idioms, shorthand phrases that haven't (yet) been officially sanctioned? There's plenty professional jargon that, while not "proper" English, is understood within certain contexts. There are also, to my old ears' chagrin, plenty of teenage neologisms that come into common usage, either through popularity or attrition.
Do other languages remain static? What happens when actually new things happen? Does "CD-ROM" just get integrated in whole? Translated? Rejected?
While I find many "new" english words unacceptable for my use, I wouldn't personally declare them "not English words". Moreover, if there were an authority over authentic english (especially American english) word existence and usage, I get the feeling that most would laugh said authority out of the room.
If the words/grammar stick well enough, the governing bodies let them in.
Until then, use them in an essay at school and you'll lose marks.
Some languages, like Afrikaans, won't loan words, and make their own up.
Where in Dutch we use computer, computernetwerk or lift, in Afrikaans it is rekenaar, rekenaarstelsel and hijsbakkie.
And in many languages, most famous in Dutch and German, one can make up words by putting other words together. Those aren't official untill some officials put it in some list. But that way, we can have koekiewet or Wutbürgerin or Nachtshoppen.
What happens when the US and UK disagree? Not to mention the other ~80 countries that use it). They can’t even agree on spelling.
For German there is an international body. Regional language differences are officially acknowledged. For example, Swiss High German has no Esszet and in Austria January is spelled "Jenner" instead of "Januar".
Eszett, Jänner
Keeping up with words is the job of dictionaries (pretty sure those exist for English), not of language regulation. For German language regulation means stuff like you're allowed to write Foto instead of Photo, but always Physik and never Fysik, or if you combine words like Schiff and Fahrt into Schifffahrt should it be written with two or three f, rules on when to use ß instead of ss and so on.
The lack of a central authority over English in the United States, at least, is related to a couple things. First, English is not the official language of the country. No language is. It's just a happenstance of our history that our lingua franca is English.
Second, Americans, I think, would be really uncomfortable with the idea of a government entity controlling how people are supposed to speak and write. That lives too close to controlling what we say and think. Not that such an entity necessarily leads to 1984-style propaganda and thought-control, but we take First Amendment concerns very seriously here.
Lastly, if you attend a specific school, you are subscribing to the instruction of that curriculum and those teachers. To have all students everywhere subscribe to the same authority of what they should know and how they should think... that can be pretty scary for an American.
you are subscribing to the instruction of that curriculum and those teachers
If this were true, there would have been no Scopes Monkey Trial. Neither is a school free to teach you that 2+2=5 or that pi is 3.2, even in Indiana. How's that for 1st amendment?
You're really just flailing about hoping something will land. It's amusing to watch, but that's all.
If you'd like to get as good as you're giving, how about you tell us what country you're from, so we can provide an opinion about choice episodes in its history in return? Fair is fair, no?
The fact that Anglophone countries don't have language regulator bodies id mind-boggling.
Sure we do. It's the people, culture, elites, etc. It's survival of the fittest.
Basically schools marking down your work for mistakes can't refer to anything as the source of truth other than "this private entity, sometimes in a foreign country, published a book that says so" or just "it's common knowledge".
You can't be serious. Don't want to get philosophical, but what is the source of 'truth'?
What should really be mindboggling to you is that more than 80% of the top 100 universities in the world are in the US alone. The majority of the rest are in UK, canada, etc. Almost all science, business, diplomacy, etc is done in the english language. Now that is mindboggling.
You don't understand us at all.
On the other hand I'm glad my language isn't subject to central control.
Countries that do have such "regulators", as you call them, aren't that much different from that, though. Most of the work these bodies do is just more professional approach to what you described. It's just observing how language changes and keeping a written record of it. Which is surely more comforting for a school teacher, I agree, but, damn, who cares. It really seems like a non-issue to me. And, I suspect, most school teachers feel like they have more important things in life to do, than keeping track of linguists keeping track of the language, even if it's implied that it's their job.
Sure, I know some countries where these "regulators" perceive themselves as having an important political function: keeping (mostly dying) language "pure". But this really is pretty laughable, teenagers will still speak some kind of pidgin, borrowing half of vocabulary from some other language with larger (and more importantly, perceived as "cool") community. I've seen this happen a lot. Maybe this does slow down language transformation to some extent, but I really doubt it is significant on the historic scale. In fact, I strongly suspect that English is changing much slower today, just because of how much content there is in it. Other languages borrow more from English, than English does from other languages today.
Dead-Penguin Tours (a type of tour in the late summer after penguins have abandoned weak chicks to die, leaving their bodies in popular tourist destinations, which causes grief in tourists)
I went on one of those and never realized I was supposed to feel bad about that. Am I a terrible person?
I don't know that you're a terrible person, but I'd say you have a characteristic I'll leave others to identify, because what you write sounds like you consider emotional reactions to be prescribed enactments rather than automatic reactions. You're not supposed to feel bad as if according to some rules, but most people automatically would.
I think it's okay to mention that as a possibility, but odds are you're reading way too far into that common wording.
I can't say that I agree with you in the slightest.
What you seem to be saying is that you have absolutely no doubt that it's reasonable to diagnose mental conditions based on a single short comment posted online.
That is, simply put, wrong and dangerous.
Not in the slightest? Because I'm pretty sure asking if you were "supposed to" feel something is in fact a common turn of phrase.
And people may judge you if you don't react in the way people think "normal people" react. People have been convicted of murder because police or juries though they didn't react the way they were "supposed to".
This is one of the few things I have learned from my wife’s love of TV about crime.
oh you too have this problem?
My SO seems to be fascinated by those horror stories and how crimes are solved that leave me wondering sometimes if she isn't just documenting herself on how to do the perfect crime that wouldn't lead to her being caught.
I mean the alternative is to go when the chicks are alive and watching them get swallowed whole by skuas. Antarctica is no petting zoo, but maybe some less serious tour operators make it out to be one and this is the result of that.
I think it’s more a common tourism problem, which is thinking what the experience will be like is quite different than actually experiencing it.
or as the highly experienced Mr. Tyson put a not too dissimilar situation so eloquently - “everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face”
Supposed to can mean “expected to”. In fact, that is more so the original meaning.
Words include tabulars (large flat-topped southern icebergs that break off from the Antarctic ice sheet and are usually over ten miles long)
You must've derived your username from those trip(s) too I bet.
A lot of people get upset when they see dead animals, especially if they're not used to it, especially if they're animals they perceive as cute.
Grief might be too strong a word.
Can anyone help answer or point in the direction of where to learn more about what/why humans begin to mimic and adopt other characteristics or full words of other languages? The reason I ask is I inherited/learned from my Mom this thing where within a couple of hours of being around another language or accent will unconsciously start adopting parts of it to a noticeably embarrassing degree. I'm at the point now where I am aware enough about this trait that I can tolerate myself but I have always been left wondering why some people seem to change how they speak faster and more drastically than others. My uneducated guess the answer I seek is somewhere to be found in the studies of human evolutionary biology and childhood development.
Some people experience a form of "empathy" stronger than most, which means they end up almost mimicking anyone new or different. Often seems to come with insecurity too.
No idea why, it appears to me to be a personality facet that is there from birth.
It's called mirroring. People often do it unconsciously when the connect with others.
I wanted to respond to both.
It's not a stretch to argue that in certain cases the person is mirroring because they're insecure. Empathy as a defense mechanism?
I mention it because back in college there were a few times where I witnessed a person mimicking an exchange student's accent almost immediately, and later claiming this always happened to them. Both were painfully insecure.
I think it's more likely that a lot of people just happen to be insecure, without any causal relation to mirroring.
Sharing inflection, accent, and mannerisms yields a wealth of context that aids both the listener and the speaker in acquiring detailed insight about one another's culture, language, and meaning.
I suspect that people who don't mirror might sadly be unaware of these subtle but rich details, even in their own communication.
https://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2014/02/28/reopening-our-critical-...
"Inhibition of this enzyme by Valproate allows the reopening of pathways in the brain, increasing neuroplasticity, thus reopening the critical period."
I hear the side effects are pretty severe, though.
Ooh intriguing. I’m learning mandarin at the moment, and also happen to have some sodium valproate lying around for my epilepsy. I’m not currently taking it but I could give it a go and report back.. :D
It might be your natural affinity for learning other languages showing up in weird ways. Do you speak other languages? Have you tried to learn? Children learn language by listening and mimicking. Maybe you're still primed to do that.
Maybe it's a hereditary disposition. Are other family members good at learning languages? Music?
It's called mirroring. People often do it unconsciously when the connect with others.
You have a case of Zelig.
It's almost unavoidable at some point. I'm guessing it's variable though!
Very anecdotal, but I’ve been told that one reason is your brain adapts the advent of the people you’re listening to, in order to make it easier for you to understand them.
I have no claims about the scientific validity of this, but it sounds nice.
If you want some fun there is also https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taafien (the article is in French as it’s a French jargon).
I always wonder about french accents. Like in half of Switzerland you speak at least 10 widely different Swiss German accents but there doesn't appear to be such a thing for the french half.
There are various accents in French-speaking Switzerland as well as French-speaking Belgium and I assume local speakers can generally recognise them, but in general French just diverges much less than German (or Dutch to talk about what I know better) and within Europe, French accents are quite light.
It might be due to the strongly centralised languages policies of France and the weight of France relative to the rest of French-speaking countries, I don't know, but basically the only accents that can actually be a bit complicated to understand are those of Québec and Louisiana, which have spent several centuries with basically no communication with France.
There's also Africa but I can't speak about the varieties within Africa though, other than the obvious accent difference between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.
What about Marseilles?
It's "strong" relative to French regional accents, but easily understandable by any French speaker around the world, without special efforts needed. It's not really comparable to Swiss German accents.
I mean, most Swiss French accents share common characteristics (e.g. stress on the penultimate syllable and descending intonation on the last) but having grown up near the Swiss border people there really differentiate the Genevois, Vaud, Valais accents, etc
It's not the same scale as Swiss German accents that are sometimes completely unintelligible for German speakers, but I have to admit there have been a few times I've been unable to fully understand someone speaking a thick Swiss French accent
French people typically don't figure out the different swiss french accents and label them as one "swiss accent" but having lived 18 years in the french speaking part of Switzerland I can assure you there are enough differences between accents to figure out from which canton, or even cities sometimes, people are from.
Speaking of weird French varieties, the Foreign Legion developed its own idioms and accent, from the wide variety of languages of its soldiers. I don’t have a handy Wiki link, but there are several examples on YouTube.
[edit] having worked there, seeing “Shadock” being used for “Personnel du Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives” really made my day. Now I know how to call former colleagues!
Don't read too much into this dictionary though, I spent a year there and not once did anyone call a CEA worker a "shadock". Many of these words are indeed used, but it's akin to company slang more than a language variety. Some people just don't use the local words and nobody cares, and everything changes fast.
Ainsi comprend-il notamment une longue série d'abréviations et d'acronymes
In that respect it's no different than any (big) corporation in the country. At least one team I've been maintained an internal lexicon but elsewhere it's just an acronym soup everywhere.
Took me a while after arriving at Kerguelen to work out who all the people with the weird-sounding job titles were.
IIRC "Disker" (the head of the district) sounds like a slang word for DJ, so his official residence is the "discothèque".
Completely unrelated, but there supposedly was this "grunge speak" English being spoken the 90's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
https://www.kexp.org/read/2017/11/15/kexp-exclusive-intervie...
At least some people thought it was.
On the other hand, there was definitely a pop punk accent.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-made-a-linguistics-p...
Americans invented punk, but early American punk, created by bands like the New York Dolls, the Stooges, the Ramones, and arguably the Velvet Underground, was a musical protest rather than a political one, railing against the silliness and pomposity of 1970s arena rock with tight, messy, three-minute pop songs.
What does “tight and messy” mean here?
It’s music journo speak i.e. meaningless
What does “tight and messy” mean here?
In music terms, playing tight means being exact. But I think in this context tight would be length of the song and how succinct it is. 70s rock could be power ballad-y with long solos. As for messy, in context, I'd argue it means the songs are less structured compared to 70s arena rock that are extremely formulaic (think of any AC/DC song and how it sounds just like every other AC/DC song).
I feel like you asked for clarification about the least unusual part of the quote.
Fun fact, today's college students in my part of the country sing exactly like Tom DeLonge when they're mocking modern pop music.
They don't know why, but they do. It's hilarious to me for some reason.
Only cob nobblers thought this was real.
Only lamestains say cob nobbler you wack slack.
Grunge speak was conceived as a hoax.
Here’s a few a remember from my time at McMurdo Station
- The fry, fried > The accumulation of brain fry, mental fog, apathy etc that builds over time accumulated on ice especially during winter.
- The CRUD > a general cold everyone eventually gets and then is immune to on the base. Usually there’s a lot of congestion or ‘crud’. Probably exacerbated by the volcanic dust and dry climate.
- Ice Wife (or husband) A monogamous couple but only on the ice. May or may not be involved in other relationships off ice.
Crud is widely used. My kid's pediatrician and my PCP both use it to describe a general cold or cold symptoms. I'd say it has been in general use for about decade.
Where do you live? I'm in northeastern US and never heard anyone use crud like this.
It’s very common in the Southeast US. It’s also a term within the science fiction community in the term “con crud” for any sickness acquired at a SF convention.
I have the crud right now. I probably got it from my kid.
I found none of these in the pdf linked elsewhere[1]. But perhps these are less formal, sort of mcmurdo’s urbandictionary?
[1]: https://monoskop.org/images/8/8b/Hince_Bernadette_Antarctic_...
Ice Wife reminds me of Chinese migrant workers who form similar relationships on construction sites during development projects. Looks like this phenomenon is cross culture.
Both uses of “crud” and “fried” are parts of the lexicon where I grew up, nowhere near Antarctica. I suppose they must(?) have been imported from somewhere, but neither seems very unique to McMurdo.
I wonder how many children are born and grow up there? My guess would be, not many. A lot of the formation of new languages occurs via pidgin languages when children naturally incorporate a multitude of vocabulary and accents from disparate origins.
Born: 11. Grow up? Zero.
There's a Toys-R-Us joke in there somewhere.
At the Toys-R-Us in Antarctica, kids really don't grow up!
"I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys-R-Us kid..."
Must have either a perfectly good or absolutely terrible infant mortality rate
Pretty sure when you’re pregnant there you get shipped off ice. They pregnancy test you if you do a winter over. They’re not equipped to delivery babies there and pregnancies don’t happen quickly.
I spent some time looking for a video documenting the actual accent. Couldn't find one. But this tiktok has some examples of how the pronunciations differ from American English. They're very subtle https://www.tiktok.com/@human.1011/video/7257164158033038635
It seems like people come and go a lot so I'm curious how it would be the same Antarctic English described in the Wikipedia article. This video talks about an experiment where it seems like an accent was formed by a new group of people.
What you probably need to factor in is that there is no complete turnover every year. Some people might spend multiple seasons there, or at the very least return on a regular basis for research. Then there is also support staff who might work there for multiple seasons.
So there likely is enough overlap between people that have been there for longer and new people to pick up on the accent. The latter is something that people subconsciously do fairly easily.
I wish they had actual recordings of the comparison instead of a non-Antarctic guy blabbering about it.
Couldn't watch that on my browser, but yt-dlp works. Mirror, in case someone is having the same problem:
https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2024/human1011_antarctic_acce...
Another video here; doesn't really say anything more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHKGErnN9W8
What's "sleeping chamber"? Is that the same thing as bedroom?
"sleeping chamber" struck me as unusual too. If you search wikipedia for it, this Antarctic English article is the first relevant result.
I think "bedchamber" is probably what was meant. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bedchamber
Variants of sleep chamber is a normal term in North Germanic languages. Maybe it comes from them.
I would just call it a dormitory...
Sounds more like a cryostasis pod.
Functionally yes, but it’s likely more specifically referring to having one in a temporary structure, e.g.: a demountables.
“Donga” is used commonly within Australian mining and construction industries (and presumably also overseas) to refer to a demountable/transportable structure like you might see on a commercial construction site. Sometimes in FIFO mine sites they’re used to house the workers. I’m guessing the same things are used in Antarctic research stations to house the personnel.
These things: https://dostonhouse.com/office-donga/
It occurred to me that there is already such a thing as a modern Israeli accent given how recently a lot of the people moved there from all over the world and resurrected a dead language. Maybe it doesn't take that long.
This isn't even comparable. You are talking about the language invented 100 years ago, which is the mother tongue for many people now, they literally are born and raised speaking Hebrew. Of course they will have some sort of accent. On an individual human level, you might have some slight English accent by the end of the day full of speaking in English, after switching to your native language.
Antarctic English might be a bit overhyped because of how much of a curiosity it seems (and definitely it's unfair to call it a separate language), but the point is that people tend to pick up some speaking patterns from other people they spent last 3 months with. It deosn't seem very surprising to me, but it is ridiculous to explain that on basis of an accent of a country, which although might have been artificially created very recently on the global timescale, still exists longer than most its inhabitants live.
Well let's say one person is the child of French parents, another is a child of German parents, both first generation born in Israel and raised on modern Hebrew. Are they going to have the same accent when speaking, whether Hebrew or English? Yeah, I suppose they would, since people usually pick up their accent from their peers rather than their parents.
Let's say one person is the child of French parents, another is a child of German parents, both first generation born in New York, live they life in New-York, study in the same school and hang out at the same parties. Maybe they even will learn to speak French and German from their parents, to talk with their grandmas, but let me blow your mind: they will speak exactly the same English with exactly the same accent. And it's very unlikely that real French and Germans will mistake them for being native French and Germans, except if they really speak French/German a lot.
Of course it will be the same in Israel. Even though you might have to make some discount to more fragmented community. (Which really isn't that special with Israel either: you know that some small European countries have up to 4 official languages, right? Rest assured, not all the people in these countries speak all 3 or 4 of these languages equally well.)
Donga is Australian slang, so it is used in other varieties of English.
Was going to say the example sound like they could be Aussie speak / humour. “The Ice” lol!
Came here to say the same thing. Plus add this link in support [1].
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-23/origin-of-word-donga-...
What if this is just one big practical joke?
What difference does that make? Irony tends to decay over time. Probably plenty of "real" accents started because someone thought elongating their vowels or whatever was funny, then their mates started doing it, then eventually it just became something you did in that area.
How much of it is it still relevant? With today's travel I guess there's substantial turnaround in the staff there.
So my naive couch potato thinking is... Nicknames? Sure, The Ice, Big Eye. I can believe it.
Different pronunciation? Well, likely the international English, same as in your big mega corp HQ.
You have the summer workers, then the ones who winter over. I suspect you'll find a lot more of a unique culture developed amongst the ones who weather (pardon the pun) the winter dark.
"Spoken primarily by scientists and workers ..."
Unless those scientists are born in Antarctica, they are not native speakers; they learned English elsewhere.
This doesn't sound like a true variant of English, but more of a cant/argot type of thing.
Seems more like professional jargon to me.
Pictairn island english is the wildest though.
I wish the antarctic was accessible to common people. Why migrate to Mars outer space when we have antarctica.
Part of the utility of antarctica is in its inaccessibility and restrictions on what you can do there. e.g. it's currently one of the best places to sample the earth's atmosphere because treaties bar things like lighting fires.
Is this really anything more than jargon? Seems a bit overwrought/self-indulgent to call it much more.
The cited scientific articles read as if some linguists are trying to make the thing bigger than it is. But okay, they have to make ends meet, too.
In addition, the tourism industry has terms for different types of tourist encounters, such as Kodak poisoning (what happens when many tourists take photographs of the same site)
Literally geologists but with more temporary rocks.
Sounds like this is Antarctic _American_ English. The British jargon is quite different.
PDF of the full Antarctic English dictionary is here: https://monoskop.org/images/8/8b/Hince_Bernadette_Antarctic_...
On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article.
This was incorporated into the show Joe Pera Talks With You[1], where a new kid begins in his class that was raised on research base in Antarctica. This is the only case I know of this being mentioned in any popular media. Would highly recommend the show, there isn't really anything like it.
I went ten times to the South Pole (in Austral summer) from 1997 to 2011, stopping in McMurdo each way for a period ranging from hours to days.
While there definitely is jargon in the US Antarctic program (and presumably overlapping-but-distinct sets of jargon for the New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain programs), it seems a stretch to call it "Antarctic English." Pronunciation varies a lot more from program to program and even from participant-to-participant (scientists tend to be a fairly international bunch) than the subtle single-station per-season continental drift cited in the papers referenced in the Wikipedia article.
That said, I still find the jargon entertaining:
- Skua - discarded items that can be usefully repurposed by someone else
- Toast / toasty - burnt out, irritable, need to go home...
- Beaker - scientist/engineer working as a "grantee" (funded by NSF scientific grant) rather than by the contracting company which handles most day-to-day operations
- Freshies - precious, sometimes rare (especially at places like Pole) fresh fruits and vegetables
and finally
- Pole - The South Pole. Because those two extra words are so much work to actually say out loud....
[edit: fix typos]
I remember how few years ago a Linux update broke my system because they added en_IL locale. Which, apparently, meant that someone believed that English spoken by expats in Israel was different enough from the rest of English variants in the world.
But then it turned out that it sort of made sense. Especially since some services in Israel can also be provided in English, they need a locale to deal with stuff like calendar, currency etc.
I don't think though anyone recognizes the language spoken by English speakers in Israel as a separate language. Even though it's usually augmented with hard-to-translate Hebrew words that relate to local realities (eg. "oleh" which is usually translated as "repatriate" (noun), but it only applies to those who repatriate to Israel, not any other country, or "ascent" (a pilgrim, only in religious context) again, only in the context of coming to Israel or more specifically, Jerusalem).
There are also plenty of second and third generation English speakers who depart very far from the dialect of English their parents came with. Usually, the drift is towards American English, with a lot of borrowings from Hebrew (and by proxy, from Arabic). So, I don't know, maybe at some point there will be an actual Israeli dialect in the same way.
A similar thing happened/is happening in Europe, as a lot of non-native speakers interact with each other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English.
Interesting, what is the difference?
Faarlund's argument for classifying English as a North Germanic language is based on syntactic evidence and historical contact between Old Norse and Old English. He suggests that the extensive Viking presence in the British Isles during the Viking Age led to significant linguistic influence that shaped the development of English. This influence, according to Faarlund, is profound enough to warrant reclassifying English away from its traditional West Germanic grouping into the North Germanic category. He points to structural similarities between English and the Scandinavian languages that are not found in other West Germanic languages, arguing these are the result of Old Norse influence rather than shared Germanic heritage.
What does Faarlund say about Frisian then? Frisian is also a West Germanic language, and to my understanding is very closely related to English to the point that it is possible to speak a grammatically correct sentence in English and IIRC West Frisian simultaneously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
When you say grammatically correct sentence, are you meaning a sentence where at least the grammar is identical in both English and West Frisian? Because that alone doesn't seem surprising; the grammatical similarity across all Germanic languages is indeed illustrated by the 'Comparative Germanic sentences' section of the very Wikipedia article you linked to.
So the example I’m familiar with and I’m going off memory is “Green eggs and cheese is good English and good Fries.” when spoken. I suspect it’s not exactly the same, but to this day I’ve never met someone from old Frisia (which runs between the Netherlands and Denmark along the coast) to fact check this for me properly. Also IIRC Western Frisian is the most popularly spoken one, and when standardized spelling came for it during the language reforms that hit pretty much all extant Western European languages, the standardization came under Dutch governance, which is why I emphasized spoken rather than written Frisian.
That’s all background though, not really relevant. In fact it might even be a distraction, but it’s what I lead with. What I’m really getting at though is that the parent said he was a proponent of Professor Faarlund’s theory that English should be categorized as North Germanic rather than West Germanic. If true, it would seem to me given that given that one of the closest cousins to the English language is the Anglo-Frisian language family, why would you stop at reclassifying just English? Why not Frisian and Low German languages? I’m not sure you can address reclassifying English without also addressing these language groups, either to sever English from them or else to propose reclassifying some or all of them as well.
One is closely related to the German that you hear in Germany today. The other is more closely related to the Amish Mennonite German, which is very different. There are similarities, but they are different enough that some people feel they are as similar to each other as English is to German.
Are you talking about Pennsylvania Dutch? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch_language
Judging by https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt the Amish/Mennonite German is no more different than any of the many dialects (Hochdeutsch being a koiné language "Dachsprache") one hears in Germany today. Compare https://pfl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Haubdsaid
Dutch sure sounds a lot more like English than Swedish does. The famous "Geef me een klap papa" comes to mind. Quite a bit of Dutch sounds nearly as close to English as, say, Scots does. "Zet de televisie aan." "Waar ben je?" "Ik heb honger, wanneer gaan we eten?"
In case anyone doesn't recognize the cognates, I think they'd be
"Set the television on."
"Where been ye?"
"I have hunger, when ere going we eating?"
(It would be easier for English speakers to understand "wanneer" by the similarity to "whenever" but it turns out that "wanneer" is actually cognate with when+ere (as in 'before') and not with when+ever.)
Those aren't too out of place in Scottish English.
There was a commotion on Twitter recently when a Dutch politician posted a tweet (in Dutch) that started with the words, “we hebben een serieus probleem”.
I grew up hearing German, Schwaebisch, English, Latin, and French regularly. Dutch is readable for me, but hearing it is sometimes completely foreign.
I don’t think this works well. English is absolutely “Germanic” but it doesn’t neatly fit into any grouping grammatically, lexically, or audibly. The influence of French, and milder influences of Gaelic languages have transformed the language considerably. Those two have as much influence as does Norse. The Angles and Saxons were West Germanic, and they started the language. Reclassification of English as North Germanic would be about as accurate as reclassifying it as Romance.
Gaelic is the surviving Celtic language of Scotland, and not the dominant Celtic language of Scotland when the Angles and Saxons arrived, which was more like Welsh. I don't think Gaelic has had a sizable influence on English. One would expect this to have come more from Welsh, Cornish, and Cumbric, the displaced languages, but I'm not aware of a huge influence here either.
Do-support is thought to have come into English from a local Celtic language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Scott...
I would not have picked Strontium.
But it would be more romantic. I was struck by how much a lot of English people really want to feel like Vikings. French people tent to be looked down upon, or considered as weird eccentrics. Some people really don’t want to realise how close the English and French cultures are in actual truth.
One problem with discussing language relationships is that there are (at least) two conflicting viewpoints on grouping languages. Historical linguists like to classify languages according to the genetic heritage of the people speaking them. They like to think of English and its heritage as West Germanic.
The other method of grouping is by degree of mutual intelligibility. It appears that Anglo-Saxon evolved to become mutually intelligible with Old Norse, so on pragmatic terms, they could be considered dialects of a common language.
Edit: I'll add that from my experience in the domains of applied linguistics and public policy, the practical distinction most commonly made is that if two speech forms are mutually intelligible, we call them dialects, and if not we call them separate languages. For some reason, that seems to really upset some people.
You simultaneously made a lot of Portugese people unhappy and Swissgerman/Alemannic people happy
I doubt that a serious linguist would really classify languages in a hierachical categorization system, and would not argue for a joined language continuum. I interact on a daily basis in english, german and swedish and it is totally obvious to me that there is a long list of things were two more or less randomly share one characteristic (or words) compared to the other, e.g declination in english and swedish, or compound words in german and swedish. Similarly, dialects (and other types of variations) are clearly intermediates based on geography. And time obviously also plays a role in divergence, hence would old norse be closer to todays english than swedish or norwegian (minus the modern words). But if I had to make a decision, english would be the outgroup.
https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...