Linguistics

[Melusine]

LOL of course! Your list is only the tip of the iceberg. Surely every self-respecting Frenchie should know about the Battle of Hastings which is the reason Americans and Brits still speak French these days [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I was kidding, BTW, before I get asked whether I would like to speak German or something... I already do. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Anyways, the older English words have Germanic roots, Old English shares its direct roots with Frisian, Dutch, German, etc. Because of the Norsemen, a lot of words stem from old Scandinavian languages. That was the first impulse of strange languages into English. The second was the French, and French of course shares its roots with Latin.

Therefore a lot of English words occur in pairs: a Germanic and a Latinate synonym for the same word. (Say, "short-sighted" or "myopic", "header" or "caption" - there are countless pairs like those... Hey! There's another one! "countless" or "innumerable")

[Moiraine]

Originally posted by Melusine: LOL of course! Your list is only the tip of the iceberg. Surely every self-respecting Frenchie should know about the Battle of Hastings which is the reason Americans and Brits still speak French these days [img]tongue.gif[/img] I was kidding, BTW, before I get asked whether I would like to speak German or something... I already do. [img]tongue.gif[/img] Anyways, the older English words have Germanic roots, Old English shares its direct roots with Frisian, Dutch, German, etc. Because of the Norsemen, a lot of words stem from old Scandinavian languages. That was the first impulse of strange languages into English. The second was the French, and French of course shares its roots with Latin. Therefore a lot of English words occur in pairs: a Germanic and a Latinate synonym for the same word. (Say, "short-sighted" or "myopic", "header" or "caption" - there are countless pairs like those... Hey! There's another one! "countless" or "innumerable")

Thank you Mel ! [img]smile.gif[/img] Now I understand better why I found many words in pairs with apparently the same meaning and one of them very close to French. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Though it is not totally exact that French comes only from Latin. For centuries, France was divided between the south - with Latin roots and culture - and the north - with german roots and culture. Until some 3 centuries ago, there were even two main languages : "oc" for the south and "oil" from the north, from which derived the many local dialects.

Even now, most northern people drink beer, southern people prefer wine.

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Moiraine: Though it is not totally exact that French comes only from Latin. For centuries, France was divided between the south - with Latin roots and culture - and the north - with german roots and culture. Until some 3 centuries ago, there were even two main languages : "oc" for the south and "oil" from the north, from which derived the many local dialects. Even now, most northern people drink beer, southern people prefer wine.

Err, Claude, what I said is that French and Latin share a common root. Both are Roman or Italic languages as opposed to Germanic ones. Also I'm speaking strict linguistics here, not cultural influences. Old English had four main dialects as well, many other languages still do.
Provencal and French did evolve from the Italic branch of the Indo-European language (so directly from Latin), Breton from the Celtic branch. If you go back far enough, they are all thought to have come from a single Ur-language, of which no tangible evidence has been found.

[wellard]

Slightly off topic
When did france unite, obviously normandy was not part of france in 1066 and iirc brittany was independant to.

back on topic

not forgetting the influx of british words back to france in the middle ages during all those invasions are we?

[ 02-13-2003, 06:59 AM: Message edited by: wellard ]

[Melusine]

Moiraine, I found a good site in my bookmarks with a language tree and an explanation of the different dialects and languages.

http://softrat.home.mindspring.com/germanic.html

It has info on Burgundian (possibly what you were talking about earlier, though of course it is not the root of modern French)

[Masklinn]

LOL of course! Your list is only the tip of the iceberg.

Dear Melusine,

The list I gave here was just to show that even in a very small text, like the one I quoted, we could find many words of similar roots.

Regards,

--= Masklinn =--

[Pyrius]

Well Im a redneck (person form the southern states) from a long line of rednecks and my response is that there are no subtleties, just mere laziness at our english language originators. Heres the redneck motto- If you aint got it, but want/need/like it, then steal it from someone in a different country.

[Night Stalker]

Originally posted by Moiraine: As for "to oblige" - the word seems closer to the 'old French' verb "obliger" - for example, the polite formula to say "I am in your debt" was "Je suis votre obligé", but it is not in use anymore. Though in the book I read, "to oblige" was closer to "to compel" - it was about a team saying they were obliged to send their report to their boss.

"Much obliged" is still used as a way of saying "Thank you" ("Merci"). It is more common in southern US, than anywhere else.

The usage in your book might be more closely "they were obligated to send" meaning they were required to send.

wellard, both Brittany and Normandy were more Celtic refugee colonies from the Angol and Saxon invasions. I may be wrong, but I think Charlemane was the uniting force.

As for language roots, I'm not a linguist but, there is a whole orgy of influance between Celtic and Germanic with noted Latin and Scandanavian injections .... and all folded back on itself numerous times!

Mel ..... bwthththtbt [img]tongue.gif[/img] for the German self reverse jibe. Guttenberg though! [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img]

[Night Stalker]

Originally posted by Moiraine: Even now, most northern people drink beer ....

As well they should with their good strong Celtic background .... [img]graemlins/cheers.gif[/img]

[Epona]

Something I found out that is very interesting, is that in rural parts of Yorkshire, which was part of the Danelaw following the Vikings' arrival here, the dialect used today - although English - is still very close to the Jutland dialect. Apparently, with a bit of effort, a Yorkshireman and a Jutlander could communicate with each other using their native dialects.

This is seen in sentence structure and pronunciation, and many words used in Yorkshire are of Danish or other scandanavian origin and fairly meaningless to the English outside of Yorkshire. Although a lot of our everyday language comes from similar roots, the way phrases are structured and pronounced in Yorkshire are more similar to Danish than the accepted Oxford English sentence contstruction.

I once found a comparison on the internet which showed this quite clearly, a Danish passage as spoken in the Jutland dialect, then the same passage written phonetically as a Yorkshireman would say it, and again in Oxford English. I wanted to post it here, but I can't find the bloomin site! The Danish and phonetic Yorkshire were virtually identical, there were a few words used that were different obviously, but one could easily have understood the gist of the other.

Anyway, some examples of use of words of Scandanavian origins in Yorkshire, although some are obviously the root of English words in the first place, you can see that the Yorkshire pronunciation is closer to the origins of the word. In other examples the Yorkshire dialect words obviously come from Scandanavia, whereas we use a different word:

Oxford English - phonetic Yorkshire - Scandanavian (mostly Danish)
--------------------------------------------

Once - yan gang - engang
Such - sikken - sikken
Break - brek - brekke
Came - com - kom
Tumble - tumm'l - tumle
Was - war - waar
Crow - kreeak - krage
Farmstead - garth - gaard
Manure - mock - mog
Barn - lathe - lade
Milk pail - skeel - skiola
Dead hedge wood - garsel - gjærdsel
Rancid/rusty - hask - harsk
Frighten - flay - flaja
Gosling - gesling - gjæsling

And some phrases:
Let out a shriek - gav hissen ti a skirl - gaa sæ ti o skrol
He is utterly ruined - He's browt ti 't, beggar staff - Han er bragt til Tigger-staven
To break in two - Ti brek i two - At brekke i tu