this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 56 points 8 months ago (4 children)

If this is his thought process, he should take it a step further.

French is just badly pronounced Latin.

[–] Warl0k3 50 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My mother (who is french) describes the language as "Latin, but mumbled around a cigarette"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

With more phlegm.

So what’s German then? A bunch of that overlaps with English words too from my recollection.

[–] mojofrododojo 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

german is just language lego - you just keep building new words from old parts.

[–] Valmond 2 points 8 months ago

Swedish checking in.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

I choose to believe French is just ugly Catalan

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

it's all PIE

always has been

[–] force 1 points 8 months ago

But in this case French actually is Latin. English isn't a descendant of French, but French is derived mostly from Latin

[–] Zombiepirate 44 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hey, it's also German with bad syntax.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Or Dutch with less silly spelling.

[–] menemen 5 points 8 months ago

Looking down on dutch spelling, while writing im English... Wild.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (1 children)

...English is only 30% or so French, and essentially just adjectives. Take out adjectives and we are German babies.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And most of the French has Germanic synonyms.

It's actually pretty fascinating to sit down with a work translated from Old to Middle to Modern English and see the language drift in action.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I will have to try that sometime. What's a good piece of literature to look at that a beginner could visually make sense of?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Beowulf is probably the most relevant and easiest to find in various evolutions, you can also find spoken versions in Old, Middle, and modern. Chaucer's stories are also popular if you find the Old English too dense, Middle English is obviously a lot more approachable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Thanks for this. I will have to give it a shot.

[–] blazeknave 1 points 8 months ago

Forgot we read this in high school

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

English is just a bunch of bludgeoned languages hiding under a trench coat, acting shady in the alleyway, I swear.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
—James D. Nicoll

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/694108-the-problem-with-defending-the-purity-of-the-english-language

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Unironically linguistic victim blaming, given most of the "loanwords" were French forced onto the language by the Normans. Who were basically just French speaking Vikings anyways.

Then there there was the Renaissance and Enlightenment obsession with the "Classics" and now you have to say "per diem" instead of "by the day" or "daily pay"

[–] Chainweasel 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Sure, there's plenty of French in English, but there's an English equivalent for most French words. We'd be fine eating cow instead of beef or pig instead of pork. It may sound a little strange but English should still be very usable if we removed the French root words.

[–] agissilver 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] TexasDrunk 9 points 8 months ago

Don't show this to the sovereign citizens. They'll start declaring that any government document with borrowed words from a foreign language means you can't be court-martialed twice for the same offense due to habeas corpus.

[–] dustyData 8 points 8 months ago

That's just Frisian with extra steps.

[–] quinkin 14 points 8 months ago

Le bollocks

[–] snf 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Someone tell the Quebec nationalists, maybe then we can concentrate on more important things than english-only trash cans

[–] Son_of_dad 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Quebec can't even speak proper French. I still remember the story of the French immigrant who failed the French test in Quebec. Btw Quebec makes you take a French test if you want to live there cause they're fascists. The rest of Canada should make them test in English before the leave Quebec.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

I remember a story awhile back where a French researcher or something wrote a whole paper in french, except one page was in english. Well the Quebequois fuzz apparently thought they couldn't speak french well enough.

[–] _Cid_ 9 points 8 months ago

Well at least the english are able to count properly...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

French is just badly pronounced French.

[–] force 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

""Linguist"" as if French prescriptivists can seriously be called linguists

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

As a German I hate both languages

[–] mojofrododojo 4 points 8 months ago

well yeah German is a lovely language... just flows right off the Zunge.

[–] pigup 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] AusatKeyboardPremi 0 points 8 months ago
[–] mojofrododojo 5 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

And Dutch and German

[–] HowManyNimons 3 points 8 months ago

Oh no, that's going to make the mail- reading gammon mad.

[–] Mr_Dr_Oink 3 points 8 months ago

Since language is in a constant state of flux and never quite settles in any solid form, ever changing and evolving. This linguist can fuck off....