What if English Were 100% Germanic?

[Mr.Nobody]

This guy's channel is awesome for language enthusiasts.

Here is the original "controversial "video he mentioned:

[Slom]

What if a bag of rice tipped over in China?

[fruitalgorithm]

Interesting. I always call English a simplified Germanic dialect that uses French words for anything more complicated than a stone.

[micrex22]

The guy who posted the video should have changed the title to: "what if English were 100% Germanic in vocabulary"

It's actually quite a large problem that English retains its eccentric Germanic sounds and complex vowels; whereby the Latin alphabet cannot accommodate that which was originally represented by runes. Of course during the great 'vowel shift' pronunciation has become a lot softer (which he didn't mention or account for in the video).

Those darn Romans...

[fruitalgorithm]

It's interesting that English doesn't have letters to represent voiced θ and voiceless ð th anymore. Especially since th is sometimes also pronounced the same as t. Most other Germanic languages have letters to represent certain sounds. Icelandic even uses the ð for the same sound as English voiceless th.

[Mr.Nobody]

@slom
That's creepy...is creepy the right word? Sometimes, things just tip over for no reason, gives me goose flesh.
@micrex22 and fruitalgorithm

To me, a silly Chinese, it seems more like English is the common tongue of Europe,and all other lanuages in Europe are dialects.

[Findecanor]

If you travel around in Europe then you will find a lot of people who don't speak English ... but still, it would be the foreign language that the largest number of people would know.

The exceptions would be the Scandinavian/Nordic countries and I think the Netherlands. Here in Sweden, English is a compulsory class in school from grade four and English and American culture and language have got so much adoption that many things even have English names with no native counterpart: Some things are quite ridiculous.
Nearby where I live there is the "Mall of Scandinavia" - and that's its name. It is supposedly the largest shopping mall in Scandinavia, hence why it was named that, but still, neither of those words are Swedish! BTW, personally I call it "korruptionsgallerian" and refuse to shop there.
I have also been in a couple of pan-Nordic cosplaying clubs throughout the years and we have been using English to communicate between ourselves.. sometimes even between people of the same nationality.

[andrewjoy]

I think it would be amazing.

We bring the best fast food chips
you bring currywurst

We bring IPA and other beers
You bring pilsner and wheat beer oh and dunkle

We bring mad scientist solutions to all engineering problems
You make them work


A match made in heaven

[Slom]

@slom
That's creepy...is creepy the right word? Sometimes, things just tip over for no reason, gives me goose flesh.

Well after actually watching the videos, I have to say that I found them more entertaining than expected. But I still find linguistics per se boring and uninteresting

Energy and work actually have different meanings in physics ...

[Mr.Nobody]

@Findecanor
English is a must-learn subject for elementary school students now, in fact, in major cities of China, kids start learning English at the age 6, however, due to the huge fundamental differences between Chinese and English, many people can't speak or write English properly even after 10-15 years of learning, they learn it because they have to pass a series of exams, it's commandatory and sometimes quite critical when you are applying a job, even though after you get the job, you don't need to speak English at work at all, it is kind of a mark indicating how good you can be at learning.

EDIT:
My generation started learning English at the age of 13, at the begining of middle school, back in the day, that's the standard, nowadays, kids start at the age of 6, surely the new generations will have better English skills, because the best time of learning a second language is when you are under the age of 12, which makes your second language natural...and they do need the ability, because of the globalization and frequent interactions between China and the rest of the world.

@slom
Now the English vocabulary is over 1 million, this is ridiculous...In fact, the German way of forming new words are familiar to how we coin new words in Chinese, for example, 电 means electricity or electrical, 视 means vision or to look, 机 means machine or device, then guess how to say "television" in Chinese? 电视机(electricalvisiondevice). That's why we can use 2500 to 3500 Chinese characters to cover a vocabulary equevalent to 1 million English words.

[fruitalgorithm]

I still find linguistics per se boring and uninteresting

Maybe you just haven't learned enough about it. It's super fascinating. I got interested in languages by a detour through artificial languages and how they are constructed. You can only make a language if you learn what parts they are made of: sounds (phonemes), rules of combining sounds to words (lexicon), rules for using the words (grammar), alphabet (graphemes). It's a really interesting system.

Once you understand the basis building blocks of languages it also becomes easier to learn them. Accents in foreign languages are artefacts of the speaker using sounds and grammar from their native language. The same letter (graphem) r can be pronounced in many different ways in different languages. It's even common for the same letter to be pronounced differently for one language, like the th example above. So a Spanish speaker speaking English uses her pronunciation of r and speaking melody and rhythm for the sentence thus having an accent.

An artificial language I really like is the super minimalist at only 120 word, easy to learn, and friendly Toki Pona. Lojban is a language that's designed to be super logical, allowing no ambiguousness.

Learning new languages gives you new ways of thinking about the world. It's truly amazing.

[y11971alex]

Guys, German =\= Germanic. Just because a word exists in German does not make it Germanic. Look at the word "Berlin", and you will notice it is actually Slavic in origin. In fact, the word "German" is not Germanic; it is Latinate, and so is "Germanic". The Germanic word for German, "Dutch", has come to mean someone from the Netherlands. Just like the word "India" is not Indo-Aryan, and "China" is not Sino-Tibetan, and "Australia" not Polynesian, and "France" not Celtic, and "Greece" not Greek, and "South Africa" not related to any African language...

I've been told that the German name for Germany is "Deutschesbank"

[seebart]

I've been told that the German name for Germany is "Deutschesbank"

I'm glad it's not!

[y11971alex]

I've been told that the German name for Germany is "Deutschesbank"

I'm glad it's not!

You should regard it as a compliment financier of Europe

[seebart]

I've been told that the German name for Germany is "Deutschesbank"

I'm glad it's not!

You should regard it as a compliment financier of Europe

Since that whole situation is becoming quite problematic it's not really a compliment although of course I accept it as such.

[y11971alex]

Since that whole situation is becoming quite problematic it's not really a compliment although of course I accept it as such.

Anyway, the idea that English should drop all its vocabulary from non-Germanic sources is clearly moronic and impracticable. There is simply no cause for it. What might actually benefit us is a spelling reform, though without a uniform authority regulating its use it may not be possible at all.

[seebart]

Since that whole situation is becoming quite problematic it's not really a compliment although of course I accept it as such.

Anyway, the idea that English should drop all its vocabulary from non-Germanic sources is clearly moronic and impracticable. There is simply no cause for it. What might actually benefit us is a spelling reform, though without a uniform authority regulating its use it may not be possible at all.

Not sure about that but between English and German as languages I can tell you English is about 110% more practical to learn and use in daily life. You wanna go hardcore try something Asian like Japanese.

[fohat]

Just like the word "India" is not Indo-Aryan,

I always assumed that "indi" came from the same root as "hindi" (as the Europeans heard it when they got there in the Middle Ages).

[y11971alex]

Just like the word "India" is not Indo-Aryan,

I always assumed that "indi" came from the same root as "hindi" (as the Europeans heard it when they got there in the Middle Ages).

I didn't know that

[y11971alex]

Japanese.

[jacobolus]

Nearby where I live there is the "Mall of Scandinavia" - and that's its name. It is supposedly the largest shopping mall in Scandinavia, hence why it was named that, but still, neither of those words are Swedish! BTW, personally I call it "korruptionsgallerian" and refuse to shop there.

The word mall apparently comes from the Italian pallamaglio, an ancient Neapolitann lawn game where you whack a ball with a stick (“mallet”), of which a variant in 17th century England was called pall mall. A particular tree-lined grassy spot in a park in London where people played this game was nicknamed The Mall, and the name came to mean any grassy walkway. Later some American businessman thought it would be a nice euphemism for “tacky agglomeration of unrelated shops surrounded by a giant parking lot with no grass or trees in sight”.

Korruptionsgallerian seems like a more accurate name for the concept.

[Mr.Nobody]

English does need a major reform, it has already got rid of the useless gender, now it's time to get rid of the plurals and conjugation/inflection. Think about it, if the singular and plural forms of nouns like: "offspring" "upstairs" "series" "species" "means" can remain unchanged, so can other nouns'; if the past and past participle forms of verbs like: "put" and "set" can remain unchanged so can other verbs'. Moreover, I know the be verb In English is already simplified comparing with French or Spanish, but we can make it even simpler; we don't need "is","am", we only need "are" and "were", it could be much easier to say I/you/he/she/we/you/they ARE/WERE without affecting its function.

[depletedvespene]

English does need a major reform, it has already got rid of the useless gender

I have to disagree here. I get to have all kinds of fun messing with gendered words in Spanish.

[Mr.Nobody]

English does need a major reform, it has already got rid of the useless gender, now it's time to get rid of the plurals and conjugation/inflection. Think about it, if the singular and plural forms of nouns like: "offspring" "upstairs" "series" "species" "means" can remain unchanged, so can other nouns'; if the past and past participle forms of verbs like: "put" and "set" can remain unchanged so can other verbs'. Moreover, I know the be verb in English is already simplified comparing with French or Spanish, but we can make it even simpler; we don't need "is","am", we only need "are" and "were", it could be much easier to say I/you/he/she/we/you/they ARE/WERE without affecting its function.

Plus, the countable-or-uncountable shit is rather annoying as well, check this out:

Spoiler:

This is from the novel "Iron Heel" by Jack London


This is the explanation from:http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/ ... week-proof


And this is from Oxford dictionary:


It seems the native speakers themselves can't reach a consensus.

TO MAKE THINGS EVEN WORSE:

Spoiler:

Uncountable / Countable

drapery,cloth / fabric,textile
zeal, enthusiasm / passion
dust / mote
welfare / benefits pension
wealth / fortune
freight / cargo
toll, tuition / fee, premium
amber, jade, jadeite / agate, diamond
artillery / infantry, cavalry
diversion, amusement / entertainment
recreation / pastime
hearsay, gossip / rumor
mischief / prank
plunder,loot / booty, spoil
slaughter, genocide, carnage / massacre, holocaust
intuition / instinct,premonition, hunch
drudgery, toil, labor, work / chore
stuff / thing
vigor / energy
provenance / genesis, origin
strife / conflict
praise / commendation
progress / advancement
justification / reason
spaghetti / noodle
apparel / garment
dessert / candy, confection, sweets
competence / competency

the list could on and on...
No rule, no logic.

And Third Person is unnecessary at all if we can say "I need help", "you need help", "we need help","they need help", surely we can say "he need help" without causing any trouble. What makes Third Person so special, why it needs conjugation anyway?

[Halvar]

Look at this writer, a native speaker who obviously didn't know his grammar!

Code: Select all

Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,
Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer:
Correction and instruction must both work
Ere this rude beast will profit.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Why is Chinese so appallingly hard to machine translate into English?

I have a constant problem with keyboard sites in Chinese (e.g. alps.tw's KBtalKing topics) and Japanese (e.g. Sandy, SPARC) that when put through machine translation frequently come out as complete gibberish.

I'm slowly going through all the alps.tw KBtalKing topics linked from the wiki and recovering the remaining photos, which is a headache as the images no longer load at cool3c and Photobucket is awfully slow, RAM-eating and flaky (so much that some Photobucket tabs left open in Opera to retry later will actually crash).

I'm also adding obvious details to the wiki but most of what's written in his topics is impossible to translate meaningfully.

A decent language would be quite easy to machine translate, as non-poetic use would be clear, precise and unambiguous, free from overloaded spellings and overloaded meanings. Insanity like "drawing" ("I am drawing a picture") and "drawing" ("This is my drawing") would not exist. Even the distinction between iron and steel seems not to exist in Chinese and Japanese (keyboards always have "iron" plates), and switches get referred to as "軸" ("axis" or "shaft") in Chinese and Japanese, whatever that's supposed to mean. I thought "軸" meant "slider", but it's used for "switch". "Solder" comes out as "weld" (totally different concept), and "legs" as "feet". Switches also have "shrapnel" (tactile leaf? I forget …) and nails, whatever those are. Of course, I am assuming nails that get hammered (like British people in pubs) as opposed to things that people waste time painting …

[ideus]

Interesting. I always call English a simplified Germanic dialect that uses French words for anything more complicated than a stone.

You put it very nicely.

[Mr.Nobody]

@Daniel Beardsmore
I agree with you, The Chinese language is a godsend for artistic purpose, but a nightmare for practical use especially for writing documents; it's a language of poetry; It has been reformed greatly according to Western languages in terms of grammar and punctuation at the beginning of the 20th century, still it's quite unique and complex; also, it has been borrowing words from English and Japanese almost on a daily basis. In fact, the multifarious switches used on keyboards used to be called "微动开关"*(micro movement switch, word by word)The word "轴" has been used to represent the switches only since after the mechanical keyboard thing has become a hobby in East Asia, and the fad started from...guess where? Yeah, Japan. Because Japanese hobbyists use the word "轴" to refer to switch, then as you've already noticed Taiwanese hobbyists have borrowed it and started to use it, and later, inevitably, Chinese Mainlanders have started to use the word "轴" instead of "微动开关" as well.

Not only the Chinese language, all languages are almost impossible to be translated precisely by any machine for the time being; all natural languages are high-level languages for the human brain and human world which is extremely subtle, vague, more artistic than scientific and therefore they are way too complex for machines of nowadays; maybe in the future when AI. has evolved into something powerful enough...it will be possible to break the language barrier of humanity, hopefully, God won't get angry this time.


Ps: Japanese use kanji in a rather different way, some words have completely different meanings comparing with the meaning of their counterparts in Chinese, for instance, in Japanese "手纸" means “letter” the thing you write and put into an envelope, however, in Chinese, it means "toilet paper", yeah the thing you use to wipe your ass. I don't speak Japanese, maybe in Japanese "轴" means "switch", who knows, maybe some DT member who can speak Japanese can give a better explanation.

[Mr.Nobody]

@depletedvespene and Halvar

These vids are made by some native British English speakers, really entertaining, they crack me up anyway.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Then you have "轴", which I can see is the same word as "軸". See, alps.tw is most likely Taiwanese, so he uses "軸" the same as the Japanese do. In context here, I can guess that "轴" is the same character, but not otherwise.

When trying to machine-translate to and from Chinese, I have to try to determine whether to send back the Chinese text in simplified or traditional based on where I think the person is (for example, Himake are Taiwanese but their factory is in China and the staff there might all be Chinese), or what they seem to have written, and I can't yet tell by looking at it whether someone's written in simplified or traditional Chinese.

Any arguments in favour of language change are only valid for me if they lead to better machine translation.