Oddbean new post about login | logout "Why build our own vocabulary when there is an entire world to plunder?" - Anglo-Saxons, probably
for whatever reason, the damp soggy islands were conquered repeatedly... first the celts, then the romans, then the vikings, then the germans, then the french so i think it's more like the conquerers made them learn new languages over and over again anad english is like a form of pigin, and then after they kicked out the french they went off out into the world and did the same thing to everyone else except south america and northern africa
LOL fair. There are fewer than ten words the English picked up from the indigenous languages of the British Isles. Even indigenous Australian languages contributed more. English has stolen far more vocabulary from cultures they admired - French, Latin, Italian, Greek, Arabic and even a few thousand from Sanskrit-derived languages. They really, really didn't respect the Welsh and Irish...
hah, yeah, and those are the two best cultures on the islands too, all poetry and fine craftsmanship
The french in me is in revelry over the criticism of the english. But the anglophile in me must come to their defense and say that the English language is indeed rich in vocabulary and is incredibly expressive. One must simply be aware of how it developed throughout the years and also never forget that it’s a germanic language. Despite the huge romance influence on it, it remains a germanic language. Tap into the endless sea of archaic yet still valid germanic words, and you shall find your heart’s delight in vocabulary.
haha, yeah... "anglo-saxon" really means nordic-germanic but the grammar is something much older, and the only language i know of in europe that lacks cases in almost the same way is Bulgarian, and bulgarian is quite unique in europe because of this feature also, the biggest distinction from english is the complex verb tenses, there is maybe dozens of different ways to conjugate verbs in bulgarian, and they are extremely concise and subtle, indeed the language seems to have been refined to be extremely compact, short, sharp expression, simple phonetics (only maybe 7 vowels, no th) the commonality of the culture goes a lot deeper too, england and roses and bulgaria and roses, and the bagpipes are also a national instrument, as it is in scotland and ireland, i think part of it has to do with having spent a lot of time as occupied territories, bulgaria was under the greeks, then the serbs, then the turks, then the austro-hungarians, then the russians, i guess i suspect that there may be a migratory link between the cultures as well, but also a general pattern of language development where the natives develop short, clipped expressions in order to covertly organise at the same time as openly feigning submission bulgarians are also seemingly polite, at least relative to all their neighbouring cultures, but also, low key much more stubborn and rebellious