Oddbean new post about | logout
 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