Is English really a Germanic language?

Comments · 1.9K

• WO

  @WordsUnravelled · 10 months ago · pinned

  So what&apos;s the verdict? And start speaking a new language in 3 weeks with Babbel 🎉. Get up to 55% OFF during Babbelʼs Black Friday sale!➡ Here: <a href="https://bit.ly/WordsUnravelledNov">https://bit.ly/WordsUnravelledNov</a>

  31

• MR

  @MrTEamonn · 10 months ago

  To me as a swede english is like a distant cousin that moved to an island and married a frenchman.

  146

• ER

  @erictaylor5462 · 10 months ago

  I got a kick out of the idea that aardvark and &quot;ground hog&quot; mean the same thing (earth pig) but they are very different animals.

  19

• DE

  @DerrangedGadgeteer · 10 months ago

  I named my pet snail &quot;þ&quot; because it looks like him when he&apos;s crawling up his tank.

  342

• CH

  @CharlesSummers-d1v · 10 months ago

  I am originally from Alabama and was stationed in Germany for 3 years between 1980-83.<br>I was on a German base and worked off base so I hardly saw any Americans for 3 years.<br>The old saying, “Thrown into the deep end of the pool”, comes to mind. <br>😀<br>I was 22 years old and was afraid at first but then quickly realized that I’d hit the jackpot!<br>I am a very social person and I realized that I was going to HAVE TO learn the German language or go insane. <br>I dove in head first…and gladly so.<br>I quickly realized that LEARNING their alphabet &amp; pronunciations was key to include the “umlauted” vowels, that and studying their differences in verb placement and so on.<br>Also, some of the grammar rules like: ei is I, ie is E, eu is OY and so on. <br>😀<br>The other thing that was also KEY to my learning was to STOP trying to translate what I was hearing in German immediately to English, and to just accept how they say things and move on.<br>In other words, I understood the meaning, even though it wasn’t how we would say the same thing in english. <br>😀<br>This REALLY helped me and my German friends opened more doors for me than I ever thought possible.<br>Reason being?<br>I was trying hard and I was learning…and they saw and appreciated this. <br>I was NOT asking or forcing them into speaking english with me.<br>Later on though, I found that many times they liked it when I spoke english to them and they spoke german to me…or..visa/versa. <br>It sounds odd…but it worked great.<br>🙂<br>Another thing for me that worked well was that I always asked them to CORRECT me if I made a mistake.<br>When they did and they saw that I took their correction is a positive manner…it also helped to accelerate my learning. <br>They really appreciated that and I have so many friends still to this day from that time period.<br>🙂<br>Those years were truly then and still are, some of the best years of my life with many wonderful memories.<br>Once Facebook came around and many of us from back then started to connect, I kept up my German by always speaking, reading and writing.<br>All 3 are key…for me anyway.<br>🙂<br>Now…my wife and I live in a German themed, tourist town in North East Georgia.<br>Helen, Georgia to be exactl.<br>Here, we still have some of the Germany spirit and we get to enjoy it every day.<br>🙂<br>I enjoy your Youtube channel and have subscribed. <br>Wishing you all the best. <br>:-)

  61

• JA

  @jacquie2004 · 10 months ago

  As someone who speaks English, German, Norwegian and French, and read Latin &amp; Russian (also, believe it or not, heavily Germanic) at school, English is SO Germanic! This crops up all over the language, and won&apos;t be immediately obvious unless you&apos;re familiar with other Germanic languages

  204

• CH

  @ChristofferETJ · 10 months ago

  Being half Swedish and half Danish, I can confirm that those languages (and Norwegian) are mutually intelligible. That does not stop some youngsters from talking English when they cross the Sound. I then correct their English in their native language.

  27

• KI

  @kinder-wachstums-geräusch · 10 months ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSD_kMu1INk&amp;t=2174">36:14</a> My favourite pure Germanic word is a Middle English word for intestines: arse-ropes

  155

• AL

  @almonteGuy · 10 months ago

  Speaking of using short, plain Germanic words instead of Latinate or Greek alternatives, my first-year journalism professor fifty years ago said, many times: &quot;Never use a twenty-dollar word when a two-dollar word will do just as well!&quot;

  9

• TH

  @TheWipeout32 · 10 months ago

  For me, the biggest tell is the English lacks a future tense for its verbs. In Romance languages, verbs can be conjugated in the past, present, and future tenses: &quot;yo como&quot; (present), &quot;yo comí&quot; (past), and &quot;yo comeré&quot; (future). The English verb only hast two: present (&quot;I run&quot;) and past tense (&quot;I ran&quot;). To get the future tense, we need to take the infinitive (which is also the present tense in many words) and add a helping verb: &quot;I will run.&quot; If English were a Romance language, you&apos;d see something like &quot;I run,&quot; &quot;I ran&quot;, and &quot;I ren/rune/rone&quot; or something like that. However, this two-tense rule is exactly what we see in all other Germanic languages: present, past, no future conjugation for the verb (furthermore, other Germanic languages, like Swedish and Danish, have transitioned away from conjugating the verb at all, which further links English to Germanic languages). Thus, Germanic DNA is right there in the very grammar of the language.

  140

• AR

  @arcxjo · 10 months ago

  The Yiddish sentence &quot;Guten erev Shabbes, madame chairman&quot; has 5 words in 5 different languages.

  5

• HO

  @hoangkimviet8545 · 10 months ago

  As a Vietnamese person, when someone says English is no longer a Germanic language because it entered too much vocabulary from Latin and French, I feel like &quot;Huh, so is Vietnamese a Chinese language/dialect as it has too much vocabulary from Chinese?&quot; It sounds ridiculous, to be honest.

  542