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Post by buddyrydell on May 21, 2005 20:05:43 GMT -5
Approximately 80% of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been lost and left no descendants in Modern English, more than 60% of Modern English words have an ultimately Latin root (usually via Old French). To classify Modern English as a purely Germanic language is misleading and an intermediate classification of Romano-Germanic should be used if the reality of the position of Modern English is to be accurately reflected. Old English was a purely West Germanic language but Modern English has been so radically altered that this should be recognised in how it is classified. I know that English is approximately 60% Latin in origin via Norman-French, but you're saying that 80% of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary was lost I find that a little hard to believe. Either that or it's just that the most frequently used English words are of ultimately Anglo-Saxon West Germanic origin.
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Post by Faelcind on May 21, 2005 20:30:33 GMT -5
Cerdic I wouldn't have a problem with calling english a romano germanic language but its important to remember that the essential function words of the language are allmost all germanic.
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Post by Ponto Hardbottle on May 22, 2005 0:19:31 GMT -5
The grammar of English is Germanic. But English has moved away from the Germanic language family by losing most of those aspects of English which tie it the Germanic family, the declensions. English is a simplified language with a mixed vocabulary and really needs to be placed in a language family of its own.
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Post by Crimson Guard on May 22, 2005 0:47:22 GMT -5
<<As usually our romophilia blinds you crimson.>> No, No Faelcind you are in error! That Romophilia as youc all it, is the light that burns away the Darkness! <<Latin is the language that was originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English.It is said that 80% of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th.>> <<As many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, Spanish, and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English.>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LatinAs far as the Roman Occupation goes,I'am correct ! By the way you/we write in Italics. ;D
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Post by Ponto Hardbottle on May 22, 2005 12:20:36 GMT -5
Romophilia, is there such a word? The Roman occupation of England, mostly, is exaggerated in its long-term effects culturally and genetically. Whatever the conclusions of this thread, the English are at least half Angle, Saxon, Jute and half indigenous Keltic Britons. The Scots may be more indigenous Keltic and the Irish/Welsh even more. The people in Britain and Ireland are a mix of mostly the same kind of racial subgroups except the proportions of Norse or A/S/J is different.
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Post by Crimson Guard on May 22, 2005 14:11:28 GMT -5
No, York ,London and man many other cities are of Roman origin,and we gave them law,the so-called English law is an imatation of Roman Law.
So no was it sit exaggerated.The british though are really still moslty Britonic in orign,the Anglo-Saxon is actually the exaggerated part.
Romophilia,I have no idea what that is,he made it up in an attempt to being sarcastic or humorous...
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Post by Cerdic on May 22, 2005 14:24:36 GMT -5
I know that English is approximately 60% Latin in origin via Norman-French, but you're saying that 80% of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary was lost I find that a little hard to believe. Either that or it's just that the most frequently used English words are of ultimately Anglo-Saxon West Germanic origin. Siteth sorgcearig, saelum bidaeled, on sefan sweorceth, sylfum thinceth thaet sy endeleas earfotha dael. How much of this is intelligible to the Modern English speaker? Sorry about the "th" - don't know how to type thorn here. It means: The anxious, grieving man, deprived of joy, Lives with a darkened mind; it seems to him His share of sorrows will be everlasting. Virtually all the verbs and many of the nouns have no descendant in Modern English. Even the verbs that did survive often have a Latin twin. For example you can start in AS or commence in Latin, equally you can end in AS or finish in Latin.
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Post by henerte on May 22, 2005 14:39:38 GMT -5
The anxious, grieving man, deprived of joy, Lives with a darkened mind; it seems to him His share of sorrows will be everlasting. And how many of these words have non-germanic origin? Two definitely: anxious, deprived.
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Post by Cerdic on May 22, 2005 14:46:19 GMT -5
Romophilia, is there such a word? The Roman occupation of England, mostly, is exaggerated in its long-term effects culturally and genetically. Whatever the conclusions of this thread, the English are at least half Angle, Saxon, Jute and half indigenous Keltic Britons. The Scots may be more indigenous Keltic and the Irish/Welsh even more. The people in Britain and Ireland are a mix of mostly the same kind of racial subgroups except the proportions of Norse or A/S/J is different. The problem is that we just don't know what proportion of the English genetic pool is of post-Roman date, and at present we have no robust method of finding this out. Differences between modern Welsh and English genetic marker frequences have been seized on as showing what size this post-Roman genetic input was. However, no-one has reliably shown that these differences did not in great part pre-date the Roman occupation. The problem being that England has always, since the retreat of the ice cap, been more open to continental influence, including genetic, than the more remote and mountainous area of Wales. No historical or archaeological evidence unambiguously indicates that either the Anglo-Saxon or Danish invasions involved mass folk migrations. In both cases evidence points to the arrival of warriors who defeated the local aristocrats and took control. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives the number of ships involved in the founding of the West-Saxon kingdom as a grand total of five! Bearing in mind that these were essentially open rowing boats the numbers of warriors involved must have been in the hundreds at most. When you consider the position of a Saxon pirate chief who had taken over a slice of Eastern Britain, what incentive would he have for importing, at great cost and effort, boatloads of peasants from his homeland? There were plenty of local peasants available to extort "food-rents" from and who knew how to work the land far better than any incomer would.
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Sandwich
Full Member
La pens?e d'un homme est avant tout sa nostalgie
Posts: 208
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Post by Sandwich on May 23, 2005 12:26:17 GMT -5
Two definitely: anxious, deprived.
Also joy I think – but that’s basically Old French, joie, from the Latin, Gaudere.
cuius stirpe multarum provinciarum regium genus originem duxit
The ‘ruling races’ would indeed seem to be a case of elite-replacement . But are we talking 1 in 10, 1 in 40 or 1 in 400 of the resulting population? What actual evidence is there for the size of the population in the late 4th early 5th century?
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Post by buddyrydell on May 23, 2005 15:53:16 GMT -5
Siteth sorgcearig, saelum bidaeled, on sefan sweorceth, sylfum thinceth thaet sy endeleas earfotha dael. How much of this is intelligible to the Modern English speaker? Sorry about the "th" - don't know how to type thorn here. It means: The anxious, grieving man, deprived of joy, Lives with a darkened mind; it seems to him His share of sorrows will be everlasting. Virtually all the verbs and many of the nouns have no descendant in Modern English. Even the verbs that did survive often have a Latin twin. For example you can start in AS or commence in Latin, equally you can end in AS or finish in Latin. Wow, that appears to be an entirely different language. I once came across an excerpt of the Lord's Prayer in Old English, and though it was definitely much more intelligible than the one you provided was, it would've still been hard to grasp many of the words.
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Post by Cerdic on May 24, 2005 3:12:48 GMT -5
I did take a particularly dense passage to illustrate my point.
Some other passages would be somewhat more intelligible.
Se sunne scineth.
The sun shineth.
or
Hwaes hunta eart thu?
Whose hunter art thou?
Are fairly easy to follow.
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Post by nockwasright on May 24, 2005 4:02:10 GMT -5
No, York ,London and man many other cities are of Roman origin,and we gave them law,the so-called English law is an imatation of Roman Law. So no was it sit exaggerated.The british though are really still moslty Britonic in orign,the Anglo-Saxon is actually the exaggerated part. Romophilia,I have no idea what that is,he made it up in an attempt to being sarcastic or humorous... English law is not an imitation of Roman law. They have in common the source system, meaning that in English law (properly: common law system) as in Roman law system the main source of the law are the sentences of judges. In the so called Civil law system instead the main source is a political body (as the parliament). This is a big difference, as a sentence concerns a case, so is a particular decision from which you must infer a general rule; a statute of law is the opposite: a general rule you use as a premise to decide particular cases. Also they have in common a similar history of evolving by trials tecniques, but is a case of parallel evolution, not of spreading of a culture. Instead, for what concerns the contains of the law, meaning the technical studies and elaboration that make up a corpus of laws, the continental laws system are an elaboration of Roman law (done mainly by Italians in the 1000/1300, then Germans and then French), while England developed a completely independent system. German and French law are much more similar to Roman law than English one. This told, I don't understand how can you claim this Roman ancestry for England. Whomever as ever been to London and Rome can see the phenotype (and the behaviour) couldn't be more different. Plus, genetically the distance between an Italian and an Englishman is double the distance between a Danish and an Englishman. And this factoring the Northern Italians, who are closer than the Romans. There is no connection at all.
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Post by WayneKerr on May 31, 2005 19:03:12 GMT -5
i notice in london. the white people have a different look compared to whites in say northern england, or in s.w. england. i think this is could be ethnic reasons. like in s.w. england i notice a lot of blondes (like Katie Price), quite shocking really, they have what i'd call a very nordic look, and then in northern england they have a look which i call the 'atomic kitten' look. i guess a mix more of irish-english-scottish types. Then london whites have a look which is definately less defined than these Northern & Southern looks. most londoners who are used to seeing london whites (i'm talking about the 'White Brits', not the 'White Irish', or 'White Others'), will notice the difference in white phenotype when they get a good distance outside of london (like more than 50-100miles). london whites tend to have darker hair, not as blonde or red as the other whites, noses tend to be less upturned than those in the north also. many subtle differences. i think it could be that London has had a long history of various people populating the area, and this has made the majority of the population in london influenced by foreign ancestry (that is the non-whites are foreign, the white irish, and white other's are foreign, and much of the white british are also descendents of mostly irish and europeans) "Northern look" (Atomic Kitten) "Southern look" (Katie Price - 'Jordan')
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Post by buddyrydell on May 31, 2005 21:14:50 GMT -5
Thanks for the input Wayne. I've never been to England so I wasn't aware of the differences between Londoners and other Englishmen. I thought it was mostly just an east-west difference, with the easterners having more Germanic ancestry and the westerners being more Celtic. I suppose London's long history of immigration from Ireland and from other parts of Britain (as well as other parts of Europe) have given the white Londoners a distinct look when compared to their countrymen in other parts of England.
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