EPTOn September 06 2008 09:40 rgfdxm wrote:
People, English is a Germanic language. It and German are descended from a common ancestor language. Those of you with some experience learning it may be justified in your opinions that that does not help much, but they are more similar than English is to most other languages.
English is a bit of a mess since it is a Germanic language that received a big injection of French from the Norman invasion a thousand years ago, but that just means we ended up with a Germanic language that had about 40% Romance/Latin descended vocabulary mixed in.
People, English is a Germanic language. It and German are descended from a common ancestor language. Those of you with some experience learning it may be justified in your opinions that that does not help much, but they are more similar than English is to most other languages.
English is a bit of a mess since it is a Germanic language that received a big injection of French from the Norman invasion a thousand years ago, but that just means we ended up with a Germanic language that had about 40% Romance/Latin descended vocabulary mixed in.
Yes, you're right about that. Especially the technical terms and the such are taken from Latin or French, while the more everyday language is influenced by Germanic dialects. However, as already stated above, you're required to have a basic understanding of vowel/consonant shifts to see the similarities right away.
Therefore, if you're not really commited to studying a language in depth, stay away from German.
