Re: Richard Heathfield's personal threads.

On Nov 18, 10:35 pm, Richard <rgr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
William Hughes <wpihug...@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Nov 18, 8:02 pm, Richard <rgr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
jameskuy...@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
CBFalconer wrote:
Tor Rustad wrote:

... snip ...

AFAIK, in all the Germanic languages (spoken by 500+ million people),
has one weekday named after "Tor", besides that, the origin of "thunder"
has it's roots in "Tor". There is even a Wiki page about the name:

Are you including English in 'Germanic' languages? I don't
consider that valid, since English is a mixture of far too many
basic languages (at least French, Latin, Nordic, Celtic) not to
mention such things as Indian, South African, and even American and
Canadian. Bearing in mind the status in India, 500+ million is far
too low.

The linguists classify English as a Germanic language. It has borrowed
a lot from other languages, especially Latin and the Romance
languages, particularly Norman Frenchy. However, it's basic
grammatical structure and it's most fundamental words remain Germanic.

It might be known as Germanic because of the vocabulary but the English
grammar is nothing like German grammar in my opinion.

Given that the grammar close to identical is, this a very strange
opinion is. (Sure there is a difference in the way that a verb
sometimes
placed is. However, the fact that you English in the German word
order understand can should a clue be, that the grammar not very
different is.)

Precisely. The ordering of words in English & German are 180 degrees
apart ....


Not true. There is a minor difference in verb placement (sometimes).
However, for the most part word order is identical.
English word order

The weather is nice if the blue sky is visible.

German word order

The weather is nice if the blue sky visible is.

Completely different word order

The is sky blue if nice is the weather

And even if it were true, there is a whole lot more to grammar
than word ordering. English and German grammar are very similar.


- William Hughes

.

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