Does English sound like other Germanic languages?
NOTE: ONE OF THE MOST COMMON ENGLISH PLACENAME ELEMENTS 'TON' WEIRDLY HAS NO GERMAN EQUIVILENT.
NOTE ALSO A FEW FRENCH PLACENAMES MISLEADINGLY END IN 'TON' - THIS FALSE RELATEDNESS IS NOT GERMANIC, IT IS THE FRENCH FOR SOME REASON STICKING A 'T' BEFORE THEIR DIMINUITIVE -'ON' SUFFIX.
FRENCH PLACE NAMES ARE WEAK, CRAPPY AND BLAND COMPARED TO GERMAN AND ENGLISH PLACENAMES.
THE FRENCH PLACENAME/SKI STATION 'VALBERG' IS COMPLETELY LATIN.
<<NOTE: ONE OF THE MOST COMMON ENGLISH PLACENAME ELEMENTS 'TON' WEIRDLY HAS NO GERMAN EQUIVILENT.
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This is because the German equivalent would be "-zaun", which means "fence". The English note of '-ton' is a purely internal development, from an alteration of the Old English word 'tun' changing from meaning "a walled or fenced in area" -> "town". So of course German would not have this same development--it occurred AFTER Anglo-Saxon split off from Common Germanic.
There are tons and tons and tons of "-tons" spread right across the map of the UK, more especially in England where you will find the vast majority of them. You can't go far along the roads of England without seen a signpost indicating a place with a name ending in "-ton"....Brighton, Preston, Beeston, Haddington (Scotland), Leamington, Teddington, Waddington, Wallington, Warrington, Wilmington, Kingston, Northampton, Southampton and so on ad infinitum......
Of course, we exported a good many of them to our developing colonies overseas, and probably the most famous of these would be Washington I would guess....the newly independent former colonials over there must have liked it as they eventually named their capital city thus, probably after the bloke with the same name taken over there from over here who first took up residence in the newly established Washington.
I reckon the UK is owed many milliions of $ in copright fees.
Oh yes....how could I overlook Simpleton! - such a beautiful little place down there among the Yorkshire dales, not that I've actually been there.
***Damian would have u think that there was only one effing place in England with 'moor' in it***
Not true at all.....maybe not quite as numerous as all those "-tons" there are a fair number of "-moors" littering the map of the UK.....though not exactly towns or villages in themselves there are, down in Devon and Somerset the wilds of Exmoor and Dartmoor, both of which contain villages within their bounds.......scenically beautiful as both of them truly are you would certainly not like to be up on either when a thick, bone-chilling pea-souper mist descends without warning or a raging take-your-breath away snowstorm sweeps across the area....you may well encounter the ghost of Lorna Doone or the nasty Rudd on one and the howling Hound of the Baskervilles on the other.
You could of course manage to escape and take refuge in a welcoming warm and cosy inn down in the gorgeous village of Widdecombe-on-the-Moor.
How about Yorkshire then.....up in Ilkley Moor, with or without your hat, where Mary Jane is always available for courting.
Derek: It's actually Deutschland.....and Widemouth Bay is in Cornwall, which is lined by Widemouth Sands.
I knew about Herford in Germany, so it could well be linked with the city of Hereford, in England, or indeed the town of Hertford in England Within England itself there is often confusion between Herefordshire and Hertfordshire, and people living in both English counties sometimes get wound up when they receive letters placing their home address within the borders of the other one, as is the case with my grandparents who live in Herefordshire, even though their postcode is correct.
As Royal Mail uses the postcode for electronic sorting and area delivery anyway it's no big deal and the mail gets correctly delivered, so I don't know why some people get so aereated about such a piddling, trifling little thing of a single wrong letter. Perhaps it's all a matter of "local pride" and I know for a fact that many people in Herefordshire think that their county is "sublimely unique".....I blame the cider, which I have to agree really does have the mind blowing "wow factor"!
Whats the difference between betwixt and between and piddling and twinky?
listening to that frisian link someone posted really made me start thinking
There no way oyu can't here the similarities. I mean with similiar accents of course. I mean there not directly the same. But neither is French of Spanish, i think there relationship is on a similiar level of closeness. The latin influence is very over stated on english. of course all intellectual vocab utilizes a significant amount, of romance words. But any sitcom, song or blockbuster film relies on the germanic words. Put it this way we forget our latin roots the second we get drunk, shitfaced//sloshed, tipsy, or loaded.
Put it this way we forget our latin roots the second we get drunk
Then you forget them very frequently.
I vote modern English does have a resmblance to Dutch, particularly when heard from a distance or a bit "downwind." I support this also by raising another question: why did AE vary from English in the southern British Isles, when and as it did? First, it didn't really vary, it was orignally a very good standard of 17th century English that the colonists brought with them. Then went on its own direction forward, as did English in the British Isles. (Ironically, endings still in AE such as -ize in some verbs and "gotten" are more authentic to Shakespeare's English, than current spellings of British English, -ise, "got" which were French influenced affectations made later, but I digress) - Where and how did AE become more rhotic (or remain rhotic, whatever - ) and why did it recede further back into the mouth? My postulation: this is the heavy influence of the Dutch and Irish in the early colonies - English already "fit" very well to their native speaking. The Dutch connection again, this time reversed and on the other side of the Atlantic, but again showing the easy proximity and similarity of the two in tone and rhythm.
potato in mouth, spitty, lispy? Try this, an excellent example of 18th century English, which time is thought by many to be one of the high points in written and conversant English: "We hold these truths, to be self-evident - that all men, are created equal - that they are endowed by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights -... " perfect blending of Anglo-Saxon and Latin derived nouns and verbs set in common Germanic sentence structure, creating the mysterious power in English when it is well written or well spoken. I have seen this phrase written in 15 other modern languages for which I can approximate pronunciations and none of them quite gets it as the English - the natural blend in English moves the pronunciation into a kind of natural, background pentameter, featuring those ancient Germanic sounds --th, -w, ae, but they work quite well, can someone explain this to me?. Can't imagine the effect from Italian, forexample, but can't imagine most opera without all the flat vowels of Italian onthe other hand.
" THE FRENCH PLACENAME/SKI STATION 'VALBERG' IS COMPLETELY LATIN "
PS: the ski station "valberg" was a new-built "town" made only for skiing in the 30's. The former place was a sheppeard area ("Bergeries" in french), so: Val + bergeries (vallon de begians in occitan). The name of the ski station was shoosed to be Valberg, because it took its roots in those former place names, and also because "berg" happened to sound "Swiss" (Berg meaning mountain in German, but of course the french etymology has nothing to do with it). So it gave a name "Valberg, which was a good one on a touristic point of view because "val" was somehow refering in peoples mind of "vallais" areas, in Switzerland, and with "Berg", with also tend to be related to something Swiss/Austrian or German.
So Valberg was finally just a mark, a business name. The same way some real estates in hot/warm shores in the USA are called "bella vista"; to give them an image that evoques some sort of "exotism", with images of Palm trees, etc... It is the same, in the 30's, the skiing industry was mainly associated in Switzerland; so a name that could sound somehow germanic was a good thing commercially speaking.
Quite often you can detect the similarity between the English language and the German language in my opinion, and in reality I think you only need a smattering of knowledge of either language to be able to get some kind of drift of meaning either way.
I mean....Lola, the toast of Berlin...one of Europe's most interesting cities which I hope to visit in September.
When Lola trills out "Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!" you pretty much get a reasonably clear idea what she's on about......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69mCwYLn7Ao
Honestly, I do think that some dialects of British English do sound similar to Dutch, but not so much actual German, which seems harsher to me.