How some people view the English Language

[Kevin]

[Ash]

Actually, I took both Latin and German too for 6 years (and I speak Dutch, which for sure is a Germanic language) and while English might use quite a bit of Latin words, the structure, types of words and pronouncations are a lot more similar to German (though German is more similar to Latin than English to Latin, IMHO...).

Though I think my Classical Languages teacher once told me that the Latinic and Germanic languages are both branches of the Indo-European language, so there should always be some similarities...

[Kevin]

but, the indefinite article structure is pure latin, not german. Also german has the mega compound word components, that's something that is frisian and not latin. English does not have this.

^_^

I'm not saying German didn't have it's influences, 12% of the spoken english language is from Gothic and Frisian origins, but over 50% of the words we use are latin, we use Latin indefinite articles structures, we use the prefix/suffix structures (which were completely absent from Gothic - and while german did assume prefix/suffix structures, it absorbed it from latin) and the only main difference between english and latin that I've seen is the noun verb flip.

^_^

[Ash]

You're absolutely right on the suffix/prefix point. But I still see it as an imported structure and not as a pure English structure.

While I'm perfectly willing to believe your numbers for the origin of words, I think it's pretty clear that in common speech, most of the words we use in English are from Germanic origin. In Dutch you can choose to use Latin words too, but you won't use them as often as Germanic words. In English it's more common to use Latin-based words, but I would still wager that most of the words in common speech are Germanic based.

And I'm not very used to English vocabulary for languages, so correct me if I'm wrong, but an indefinite article is 'a' (a tree) right? Latin doesn't use indefinite articles, only 'pointing articles' (hic/here, ipse/self etc.).

The influence of Latin on the modern English is big, that's for sure. But the roots of modern English are still in Germanic language, as far as I think.

[cmoon]

I thought both German and English had Latin as their root ???

I've also heard of English as a Germanic language--but am not going to pretend I'm any kind of expert on this. If someone just asked me to gues I would have assumed something like 'ancient latin' -> 'ancient root of germanic languages' and a split with something leading to modern English and something leading to modern German.

Edit: as an aside, this should be paired up with historical/geographic data of the movement of people. There's no way this should simply be a linguistic debate, since the descent of languages should follow the movement of people.

[Kevin]

[cmoon]

[Kevin]

[cmoon]

[Kevin]

[putrocca]

[strobe_z]

[Huscheli]

[Kevin]

[Kevin]