n00bs

[n00bs]

mmupatton said:

You wouldn't happen to be in the Portland, Oregon area in the end of July, by any chance? I am (again) attending the OSCON this year...

I may actually be there, not for OSCON, but for a wedding. Date has not been completely settled yet, but they are talking about end of July or beginning of August. Will get in touch if it ends up overlapping.

[n00bs]

inyati said:

I left it open to interpretation, Patton

And Natmus...what have the Danes ever done for us?

Try looking in your English dictionary, removing all the words with Danish roots, and then formulate a sentence. We gave you half your language. Though, considering how much of a mess English is, you can argue if that was a good or a bad thing.

And we have established standards in an area where the rest of you males are left feeling so inadequate that a whole industry has appeared. One that seems to predominately advertise using spam.

Don't mess with the Danes dude, the broadsword and the helmet may not be in plain sight, but they are never far from reach.

[inyati]

:thumbsup:

[Arminius]

n00bs said:

Try looking in your English dictionary, removing all the words with Danish roots, and then formulate a sentence. We gave you half your language. Though, considering how much of a mess English is, you can argue if that was a good or a bad thing.

Hang on, you're only half of 'Anglo-Saxon'... it's words of Germanic origin which make up a lot of the basic English vocab, Danish being a North-Germanic language.

[inyati]

Now you see Arminius, I stopped this issue escalating, but if you really want to, I'll start saying what we (Portuguese) gave the world. But then I'd have to hear Ashimar hammer me and I dont feel like putting him in his place again

;D

[n00bs]

arminius said:

n00bs said:

Try looking in your English dictionary, removing all the words with Danish roots, and then formulate a sentence. We gave you half your language. Though, considering how much of a mess English is, you can argue if that was a good or a bad thing.

Hang on, you're only half of 'Anglo-Saxon'... it's words of Germanic origin which make up a lot of the basic English vocab, Danish being a North-Germanic language.

Where do you think those words came from? Could it be because someone ruled England for a while? The vikings didn't just raid the place, you know, they actually conquered and ruled it.

The funny thing about English is that there is almost nothing there that is English. There is latin from being ruled by the Romans, Danish from being ruled by the Danes and French from being ruled by the Normans. Incidentally, guess why Normans are called Normans.

As I said, don't mess with the Danes

[Arminius]

n00bs said:

Where do you think those words came from? Could it be because someone ruled England for a while? The vikings didn't just raid the place, you know, they actually conquered and ruled it.

And so did the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles who came before the Vikings after the Romans had gone. And while they did indeed rule parts of Britain for a while, as far as I remember from my history of the English language, their legacy is mainly in the place names (-by for example), perhaps some northern dialect words, and the gene pool in general. Oh yes, on the isles up North they had a bit more influence linguistically.

But general Old English was probably not too dissimilar from old Norse, at least there was not that much of an influence. So the basic grammar and function words are Germanic in origin, whereas the Normans brought in a whole host of French/Latin words with them (they seemed to have dropped Norse pretty swiftly in favour of French when they settled in Normandy). That's why there are many 'content' words for which there is a French/Latinate near synonym, but words like 'and', 'or', etc are older and of Germanic origin.

If you check an etymological dictionary (eg www.etymonline.com/index.php) you will see that a lot of words of everyday life ('sword', 'stone', whatever) have very similar equivalents in the Germanic and Nordic languages.

[n00bs]

arminius said:

n00bs said:

Where do you think those words came from? Could it be because someone ruled England for a while? The vikings didn't just raid the place, you know, they actually conquered and ruled it.

And so did the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles who came before the Vikings after the Romans had gone. And while they did indeed rule parts of Britain for a while, as far as I remember from my history of the English language, their legacy is mainly in the place names (-by for example), perhaps some northern dialect words, and the gene pool in general. Oh yes, on the isles up North they had a bit more influence linguistically.

But general Old English was probably not too dissimilar from old Norse, at least there was not that much of an influence. So the basic grammar and function words are Germanic in origin, whereas the Normans brought in a whole host of French/Latin words with them (they seemed to have dropped Norse pretty swiftly in favour of French when they settled in Normandy). That's why there are many 'content' words for which there is a French/Latinate near synonym, but words like 'and', 'or', etc are older and of Germanic origin.

If you check an etymological dictionary (eg www.etymonline.com/index.php) you will see that a lot of words of everyday life ('sword', 'stone', whatever) have very similar equivalents in the Germanic and Nordic languages.

You might want to check where the jutes came from. I for instance, am proud to be one of them

As for old English, it is basically English pre Norman influence. It is defined by invaders, mostly saxons, romans and vikings. From my understanding, the major sources of words are latin and old Norse, a lot of saxon words having disappeared by the time the Normans arrive and even more vanishing under Norman rule.

The original English language, the one that was not forced upon people by invaders, is hardly to be found in there. I think I have read somewhere that it was probably closer to Gaelic, but that they only have very limited records of it.

But it has been years since I last went digging in the topic of languages, so I might be mis-remembering. I do think it is a fact that the vikings had a substantial influence on the language that we speak

[Arminius]

I know where the Jutes came from. Been there on holiday lots of time...

But I still have to insist that Old English is closer related to Old Saxon than to Old Norse. At least that's what a former colleague told me, and she was an expert on Old English.

Perhaps, looking at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_language, we can agree that the basis of Old English was the West-Germanic languages of the Saxons and Frisians, which was later influenced by the North-Germanic languages of the Vikings.

[SkulkrinBait]

Oh whatever!

;D

[Warliter]

but you see its not who brought the words, its what we do with them, for example, the English,the Americans and the Aussies, all separated by the same language!!

Personally, I think English is one of the most amalgamated languages their are with influences from a multitude of other languages, Perhaps thats why politicians can answer the same question 20 different ways and still manage to avoid the question
;D

[2kcastle]

I'm pretty sure politicians the world over can do that, whatever the language they are speaking.

[Natmus]

inyati said:

And Natmus...what have the Danes ever done for us?

'

Who do you mean by "us"? Those unhappy people unfortunate to live in that godforsaken place Portugal? The Morkin, Corleth and FoM alliances? The world in general?

Anyhoot, the answer to you question probably can be answered best in song:

<sing>
Inayti crack corn and I don't care,
Santos crack corn, I still don't care,
Natmus crack corn and he is great!
Take that you stupid corn!
</sing>

[mmupatton]

n00bs said:

mmupatton said:

You wouldn't happen to be in the Portland, Oregon area in the end of July, by any chance? I am (again) attending the OSCON this year...

I may actually be there, not for OSCON, but for a wedding. Date has not been completely settled yet, but they are talking about end of July or beginning of August. Will get in touch if it ends up overlapping.

I'm in Portland July 23rd to 28th, and then in Seattle (meeting old friends) 28th to 29th.

[inyati]

The world in general ( I was eluding to the romans in Life of Brian)

<whisper to Santos> He cracked the wrong corn...</whisper>