It's fascinating that while languages vary wildly by speaking speed, information transfer is fairly similar.
It's fascinating that while languages vary wildly by speaking speed, information transfer is fairly similar.
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The French/English/German curves are interesting, given the relationships between them.
I wonder if this implies English has more in common with French than German.
Or how the German and Italian curves are so similar, does that reflect a similarity in language or in how it's used (cultural)?
English is vocabulary wise a neolatin language like french. More than 50% of english words are of latin origin, from roman latin to anglo-norman-french to modern french. English has also lost almost all noun declinations present in german and old english, with the exception being the genitive 's like dog's tail), and the plural, that takes an -s suffix (apple apples), which makes it similar to french and neolatin languages. So, there is something to it.
yeah but, while most of the english vocabulary is romance-based, the grand majority of what we actually use in daily life is germanic
English has a lot in common with both, being a language that has been bludgeoned by both.
Isn't it the other way round? The english having bludgeoned the other languages and made the result theirs? And english and german both are west germanic languages and share a common ancestor.
No. English got its French words after William the Conqueror of Normandy (France) invaded England and conquered the Anglo Saxons.
Huge amounts of English vocabulary came to us through French. English shares structure with Germanic languages, and retains some vocabulary, but a lot of what remains is considered the "vulgar" term for a thing, while the Romance-root word is the "proper" one. Largely thanks to the Norman conquest if I recall. French was the court language.
If I'm misremembering I'm sure someone will correct me. It's been 20+ years since I took Latin 😂