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English is weird
Cornelius:
--- Quote from: Case on 24 Jan 2019, 10:39 ---Oh, purrrty!
And what is that branch with Dutch, Flemish & Afrikaans called? "Low Franconian"? And why isn't it closer to the High German branch? Dutch is closer to German than English, methinks? And Frisian is definitely closer to German than either English or Dutch?
And what does 'year 0' mean?
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It's from a post-apocalyptic comic: year 0 is when disaster struck in the story.
As such, it's not entirely accurate in closeness. On the other hand, it does take into account Limburgs and Luxemburgs as well, along with other smaller languages that often don't figure in the overview As for the relation between Friesian, Dutch, German and English, this is the - decidedly less inspiring - tree wikipedia gives for that branch:
Edit: looking back on the picture of the tree, the detail in the lower panel does give the right sequence for the west-germanic branches.
Cornelius:
--- Quote from: Case on 24 Jan 2019, 11:46 ---English really clicked for me, in a way that French never did, and with a good foundation in German & English, Dutch isn't really that hard to learn (though I've heard it's harder the other way round), so for me, Frisian feels more like another color on the spectrum.
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Personally, I feel people are mostly scared off by the case system that's rather more prominent in German. That's the only thing that's really much different.
Morituri:
You wouldn't normally guess that the words "mercy" and "mercenary" have much to do with each other, but in fact they come from the same root.
The root is the Latin word for money, "mercare." In the sense of donations made to charity (or money pleaded for by beggars) "mercare" became "mercy." In the sense of an explanation for why some young men would leave behind civilized behavior, at great risk to their own lives, and slaughter strangers in large numbers without even believing in anything they were fighting for, as long as they got paid enough to party on weekends, it became "mercenary."
So next time you see someone pleading for mercy from a mercenary, you're going to have to avoid thinking about this, because in that situation, laughing about the linguistic convolutions of those words would brand you as a complete ass insensitive to the suffering of others, as well as probably getting you shot.
Tova:
Interesting. So you're saying that the words "mercy" and "mercenary" are very much two sides of the same coin.
Akima:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 24 Jan 2019, 11:00 ---
--- Quote from: Case on 24 Jan 2019, 10:39 ---And Frisian is definitely closer to German than either English or Dutch?
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I thought it was closer to English, as the old rhyme I know (and so does Wikipedia) suggests:
--- Quote from: Wikipedia ---One rhyme that is sometimes used to demonstrate the palpable similarity between Frisian and English is "Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries", which sounds not very different from "Brea, būter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk".
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I recall that the TV documentary series "The Adventure of English" said that Frisian was a closest relative of English.
I don't know enough about the history of German, Dutch, and related languages to know whether it is historically relevant, but I've spoken before about how Flemish commentary on cycling events like the Tour of Flanders (Ronde van Vlaanderen) confuses the English-speaking part of my brain into thinking I ought to be able to understand it, because it sort of sounds like English.
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