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English doesn't borrow
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Ruth
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Nov 06, 2011 09:45AM
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Where do you find these gems Ruth? That one was great.
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Debbie wrote: "...and I can't see anything in #1.......what was it?"It didn't load Debbie?
It says: English doesn't borrow from other languages.English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
Picture of a guy mugging another man , background black with blue letters.
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Whew! Glad to know I am not a dunce yet.
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-- from some Indiana Jones movie or other
That's a funny picture. I don't know how true it is though. I speak 4 languages. English has the easiest grammar and seems more loose to me. Greek or German grammar... now that's strict grammar!
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The cartoon explains why the English-French dictionary is so much longer than the French-English one. We have stolen everybody else's words. The Inuit have 24 words for snow. We have 24 words for everything.(I exaggerate!)
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Heck, some German words are longer than the autobahn.
I suppose this is a deviation from the spiffy image Ruth presented in #1 (thanks Ruth), but Anthony brought up something interesting in #17 that… well… I can’t resist.To me it seems reasonable that the Inuit would have 24 words for snow. Snow comes in various forms, such as the large flakes that decorate tree branches, or the fine powdery crystals that form drifts, or the soft slurry that forms slush. Some snow packs well, other snow doesn’t. Some snow is very grainy. I suppose as the language evolved it became simpler to develop a word to each type of snow, rather than using phrases, like “fine powdery snow” or “Big heavy flakes”. After all, snow is their primary environment.
To put it in perspective, consider the following list of 24 words that describes the primary environment for most of the planet:
Dirt, sand, soil, mud, muck, clay, earth, gravel, dust, loam, quicksand, terracotta, caliche, stone, rock, shale, pebble, boulder, bedrock, sediment, sandstone, grit, pumice, outcropping.
How many Inuit words describe dirt? Does anyone know?
Marcus wrote: "How many Inuit words describe dirt? Does anyone know? ..."In the interests of truth, I should say I really don't know how many Inuit words describe snow. But your point is an interesting one.
It is sometimes plausibly said that the proliferation of seafaring words and phrases in English ("show a leg","give a wide berth", "pipe her aboard","splice the mainbrace", "walk the plank" etc) is due to Britain having once been a nautical nation.
