My Father Has Become a Beautiful Girl and It's a Lot of Pain - Vol. 4 Ch. 1 - Ch. 25

Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jan 27, 2018
Messages
2,428
Yeah, English borrows the most from French and then German.

I think the French influence came about from the Duke of Normandy, aka William the Conqueror invading and claiming Britain as his. Most of English's German influence comes from the time of the NA colonies, with lots of German settlers coming in.

There's other languages that got their vocab grabbed by English but those two are the most influential.

I'm also not an etymologist so I could be completely wrong.

Fun fact about Japanese, Korean and Mandarin languages, they're all descended or inherited from Late Middle Chinese, that was common tongue around the Tang Dynasty.

Korean and Japanese actually keeps more influence from Middle Chinese than modern Mandarin does, while Hokkien directly descended from Middle Chinese. Korean language keeps the most I believe, and in some cases Hokkien and Korean sound like each other, just with different accents. For that matter, Cantonese is more similar to Hokkien and therefore related to Middle Chinese than Mandarin.

There's a Youtube channel that did reconstructions of what Old and Classic Japanese sounds like, and if you compare it with reconstructions of Middle Chinese you can figure out exactly when the tonal influence came in.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Feb 12, 2023
Messages
1,009
Yeah, English borrows the most from French and then German.

I think the French influence came about from the Duke of Normandy, aka William the Conqueror invading and claiming Britain as his. Most of English's German influence comes from the time of the NA colonies, with lots of German settlers coming in.

There's other languages that got their vocab grabbed by English but those two are the most influential.

I'm also not an etymologist so I could be completely wrong.
An guy who does know what he's talking about mentioned that dramatic,flowery statements,one can find as new article titles are mostly French in origin,whilst normal conversation is mostly Germanic.

It has also been noted that English speakers learn Spanish faster then Japanese,and Japanese speakers learn Spanish faster then English.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jan 22, 2018
Messages
930
That's actually massively helpful advice for someone coming to English from that side of the world. Latin is roughly equivalent to the old Chinese characters that Japan would adopt into kanji when splitting off into their own culture. Pointing out both the etymology of words and how there is sometimes a bit of German mixed in throwing off the rules can probably make learning English a lot easier.

One of my favorite things to share with Japanese friends is Spanish. Mostly because Spanish has pretty much all the same vowel sounds as Japanese! A friend from Hokkaido was totally mindblown.

... Papa is turning out to be quite a catch, tbh. Intelligence adds considerably to beauty for me.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jan 27, 2018
Messages
2,428
That's actually massively helpful advice for someone coming to English from that side of the world. Latin is roughly equivalent to the old Chinese characters that Japan would adopt into kanji when splitting off into their own culture. Pointing out both the etymology of words and how there is sometimes a bit of German mixed in throwing off the rules can probably make learning English a lot easier.

One of my favorite things to share with Japanese friends is Spanish. Mostly because Spanish has pretty much all the same vowel sounds as Japanese! A friend from Hokkaido was totally mindblown.

... Papa is turning out to be quite a catch, tbh. Intelligence adds considerably to beauty for me.
It's usually the vocabulary that messes with people because loan words break all the rules.

Goose, geese. But moose and mooses.

Mouse, mice. House, houses.
 
Dex-chan lover
Joined
Jan 21, 2020
Messages
329
It's usually the vocabulary that messes with people because loan words break all the rules.

Goose, geese. But moose and mooses.

Mouse, mice. House, houses.
Maybe it's time to start calling them meese and hice
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top