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English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking it.

Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

But English is by far the most widely-spoken language. Go to any nation - except for hermit nations like North Korea - and you're going to find some native-born who can speak English well, and many who can speak it haltingly, or at least know a few words. However...try going to, say, Honduras and finding a native-born Honduran who can speak Mandarin.

A very valid point, though I'd think Spanish may have an edge on English even there.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I've always thought that English has come to dominate not just because it's the "lingua franca," but also because it has so extensively borrowed from so many other languages, which gives it a fluidity.

Here are some stats on borrowing:

Any language, under appropriate circumstances, borrows lexical material from other languages, usually absorbing the exotic items or translating them into native equivalents. Some languages borrow more than others, and borrow more from some sources than others. English has borrowed massively from FRENCH, LATIN, and GREEK, significantly from Italian, SPANISH, GERMAN, DANISH, and DUTCH, and to varying degrees from every other language with which it has come in contact. The Cannon corpus of 13,683 new English words shows that this process continues unabated; the 1,029 transfers listed in the corpus entered English from 84 languages (1987–9) as follows: French 25%, Spanish and Japanese both 8%, Italian 6.3%, Latin 6.1%, Greek 6%, German 5.5%, and 77 languages contributed 1–39 items each. Here, only the Japanese element breaks the traditional pattern, in which European languages predominate. borrowing Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about borrowing

http://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/05-Bates-L.-Hoffer.pdf
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I've always thought English was little more than a German dialect.

Yeah, English has lots of words with roots in Greek and Latin...often filtered through the Romance languages...but German (I thought) was it basis. I thought German accounted for the bulk of the words.

Can anyone fill in the blanks on that? Have I been all wrong on that all these years?
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Next time I'm in Paris I'll need to remember to rattle the (its) cage. :mrgreen:

Yes you can tell which bygone era I come from. Even years of radical feminism hasn't stubbed it out.
Off to watch a re-run of "Mind Your Language" with my next cointreau.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Open your eyes, you are wrong. French is still used in diplomacy a lot because like I said it is still a very common lingua franca

Can you give us some examples of recent international events, acamedic meetings, political summits etc., which involved more than just francophone countries, where French was the language of proceedings? My personal experience is in the world of international medical conferences - it's all in English honey.
some English words are not going to change that, every language has English words in it, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Chinese. French is still one of the world's more used and most useful languages.

Yes, but we are talking about a distinct paradigm shift with more anglicisms entering French in recent times with great rapidty and no new French words going the other way. You ignored my question, so I'll repeat it: Which French words have been adopted into English in the last 20 years?

Your screen name intrigues me:

You might not ever get rich
But let me tell you it's better than diggin' a ditch
There ain't no tellin' who ya might meet
A movie star, or maybe even an Indian chief

Workin' at the................
 
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Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Can you give us some examples of recent international events, acamedic meetings, political summits etc., which involved more than just francophone countries, where French was the language of proceedings? My personal experience is in the world of international medical conferences - it's all in English honey.


Yes, but we are talking about a distinct paradigm shift with more anglicisms entering French in recent times with great rapidty and no new French words going the other way. You ignored my question, so I'll repeat it: Which French words have been adopted into English in the last 20 years?

Your screen name intrigues me:

You might not ever get rich
But let me tell you it's better than diggin' a ditch
There ain't no tellin' who ya might meet
A movie star, or maybe even an Indian chief

Workin' at the................

So medical conferences = all events everywhere, got it. English may be entering French vocabulary but that means nothing, it is how languages evolve meanwhile English uses hundreds upon hundreds of words from French, does that mean anything, no.

My screen name is a combination of some of my favourite book characters.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I've always thought English was little more than a German dialect.

Yeah, English has lots of words with roots in Greek and Latin...often filtered through the Romance languages...but German (I thought) was it basis. I thought German accounted for the bulk of the words.

Can anyone fill in the blanks on that? Have I been all wrong on that all these years?
It's Germanic, as in "rooted in" that group of languages. Yet as removed from the original base (ages old Frisian of what is today N.W. Germany) as much as today's German is from that particular dialect.

Additionally Scandinavian dialects, Germanic as they also be, took influence with invasions from the North.

Old Norman, which helped towards forming English, was a type of "norsified" French that brought in Latin components.

At the same time German developed out of various influences, the Frisian of old never having been spoken thruout all of its territory anyway.

So both today's German and today's English would still fall into the language group of "Germanic", but English being little more than a German dialect really wouldn't apply.

Both are meanwhile so far apart as to be mutually unintelligible
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

So medical conferences = all events everywhere, got it.

I didn't say that and you know it. Answer the question:
"Can you give us some examples of recent international events, acamedic meetings, political summits etc., which involved more than just francophone countries, where French was the language of proceedings?"

English may be entering French vocabulary but that means nothing, it is how languages evolve meanwhile English uses hundreds upon hundreds of words from French, does that mean anything, no.

Question dodging again. Answer the question:
"Which French words have been adopted into English in the last 20 years"
My screen name is a combination of some of my favourite book characters.

Mine's a combination of my favourite singer and my favourite Christmas decoration.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

.................... meanwhile English uses hundreds upon hundreds of words from French, does that mean anything, no........
yeah, it means that on account of the last version of Britain as a kingdom having been founded by the French, there's no surprise there.:mrgreen:

Okay, they were Normans and Scotland still had to be secured, but that's the story except for the details.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

The English we speak here is not noticeably different from the English spoken by every other English-speaking country in the world. Every one of those countries have added words from non-English speaking countries. We are hardly unique in that regard.

No we are not unique. But we should have incorporated more words from many languages by now. I think in the long run it would strengthen our language and our understanding of other languages. It would make it easier for people of different languages to learn and understand our language as well as for us to learn theirs. Even if we didn't learn each others language we might have enough words in common to still communicate to some degree. A single world language with different dialects would be the ideal situation. We could preserve individual culture but still understand each other to some extent.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I've always thought English was little more than a German dialect.

Yeah, English has lots of words with roots in Greek and Latin...often filtered through the Romance languages...but German (I thought) was it basis. I thought German accounted for the bulk of the words.

Can anyone fill in the blanks on that? Have I been all wrong on that all these years?

The Grammarphobia Blog: Why is English a Germanic language?
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I've always thought English was little more than a German dialect.

Yeah, English has lots of words with roots in Greek and Latin...often filtered through the Romance languages...but German (I thought) was it basis. I thought German accounted for the bulk of the words.

Can anyone fill in the blanks on that? Have I been all wrong on that all these years?

As Nota Bene pointed out, it is a Germanic language.
Still a lot of old words you use everyday that are direct decedents of old German/Norse.

A couple of examples, Jera (said as "yera")(however it's spelled) = Year/Harvest.
Tewsday (for the norse god Tew) = Tuesday.
Wodonsday (for the Saxon god Wodon, basically Odin) = Wednesday.

Cool stuff.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

As Nota Bene pointed out, it is a Germanic language.
Still a lot of old words you use everyday that are direct decedents of old German/Norse.

A couple of examples, Jera (said as "yera")(however it's spelled) = Year/Harvest.
Tewsday (for the norse god Tew) = Tuesday.
Wodonsday (for the Saxon god Wodon, basically Odin) = Wednesday.

Cool stuff.

Not to mention Thor's Day and Fria's Day.

In French (a Latin language) the days are named after planets. Mostly.
Even the name 'English' is Angle-ish from one of the three main German tribes who came to England- the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Not to mention Thor's Day and Fria's Day.

In French (a Latin language) the days are named after planets. Mostly.
Even the name 'English' is Angle-ish from one of the three main German tribes who came to England- the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

Love historically language stuff.
We still have Brythonic mixed in with English, as well as French and many others.
I think the old rhyme "eenie, meenie, miny, moe" is counting in old Welsh.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Love historically language stuff.
We still have Brythonic mixed in with English, as well as French and many others.
I think the old rhyme "eenie, meenie, miny, moe" is counting in old Welsh.

I like that stuff too.
That, the borrowing from other languages, is part of what makes English about the most useful language in the world. The vocabulary is huge, and it's worth wading through all the irregular verb forms you have to learn just to be literate in English.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

I think you were trying to say that English was the primary language and Spanish is now over-taking it.

English is still the primary language and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

We do have a growing Spanish speaking population and it is the largest second language. It will not replace English for all the Asian and African, and even European language speaking immigrants.

True. Immigrants that come here learn English (even if it is rudimentary at best). By the time they have kids and those kids go to public school?

Let's just put it this way, my mom is born n raised in America (your typical anglo-saxon woman). My dad was born in Ecuador and came here not knowing any English. He speaks English fluently now and I, his son, wouldn't be able to survive for a single day in a spanish speaking country.

Such is the fate of immigrants: assimilation. If not them, then their children will. Whether they like it or not, it's simply the way things occur.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

Not to mention Thor's Day and Fria's Day.

In French (a Latin language) the days are named after planets. Mostly.
Even the name 'English' is Angle-ish from one of the three main German tribes who came to England- the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.



Wodin's day. [Odin is pronounced with a 'w' sound, and I think Saturday has something to do with the goddess Saturn.
 
Re: English was the second language of the US for centuries. Now Spanish overtaking i

True. Immigrants that come here learn English (even if it is rudimentary at best). By the time they have kids and those kids go to public school?

Let's just put it this way, my mom is born n raised in America (your typical anglo-saxon woman). My dad was born in Ecuador and came here not knowing any English. He speaks English fluently now and I, his son, wouldn't be able to survive for a single day in a spanish speaking country.

Such is the fate of immigrants: assimilation. If not them, then their children will. Whether they like it or not, it's simply the way things occur.
Unless you're Amish.;)

At home they still speak a German dialect falsely labelled as Pennsylvania Dutch where it's actually more similar to German than to Dutch. But of course they speak English as well.
 
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