Re: OT: NB as Xy

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
> 90% is the usual number. But vocab does not a language make.
> 90% of Indonesian vocab is Sanskritic (Indo-European), but
> Indonesian (=Malay) is still an Austronesian language.
Fascinating (about the Indonesian vocabulary). But while
structure may be paramount for linguistics, once you get into
literature, aesthetics, and the whole atmosphere of a language, I
think vocabulary starts to have more importance. And when it
comes to learning a new language--I once shared an office with an
Icelander. He spoke Icelandic (i.e., Old Norse), Danish,
Norwegian, and Swedish, and had studied German. But he told me
that when he came to learn English, his Latin (which he had also
studied) was of more use than ALL those Germanic languages.
Admittedly, they're all from the North or East Germanic branches,
not the Frisian-Dutch-Flemish-English one.
> English
> is a Germanic language. Come on -- you know that.
Indeed I do. It's one reason I get annoyed when pedants start
complaining about splitting infinitives and ending sentences with
"prepositions" (which are usually actually adverbs doing the work
of German separable verb prefixes--as in "Machen Sie die Tür zu,
bitte").
> What we now call
> Frisian (or some proto thereof) is the parent.
The proto was what I was getting at. Modern Frisian would have
changed from whatever the original root was, if not as much as
English has, no?
> indeed, they still make good slaves (check
> out most any corporate cubicle).

A hit, a palpable hit!
> -- this explains why
> American Congressmen have franking rights, but only for them).
The history of the words Frank, franchise, and cognates is
fascinating. C. S. Lewis has a whole chapter on it in _Studies in
Words._

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx