On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:54:09 +0000 (UTC), "hawker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
<flink@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>I hope you do not mind if I top post.
Go right ahead! It identifies you as an idiot and will spare us the
trouble of reading the rest of your posts in future.
>Wright, the eminent Victorian
>philologist, noted the total lack of German grammar in so called Middle
>English,
Still flogging this old chestnut, I see. Where, exactly, did he make
this observation? Since he taught at Heidelberg for a time, it is
inconceivable that he would be unaware of the very real relation****p
between English and German grammar. We only have to look at the verbs
and how they are classified into 'strong' and 'weak' and how the
process of ablaut (swim, swam, swum, sing, sang, sung, bring, brought,
think, thought) is mirrored between the two to realise that they are
connected.
>as well as massive word borrowings from Scandinavian
Old Norse was a Germanic language too.
>and Celtic languages,
A load of place names and at most a few hundred other words from all
Celtic sources is hardly a massive borrowing.
>and even on a smaller scale French. Grammatically English bears
>to relation to either archaic or modern German, so how can English be
>derived from Anglo-Saxon? No, English is a pidgin language derived from
>several other languages. This accounts for the mixed English vocabulary
and
>the general lack of grammar. The final coup-de-grace arose when in
Northern
>English the definite article THE replaced the German (masculine,
feminine,
>and neuter definite articles (I forget the archaic German/Anglo-Saxon
>definite articles, but in modern German they are die, der, das). So
called
>Old English was in fact Old German.
Didn't you just say it bore no relation****p to either archaic or
modern German? At least try to be consistent with your nonsense.
>All of this rubbish about 'Old English'
>derives from Gobineau's book, The Inequalities of the Races..
So where does all the rubbish you post derive from?
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