Category Archives: Germanic
How Moving Word Stress Changes Meaning in English Sentences
Tulio writes about how stress changes meaning in English sentences. I reprint it below, with some additions by me. What I think must be even tougher for English learners is the way we use stresses to completely change the meanings … Continue reading
Articles in the English Language
Foreign language learners probably have more problems with articles than with most other aspects of English. This is because the rules of English articles are obscure, if they even exist at all, and because many L2 learners of English come … Continue reading
How Far Back in History Does the European Race Go?
Etype shares a great many myths about “Aryans,” by which means I am not sure what. The greatest number of linguistic precursor markers for the Aryan language that is shared throughout the globe and the greatest concentrated number of speakers … Continue reading
Observation of an Age Effect in English Language Learning Among Filipinos
I talk to quite a few Filipinos on the Net, mostly women. I have noticed an age effect for English language skills among those that I talk to. Over 50: I didn’t talk to any, but other people told that … Continue reading
Filed under Applied, Asia, Asians, Education, English language, Filipinos, Language Learning, Linguistics, Philippines, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, SE Asians
What Languages Are You Studying?
Please feel free to update us on your current language learning endeavors, if they exist. As for me: English: Native speaker, no need to study anything. In fact, it’s unusual that I run across a word that I don’t know. … Continue reading
Check Out Moselle Franconian
This is one Hell of a bizarre sounding language. I guess it sounds more like French than anything else, but it doesn’t sound much like French either! It doesn’t sound like much of anything! Truth is, they are actually speaking … Continue reading
The Northern Germanic Languages
A friend of mine has a post up at his site referring to an earlier post of mine, Scientific Studies of Intelligibility in Scandinavian Languages. North Germanic has been traditionally divided by East Norse (Swedish, Scanian, Danish, etc.) and West … Continue reading
Filed under Danish, Dialectology, Dutch, English language, German, Germanic, Icelandic, Indo-European, Language Families, Linguistics, Norwegian, Swedish
Afrikaans and English Redux
A friend of mine who runs a site on Germanic culture and linguistics links to an old article of mine, Is Afrikaans Close to English?. He adds at the end a several paragraph explanation of the question and possible answers … Continue reading
Filed under Afrikaans, Descriptive, Dutch, English language, Germanic, Indo-European, Language Families, Linguistics
Does Speaking Indic As a Native Language Help You Learn English?
Commenters are discussing this question. Mr. India first said that Indians speak English well because they speak an Indo-European language natively. First of all, it’s dubious whether most Indians speak an Indic language natively. Many speak Dravidian and Asiatic languages … Continue reading
Filed under Albanian, Applied, Armenian, Balkan, Baltic, Balto-Slavic, Balto-Slavic-Germanic, Celtic, Dravidian, English language, Germanic, Greek, Hellenic, Illyrian, Illyro-Venetic, Indic, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Irano-Armenian, Indo-Irano-Armeno-Hellenic, Italic, Italo-Celtic, Italo-Celtic-Tocharian, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Slavic
A Rather Subjective Analysis of European Minority Languages
One way to see how well European minority languages is if you run a popular website that gets a lot of hits from all over Europe. I run one here on my old site, which is in the top 1200 … Continue reading
