Which is to say, not very close at all.
We’re not speaking Anglo-Saxon, and Itslians are not speaking Latin. (Except maybe in church.)
There seems to be some cyclical evolution going on where a complex system of inflections develops, then is gradually lost, then a new system of inflections comes into use, and so on.
What Italians speak is a hell of a lot closer to classical Latin than English is to Anglo-Saxon. Partly, although not entirely, this is due to 1066 and all that.
Like this you mean …???
Not close. Not even remotely close.
Languages are “weird”; it’s not just English, and I’m not really sure that the various quirks of languages make them “weird”.
All languages leave out things to shorten speach. In Japanese, subjects are often not specified and you have to infer who or what did the action.
I said Old English but meant I guess Middle English – Chaucer’s English which goes like this:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
I can definitely get the gist of that
I would say that “you” and “me” are direct objects in those sentences.
Indeed.
Languages can be classified in various types, depending on how they build words and sentences : analytical, fusional, agglutinative, and polysynthetic and they slowly drift from one type to another in the course of time.
Latin (partly) losing its inflections is an example of that. It has nothing to do with it being “perfect” or not.
Yeah, I agree that’s much more readable to modern English speakers.
Then again, when considering the timeline, the time interval from modern English back to Olde English is less than the time interval from modern e.g. Spanish or Italian to even Vulgate Latin, much less the Real Thing: Classsical Latin.
Is it? Old English began to be used in writing in the 8th century, and what we would call Modern English was certainly around in the 18th. So that would be about a millennium. Vulgar Latin must have been around when the West Roman Empire collapsed, which would be the 5th century; and what Dante wrote in during the 14th century would probably be accepted as Italian in the modern sense.
That seems to be true. Apparently, Hungarian seems to be undergoing a process in which postpositions (like prepositions except they follow the noun–English has one I am aware of) are getting closer and closer to the nouns they govern (a process called clitilization) and eventually result in a declension. I know no Hungarian and cannot elaborate. But English shows no sign of such a process.
I can think of two in English. At least I think they’re postpositions. “Ago” as in “It was three years ago”
And “Hence” as in the phrase “three years hence.”
English has a few clitics too : I’m, I’ll, you’ve, she’d, aren’t, etc. They cannot be pronounced without the supporting word, which makes them clitics.
Besides, English, like all languages, is also undergoing grammaticalization, a process through which some words lose their original semantic content and acquire a purely functional role. One of the hallmarks of grammaticalization is phonetic erosion.
A classic example is “going to”, used to indicate the future.
Contrast the following examples :
- I’m going to the city BUT NOT I’m gonna the city
- I’m going to talk AND I’m gonna talk
In the second example, “going to” is undergoing grammaticalization and becoming an auxiliary that indicates a future action. It’s ‘eroded’ form “gonna” is acceptable.
In the first example, “'going to” still has its original meaning of “moving from one spot to another”. As a result, the ‘eroded form’ doesn’t work.
I’m not disputing you here. You’re clearly the expert and I am … not.
Please explain a bit more what you mean by the snip above. Which is the “supporting word”? By “pronounced” do you mean spoken, or just used as in writing or speaking? Can you provide an example or two?
Un-fucking-believable.
Good catch. Ago is the one I was aware of, but I think you are right about hence.
I thought of a couple more.
“Through” as in We were busy the whole day through.
“Apart” as in Keep those two combatants apart. Though apart here might be an adverb I guess.
“Notwithstanding”
(To clarfiy: this is an infix, as opposed to a prefix or suffix.)
Looking at I’m, I’ll, you’ve, she’d, aren’t: the supporting words can stand alone as words, i.e. I, you, she, are. The clitics are the reduced forms m, ll, ve, d, nt. You cannot use the reduced forms on their own. They need to be attached to a stand-alone word. They are a lot like suffixes, but people don’t want to put them in the same category as straight-up suffixes for various reasons. They are pronounced together with the stand-alone word, and in English they are often written with an apostrophe.
Sometimes, words go from being stand-alone, to being clitics, to being affixes. This is one way languages can acquire case / tense markings for nouns / verbs.
Thank you.