More precisely, Frisian is spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland and the German Bundesland Ost-Friesland. But why is it “most similar to English”? The grammar is fairly Germanic, I’d say. Not that I really speak it, but I can understand it a little. It is vastly different from Dutch, and also there tend to be slight differences between the Dutch and German version due to the time there has been a physical barrier between the two areas (the two provinces don’t meet at the border, there’s another Dutch province in between).
Back to the OP. As a native Dutch speaker, I tend to differentiate between UK and American accents. Generally, the UK accents are more pleasing to the ear than the American ones. It’s entirely possible that this originates in the association we have with these accents and loud-mouthed dumb American tourists (not saying they’re the majority of US citizens, but they ARE the ones we predominantly hear).
But in the two categories, there are differences too. Oxford English is a delight to hear, whereas a thick Cockney accent can range from amusing to annoying. Mancunian accents are very funny to hear, IMHO, as are Scottish accents. I couln’t tell Glasgow from Edinburgh though.
As for the American ones: I think a thick Noo Yawk accent has a certain in-yer-face char about it, as has a good Southern accent. But on the whole, they sound less pleasing as the English ones.
According to language tree in a book by Cavalli-Sforza, German and Dutch separated after the separation of Frisian from the German-Dutch branch which was after the German-Dutch-Frisian branch separated from the Nordic language branch and this was after the separation of the German-Dutch-Frisian-Nordic branch from English. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that modern English sounds more like Frisian than like Dutch or low German, but I think it’s interesting.)
I think English does have vestigial gender, just like it has vestiges of just about every other feature found in Indo-European languages. For example, ships are female.
Icelandic is the “purest” language. They have
been using the same words forever, and anyone
who speaks it today can read the Old Norse
legends from the 1100’s with ease (try that
with Shakespeare).
Anytime they need new words, they use existing
Icelandic words to make them. This is what the
French are trying to do now (i.e. mais souffle
instead of le popcorn).
Ships are often given female names, but the word itself doesn’t have a grammatical gender. I don’t have to change my adjectives to match the word “ships.” The female nature of ships has more to do with naval tradition than correct grammar.
Several years ago Ricardo Montalban was on The Tonight Show (back in Johnny Carson’s day), and Johnny asked him what English sounded like to a non-English speaker. Montalban said that “English sounded like dogs barking”. It makes sense to me.
An Englishman, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and a German are walking through a meadow debating the relative merits of their respective languages. Each, naturally, believes that his language most nearly captures the essence of reality.
As they’re talking, a butterfly undulates by. The Englishman says, “Here, gentlemen, we have a perfect illustration of my point. Consider the word ‘butterfly’; what word could more neatly embody the essence of this creature’s gentle, wavering motion?”
The Spaniard replies, “Ah, but ‘mariposa’; does not this word flow as smoothly and gracefully as the wings of this insect?”
The Frenchman counters, "Monsieurs, what you say is true, but both words fail to express the lightness and delicacy that are so much of the essence of the creature, and which are so clearly brought to mind, along with the other qualities you mention, by our word ‘papillion’.
Everyone turns expectantly to see what the German will say. He merely shrugs and says, “So was ist wrong mit Schmetterling?”
I speak both English and Spanish as native languages and I am always amused when people try to explain another language they are not familiar with. They always come up with reasons that would never occur to a native speaker.
I once overheard some Americans analyzing how to say in Spanish “I dropped it”. The construction is Spanish is more like “it fell away from me” and their “logical” explanation for this is that Spaniards are a lazy bunch who do not want to take responsibility for their actions.
People who only speak one language fluently do not realize how much they are conditioned by that language and culture. Please do not try to overstep your area of knowledge because you can end up saying some very stupid things. Only foreigners analyze the language at that level. Natives just speak it without analyzing it. Don’t try to draw any conclusions
I also remember trying to convince a Spaniard once that English speaking people are not necessarily stupid just because they use constructions and spellings which make no sense. (He was puzzled by the “up” in wash up, close up etc. what’s up with “up”?)
If you speak a language it is VERY difficult (if not impossible) to imagine what it sounds like to others who don’t. For them the “meaning” is much more in their heads than in what they hear.
This subject is discussed in GREAT depth in chapter 11-12 of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas R. Hofstadter and also in “Metamagical Themes” by the same author.
It also discusses translations and nonsense and other facets of communication. very interesting (and dense) stuff which I recommend.
I dont think anyone here is analyzing the useage of other languages. They are merely saying what the language sounds like to them. Your examples talk about analyzing the syntax,and I don’t think anyone has done that here.
Your post also seems to me a good explanation of why software just can’t manage effective translation. The day we have programmes that can translate perfectly into and from kanji is the day the human intelligence really reaches it’s high point.
Without knowing a whole lot, that seems to me to be the last step before artificial intelligence begins. What’s the betting …5 years ?
Speaking of translations of nonsense, check out [url=“http://www.enteract.com/~geenius”]my home page. I’ve gone to some trouble to translate “Geenius at Wrok” into a large number of different languages.
So far the only language into which I’ve found it impossible to translate is Japanese. Chinese, however, was a lot easier than one might imagine.
Has anyone else ever had the experience of reading or listening to a language closely related to or heavily influenced by English – say, Dutch or Esperanto – and thinking, “It sounds like I really SHOULD be able to understand this, but I can’t”? I wonder if that’s what being aphasic feels like.
The ignorance of the Teeming Millions is frightening. Any truly educated person, or Philadelphian, will tell you that “water” is correctly pronounced “wood-er”. We much stop these so-called English teachers from corrupting our youth with bastardized pronunciations of this most important of words.
I once asked a Russian colleague what English sounded like to him, and specifically whether he found it at all grating (like the “two cats having sex” description provided by a French speaker). He said that he found it relatively pleasant, but particularly liked the fact that English was more expressive tonally (?inflected) than Russian.
Folowing up on the butterfly example, one thing I’ve always wondered about is the different words for a “bat” in English, French and German. (As in vampire, not baseball.)
In English, we just call it a “bat.” Short, simple, unique name for this particular animal.
The Germans, with their fondness for building words out of words, instead have “fliedermaus,” the “flying mouse.” You can see the train of logic: it looks sort of like a mouse, except it flies. This I understand.
The French, judging from their word for the critter, also think that a bat looks sort of like a mouse, but like the Germans think there is an important disinguishing characteristic. It’s just that the French have picked a different distinguishing characteristic: they think the most significant difference between a bat and a mouse is that a bat doesn’t have as much hair. The French call a bat a “chauve-souris” (literally, a “bald mouse”).
I mean, what the ?? First of all, bats have hair, and second, the amount of hair is the most significant thing distinguishing a bat from a mouse???
The word ship might not have any grammatical gender, but referring to a ship by anything other than “she” sounds funny, at least to my ears. To me, all ships, even those named after men, are ALWAYS called she. A notable example I can recall is a ferry the “Sir Robert Bond”, which even had a song written about her, with the lines “The Sir Robert, she’s strong…” etc.
Similarly, although from a language which still has ample grammatical gender, hotel is a masculine noun in French, hence “le Reine Elizabeth” in Montreal!
You want some great animal names? Check out Chinese. I spent way more time than was probably healthy one day flipping through a Chinese dictionary and looking up the names of animals. Here are some of my finds:
Going a bit further off on this tangent, these examples highlight one of the things I find fascinating about Chinese: the fact that the morphology is so much closer to the surface. Not many people could see right off the bat that the English word “platypus” means “flat-footed (animal)” in Greek, or that “hippopotamus” means “river horse”. In Chinese, though, the original meaning is right there for any schoolkid (or foreigner) to see.