Re: Gender in language (was Re: way-OT: regularity of german v. english [was: <snip>])
On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 19:58, Cam Ellison wrote:
> * Erik Steffl (steffl@bigfoot.com) wrote:
> > Ron Johnson wrote:
> > ...
>
> >
> > > - Why English doesn't have gender, since it's predecessor, German,
> > > does have gender?
> >
> > looks like a lot of unneccessary stuff was removed from english
> > language (last century or two?), as far as I can tell it's because it's
> > used as a non-native language for pragmatic purposes (i.e. as long as
> > the message gets accross it's all good:-)
> >
> Strictly speaking, English did not descend from German, but they have
> a common ancestry in a version that was spoken during the time the
> Romans were in power. Angles, Jutes, and Saxons invaded England over
> a period of time and pushed the Celtic peoples into Wales and
> Scotland, and Anglo-Saxon (which was a synthetic language like Latin)
> became dominant. Then William the Conqueror arrived in 1066 (and all
> that) and the language of the upper class was then Norman French.
Hmmm.
http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html
http://www.m-w.com/about/look.htm
"The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic
tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A. D"
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer
arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Bertrand Meyer
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