English primary developed from German, French, and Latin with some Celtic
While the Roman once ruled much of the British Isles, modern English begins with the influx of the Anglo-Saxons from Northern German about 450 A.D. The Norman Conquest (1066) of England by French people began 200 years of French being the the government language.
Since so many modern English words have French and German roots, reading French and German is not so difficult for English-speaking peoples
planned
215 - Full cognates - Still have the same spelling and meaning; usally sound similar.
216 - Cognates with vowel change
217 - Cognates with consonant change
218 - Cognates with vowel and consonant change
219 - False Friends - Same spelling but different maning
-----below is to be revised ---
English is a Germanic language. This chapter opens with a short introduction to the Germanic languages and and shows a bit of how English developed from Lowland German, Latin, French, Celtic, Norse, etc. Understanding these relationships may help you understand the meaning of German/English cognates which are words that had the same roots and usually still have the same meaning. Some are still pronounced the same: maus = mouse; haus = house, etc. It is a big help if you can pronounce the German word as sometimes the sound is more like its English cognate than the spelling.
Chapter 200 will cover four subject areas:
After you learn the above, you will be able to guess the meaning of thousands of words seen in German websites, newspapers, and professional literature in all fields of study.
This Chapter was started recently and is very incomplete. I hope German speakers will proofread the pages or give suggestions for organization and additions.
211 - English developed from
Platt Deutsch
212 - Full cognates: same origin,
same spelling, same meaning in German and English
---------- items to be used in revising Chapter 200 -----
Euro-English - This short assay may help you think about some of the differences between German and English, but that was not its original purpose. Not ready
German vocabulary and pronuciation -
Infoseek: Platt Deutsch pages -
The Germanic Phrasebook - This phrasebook (free download) is a compilation of several hundred important phrases and words in 17 different Germanic languages. The languages are: Afrikaans, Bavarian/Austrian, Dutch, English, German, Low Saxon (Low German) of Eastern Friesland, Luxembourgish, Mennonite Plautdietsch, Northern Low Saxon (Low German), Scots, Swiss German (from both Zurich and Bern), Westerlauwer Frisian, and Westphalian Low Saxon (Low German). This is not a phrasebook for tourists. It is for those interested in dialects.
TAD TREE - a tree of origin of many languages
The Lowlands Languages - includes a mailing list Lowlands-L -
The
Lord's Prayer in several Germanic Languages -
Suggestions, corrections, and comments are appreciated: Contact Harold Eddleman indbio@disknet.com
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS IT IS SPOKEN
For all the English speakers around the world, I'd like to recommend the book "The Mother Tongue, English & How It Got That Way" by Bill Bryson. Also "The Story of English" (companion to the PBS television series) by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. I always wondered why English speakers couldn't pronounce words the same and why some words weren't spelled the way they sound. These books were very enlightening.
Marcy Hoover <kim.hoover@worldnet.att.net>