>> … English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic …
that’s exactly what they were saying. English is traditionally described as West Germanic with German, Frisian and Dutch, but as a creole with Old Norse it could be instead described as North Germanic
Re:What Is Anglish?
by thaumasiotes on Tuesday February 28, 2023 @01:35AM
(#34966366)
The link says that Old English is not an ancestor of modern English.
triyambakam says that it is.
A creole would be neither West Germanic nor North Germanic; creoles are new. The grammatical structures of a creole are, in general, not inherited from any of the "parent" languages.
it’s a synecdoche. the link is saying it didn’t solely develop from Old English, not that it didn’t at all
Re:What Is Anglish?
by thaumasiotes on Tuesday February 28, 2023 @08:00PM
(#34977327)
It really can't get any clearer than stating "Middle English did not develop from Old English."
you’re reading it too literally
Re:What Is Anglish?
by thaumasiotes on Tuesday February 28, 2023 @08:30PM
(#34977585)
You are attempting to read in a viewpoint that the book specifically says it doesn't believe.
do you genuinely think that the book is saying that English is not descended at all from Old English and is in fact solely descended from Old Norse?
based on the rest of the text which is making the argument that middle-English is a creole between Old English and Old Norse, it's very clearly a synecdoche to be read as "Middle English did not solely develop from Old English.". you're taking your attempt to be contrary a bit too far here
But your link says the opposite of that:
> In the book, we show that both synchronically and historically, Middle (and Modern) English is unmistakably North Germanic and not West Germanic. (Uncontroversially, Old English, just like Dutch and German, is West Germanic.) That is, Middle English did not develop from Old English.
> We claim that Middle and Modern English are instead direct descendants of the language spoken by Scandinavians who had relocated to England over more than two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. We refer to this earlier language as Norse.
The model there is that you have Angles in England speaking English and they get so badly overrun by Norse settlers that their language is replaced rather than influenced. None of them realize that this has happened; everyone blithely continues to refer to their language as "English" even though they've switched what language they're speaking. That seems like a difficult case to make.