News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The strangest letter of the alphabet: The rise and fall o... by quickthrowman on Friday October 03, 2025 @05:02PM (#45467732)
English is three languages smashed together with thousand of words borrowed from dozens of other languages (Latin, “Proto-German”, Norman French). There’s no other language that has such a rich vocabulary.

To me, Finnish is the only interesting language in your list, due to not being related to the rest of the Nordic languages or Russian (Finno-Ugric). It’s also purely phonetic, which is nice, but what a shame about all those case endings. I am definitely biased as I learned Finnish as a teenager.

Might as well take this opportunity to plug Bill Bryson’s book The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, it’s a fun read.

Re:The strangest letter of the alphabet: The rise and fall o... by cenamus on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:45AM (#45471103)
You mean Old English, proto-germanic was long gone by the time of the norman conquest