News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The weirdest languages. Parent comment

Re:The weirdest languages by mtdewcmu on Friday June 28, 2013 @01:17PM (#5959127)
I read something about how English was simplified as a result of the Viking invasion of England in the middle ages. It sounds like koineization. English might be weird, but it seems to be weird in a way that makes it highly exportable, like a successful product.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The weirdest languages by squeed on Friday June 28, 2013 @03:10PM (#5959806)
That's right. Old English has grammatical gender and noun cases (like modern German). Modern English retains case only for pronouns.

They were lost when the Danes invaded. The language was simplified to a mutually-understandable subset.

[ Parent | on HN ]