XL/TG

A word from our sponsor:

1200-320-max.jpg
Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Blog About: 

I just got back from doing a little shopping. Among other items, I got some new underpants.

The tag denoting the size says, "XL/TG" I can only assume that stands for:
eXtra Large/TranGender. ;o)

Comments

Mais oui.

Mais oui.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Si!

Mais oui!

Size tags can be confusing

In Denmark small=Lille and large=Stor. As a result I wound up with a garment of the wrong size since the tags referred to Danish and not English. (No it wasn't a labeling mistake - I went back the day after and they explained it to me)

Twist

Daphne Xu's picture

That sounds like a twist in one of your stories. It figures that such a thing would happen to the master of the story twist.

I wouldn't be surprised if "Lille" were cognate to English "little".

-- Daphne Xu

Germanic

mountaindrake's picture

Both are part of the Germanic language family, hund = hound and many many others.

Have a good day and enjoy life.

Yes

Daphne Xu's picture

A major pattern of this: silent "gh" in English spelling corresponds to the rasping "ch" in German: eight=acht, night=nacht, right=recht, and many more.

-- Daphne Xu

It's because English, while

It's because English, while not a Germanic language, comes from the same parent as most of the Germanic languages. (Frisian and Old Scots are the closest relatives to English. Bring up a Frisian video on youtube, and listen to it. Don't try to make out the words, but the rhythm and grammar are identical)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

A-hem

Daphne Xu's picture

English is a Germanic language, precisely because it came from the same parent language.

I have trouble believing that Frisian would have identical rhythm and grammar because it was closely related to English. If they were identical, it would involve parallel evolution. Different dialects of English have different rhythm, and slightly different grammar. And English, after separating from the other Germanic languages, underwent severe changes beyond vocabulary. (And avoided some changes made by almost all other Germanic languages -- "th" -> "d", for example.)

-- Daphne Xu

You better

mountaindrake's picture

You better believe it I studied languages and language families at uni in play in Europe Slavic Germanic and Romance groups are the primary ones Aramaic is a secondary one including Arabic and Jewish and a few stand alone ones like Portuguese. Just because rhythm and grammar are very much a like dose not make them related to each other.

Have a good day and enjoy life.

Stand Alone?

Daphne Xu's picture

Portuguese as a stand-alone language? This is the first I heard of that. I thought it was a Romance language, descendant of Latin like the others. Basque (in Spain), on the other hand,...

-- Daphne Xu

yes

mountaindrake's picture

They are isolated by the terrain, most people look at a map and think that what with France on one side and Spain on the other they would be a Romance language but mountains tend to break things up.

Have a good day and enjoy life.

sorry

mountaindrake's picture

It has changed since I studied languages just spoke with my Daughter and she said they got enough root word match ups to declare it a Romance language about 20 years ago my info was 40 years out of date but it is the most unrelated of the lot.

Have a good day and enjoy life.

I think you're thinking of

I think you're thinking of Basque - that's the totally unrelated language to any other. Portuguese and Spanish are closely enough related that if you speak one, you can make yourself understood to someone who speaks the other. (My grandmother's second wife spoke Portuguese (from Mozambique) and English)

As for English - no, it's not Germanic, not like Low German, Dutch, and the others. I think it's a misnomer because of the assumptions that are made sometimes - and very poor imaginations by some linguists. The various Germanic languages are from the Indo-European chain of languages. What people think of as 'Germanic' languages the linguists call North Germanic, West Germanic, and East Germanic. Some of the articles I've seen must be very old, because they lump Dutch in with Frisian, where Frisian is actually related to English, Scots, and some extinct language groups from what is now Southern Germany. The Nordic countries are supposedly 'North Germanic' - even though they're not related to the area that was called the Germanies. (Germany didn't exist until the mid 1800's. Prior to that, it was a random loose confederation of princedoms with no real name, just referred to as 'The Germanies'. The Kaiser got tired of the constant mish-mash of tolls, taxes, and fees, and took it over into one country. So, if you hear of a German talking about how young the US is, you can point out that their country is younger.)

So, English, Frisian, and old Scots are still the same language group. Frisian picked up more of the Dutch words, and English picked up more Norman words - so they drifted apart. Old Scots picked up more Celtic words. The three languages are still much more closely related than, say, English to German. English is an Indo-European language, yes - but it's pretty clearly not Germanic like .. oh, say, German, Dutch, or Swedish. (We won't touch Finnish)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

The two notions...

Daphne Xu's picture

both triggered "What-the-hay!" responses in me: that Portuguese isn't Romance or Indo-European, and that English isn't Germanic (in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, descendant from proto-Germanic in Denmark, and gradually separated beginning around 500 BC). Checking Wikipedia confirmed both.

I hope we weren't confusing our terms. Someone may have confused Portuguese with Basque, which is a language isolate or orphan, but Portuguese was known for centuries to be Romance (descendant from a dialect of Latin) and closely related to Spanish. And maybe someone is confusing "Germanic Language Family" with the languages close to German. If a member of a language family diverges from other members, it becomes a separate branch of the family -- but still is in the family.

They try to rule out borrowing when considering what family a language is in. So Armenian was known to be Indo-European perhaps since Indo-European was discovered, but it was thought to be part of the language family containing Iranian, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Urdu. But a couple periods of major borrowing were identified, and once those were removed, the underlying structure declared it to be its own separate branch of Indo-European.

It's hard to imagine what would break the connection between English and the Germanic language family. Innovations and borrowing, no matter how extensive, wouldn't do it -- the trail is still back to proto-Germanic. Perhaps wholesale adoption of a different language would do it, or perhaps wholesale creolization of a new language. In any case, anything that broke the connection between English and the Germanic language family would also break the connection between English and Indo-European because the connection is through proto-Germanic.

-- Daphne Xu

Frisian

mountaindrake's picture

Frisian is a Germanic language Old Scots is a Gaelic language two different language families.

Have a good day and enjoy life.

_Old_ Scots isn't a Celtic

_Old_ Scots isn't a Celtic language. Current Scots Gaelic is. Even that is a blend - if you're closer to Ireland, it's more Celt than if you're closer to Sweden.

Proto-Germanic would be Indo-European. (I'm thinking Beakers here, not so much the Goths)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.