Ken Brown wrote:
But we're on the edge of a continent and we've absorbed more foreign words than *you* :-)
I wasn't under that impression, so far.
- and later on there seemed to be a similar sharing of words between English & Norse (& sometimes Dutch/Low German as well). So "ship", "skiff" and "skip" (in the sense of a large container) all survive, but mean slightly different things. As do "shirt" and "skirt".
living in northern germany, I should add that low german (the local dialect) is very similiar to english in some respects. even though I can hardly speak it, I can immediatly think of a dozen or so words where the english equivalent is closer than the (high) german one.
- but most of all the sense that it is bad style to use the same word (except for little ones) more than once in a sentence. Does German do that?
yes, it is. maybe to a lesser degree, because you DO stay consistent with the main topic, but it is generally considered bad style to be repetitive without need, and german classes spend some time on the topic, drawing up lists of words with similiar meanings that can be used for variety. the most famous one is "speak", which has a LONG list of similiar words in pretty much every language.