CDR: Re: Two items, of varying relevance to the list

[Ken Brown]

Tom Vogt wrote:
> 
> jim bell wrote:
> > > It's interesting that German is so willing to absorb new language
> > > terms, completely unlike French. English has embraced foreign
> > > expressions, and so, it seems, has German.
> >
> > Maybe they've decided they need more "sprechenraum".
> >
> 
> "sprachraum", actually. :)
> 
> german has always accepted a lot of foreign terms. during the late
> middle ages, it was mostly french, in modern times it's mostly english.
> I guess it comes from sitting in the middle of a continent (borders to 9
> other countries) - you just can't close yourself off against foreign
> influence.

But we're on the edge of a continent and we've absorbed more foreign
words than *you* :-)  How many languages are there where even a
well-educated person would only be expected to know about a quarter of
the words in the dictionary?  And even that means you are learning 10-20
words a day for your entire life.

In fact more than anybody & its being going on a long time.  Loads of
possible reasons (none of which are more than Just So Stories as far as
I know)

- way back when Christian missionaries turned up they adapted English
words  (same applies to German AFAIK) to describe specifically Christian
things.  Most European countries adapted the Latin or Greek rather than
inventing their own. So we have sets of words like easter/passiontide
rood/cross  atonement/reconciliation/redemption/salvation... loads of
words to mean the same, or similar things

- 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".

- then the famous layering of courtly Norman French on top of homely
English so that we got the only language that has different words for
dead animals and live

- The recent English habit of not changing foreign spellings, so you can
spot Latin, Greek, French etc. words in writing & preservbe a sense of
their differentness.  (slightly diluted in north America: 
sulphur/sulfur yacht/yaucht gaol/jail  (though in the UK we mostly write
"jail" these says) pyjama/pajama)

- 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?