About 80 percent of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin. Over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots. In the vocabulary of the sciences and technology, the figure rises to over 90 percent. About 10 percent of the Latin vocabulary has found its way directly into English without an intermediary (usually French).
^ You forgot a link for your copy and paste. Here's one: https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-origins/
Chinese invented left arm leg spin
And the wheel, gunpowder, printing, the rudder, the compass etc etc.
Still fine-tuning democracy though.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers. With the end of Roman rule in 410 AD, Latin ceased to be a major influence on the Celtic languages spoken by the majority of the population.[citation needed] People from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to culturally dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain until the 7th century. The Anglo-Saxon language, now called Old English, originated as a group of Anglo-Frisiandialects which were spoken, at least by the settlers, in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It displaced to some extent the Celtic languages that predominated previously. Old English also reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialectshad a greater influence on MiddleEnglish.
"The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon, or now more commonly Old English.[6] It displaced the so-called indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, "
Live with it, even your language comes from Germany . . .
(Shit cut and paste from Wiki, though)
Influenced by the Normans, but English is Germanic from the Angles, Saxons and Jutes of the 5th century.
^ that's nonsense.
As PH has stated, English was bought to Britain by three North Germanic tribes (who spoke similar, but slightly different languages) in the 5th century. Before then, the Brits spoke Celtic languages.
70% of English is from Germanic and moved many times (such as vowel shifts and S+V+O shifts) over the centuries.
15-20% of English was from the Norman's after the 11th century conquering.
Maybe 10% is from Latin, the Catholic church, but that diminished somewhat after the King James Bible was published in 1611.
Some areas such as culinary, 'court' language and legal were heavily influenced by the Normans/French while academia was heavily influenced by the original places of learning and books - the Catholic monastery... This last fact often artificially inflates the thought of how much Latin is involved in English - the truth, there's not much Latin in English, but idiots like the 18th century Oxford 'grammarians' (I use the term loosely) foolishly wrote prescriptive English grammar rules based in Latin which was just wrong; English grammar is Germanic.
Right, I'm getting bored now...
Cycling should be banned!!!
The Chinese have certainly contributed to a certain brand of slang or vernacular English.
eg: "Harder than Chinese Arithmetic" - Pertaining to one's erect penis.
"Hung like a Chinese mouse" - Someone rather poorly endowed in the penis dept.
"Grinning like a wanking Chink" (or Jap). Ecstatic facial expression.
Yes it's debated that some (many?) Renaissance breakthrough "inventions" were actually Chinese or Chinese inspired as at the time China was into some sort of knowledge spreading scheme covering various fields, including world mapping.
The extent of theses transfers is not set in stone because of academics debats and lack of proofs or contradicting proofs...IMO the Renaissance's breakthroughs occured in such a short time and on so many fields that I think there must have been some foreign inputs (China, middle-east...)
As for English language, I think that Chinese academics' claim is nonsense...even other Chinese academics consider this as BS ...not much to debate here contrary to Renaissance's inventions.
Last edited by Farang Ky Ay; 04-09-2019 at 03:08 PM.
Read Gavin Menzies’ book ‘1421’ for a giggle.
Apparently the eunuch admiral Zheng He sailed around Greenland. Busy lad.
Poor old Gazza’s head was too close to a submarine reactor for too long.
Ignoring the fact that my family tree is documented back to mid 1300" (14th century) and that my original home town has had a market every Tuesday dating from the 1200's (13th century)
But all this will be grist for the mill to Chinese mobile phone junkies who will believable anything on the internet.
Better to think inside the pub, than outside the box?
I apologize if any offence was caused. unless it was intended.
You people, you think I know feck nothing; I tell you: I know feck all
Those who cannot change their mind, cannot change anything.
And moving the breasts closer together isn’t a thing yet thank goodness.
Without going OTT with Menzies theory, some western "inventions" originated from China (and middle East too)...
Here's a list of inventions that have reasonably (i.e proven historically) considered as Chinese... keeping in mind though that it is possible for two people who are unrelated to create/discover the same thing in the same timeframe
https://historyplex.com/ancient-chinese-inventions
Let's face it the chinkies haven't invented anything for centuries. They just nick shit off everyone else.
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