English was derived from German. Why is there still German?
2007-01-31 10:02:51 · 13 answers · asked by Zhukov 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Because David Hasselhoff said so!
2007-01-31 10:07:38 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
Nice point. I shall steal it and use it myself.
To the others who talked about English not being from German:
That there where other languages is true. It is NOT heavily based on Latin (that'd be Italian, French, Spanish and Portugese), Egyptian not at all. You all missed on of THE major influences on English - Norsk, with half the country run by Vikings a fair bit of it had to come into English (it was them who introduced "Beer" into the language!). There's also small bits of Celtic languages, usually in local dialects.
So German + Norsk + French + a tiny bit of Gaelic and Irish = English.
A great book on the development of English (look I know its an evolution question but it IS a great book) is "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson. I heartily recommend it.
Oh and German did not AT ALL come from Latin. Not one little bit (Germany wasn't even part of the Empire)
2007-01-31 18:26:46 · answer #2 · answered by anthonypaullloyd 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There should still be 10% of German, the rest came from French.
Great question though.
2007-01-31 18:11:41 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
modern German and modern English (and Dutch and Swedish and Norwegian...) all came from a Germanic language--Proto-Indo-Germanic, which is part of the Proto-Indo-European language family.
Look up a language family tree and you'll see visually how the languages are related to each other.
2007-02-02 18:47:35 · answer #4 · answered by frauholzer 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
English is also derived from Latin, Egyptian, and Dutch. And pretty much any other language you can think of.
2007-01-31 18:10:43 · answer #5 · answered by Cold Fart 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nice try, I accept evolution, but man German came from Latin, and it's dead.
2007-01-31 18:12:29 · answer #6 · answered by mrfame1017 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
because german is a ver nic language
2007-02-01 14:43:17 · answer #7 · answered by Fragerin 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
English wasn't derived from German.
You were derived from your parents. Why are they still here?
2007-01-31 18:07:51 · answer #8 · answered by Maus 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
At the tower of Babel is where Jesus gave people the different languages. There is no reason why we have to stop speaking any language.
2007-01-31 18:09:52 · answer #9 · answered by salvation 5 · 1⤊ 3⤋
But English was deprived from Latin. Why is this question in religion/spirituality?
2007-01-31 18:08:57 · answer #10 · answered by Maikeru 4 · 0⤊ 3⤋