why doesn't English have the equvilant of sein/haben and etre/avoir auxiliaries in the perfect tense?
2007-03-10 04:01:38 · 14 answers · asked by distant_foe 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
For the same reason neither Cajun French nor Spanish has them (they use avoir and haber exclusively). - linguistic evolution. That and the fact that vocabulary and structure don't always go hand in hand.
2007-03-10 04:31:11 · answer #1 · answered by hznfrst 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
English does have the equivalent of "haben" or "avoir" in the perfect tense, it is "have". For example in English you say "I have written", in German "Ich habe geschrieben" and in French "J'ai écrit" ("ai" is a form of "avoir"). This is a similarity between the languages that only exists in the West European languages as far as I know. I know some Russian and there is no construction like this there at all.
In German you use forms of "sein" instead of "haben" for certain words especially those that have something to do with movement like walk, swim, fly or run and in French it is similar. That is a difference between the languages.
2007-03-11 09:10:29 · answer #2 · answered by Elly 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
When the Romans withdrew the Britain in the V century, the Saxons settled in the region where now is England and the natives were pushed to the west (now wales). The original Saxon language evolved specially after William the Conquer when many Latin words were introduced through French in the English lexicon, at the time the House of Normand ruled Britain.
Here some German words modernly introduced to English:
Rücksack
Autobahn
Delicatessen
Kindergarten (I hate when they say "kindergarden")
2007-03-10 12:58:05 · answer #3 · answered by QQ dri lu 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is an evolving language, French evolves out side of France ,but has the National institute to make sure that there are no changes in the country, or mostly Paris. German is the same.
2007-03-10 12:06:26 · answer #4 · answered by bocasbeachbum 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In the perfect tense, English does use "have" as an auxiliary verb. For example: I have been; They had gone.
2007-03-10 16:16:42 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Since when were the normans scandinavian ??? see above.
The English language is a b@stardised version of many languages, but modern English derives from Anglo/saxon, saxon being the german connection....
2007-03-10 12:12:12 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
some languages have up to 25% and more loan words but still retain a completely unique language. English has loan words from french and German but it is very small and insignificant.
2007-03-10 12:17:36 · answer #7 · answered by j_emmans 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
well it's because english came from germanic or whatever and french from latin. A lot of languages have some words from another language(exemple: in russian, we have some french words) but you don't copy entirely a language.
2007-03-10 12:45:07 · answer #8 · answered by Brynn 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
English had been impacted by these languages but the words from them had the impact from english too so they just transfered
2007-03-10 12:37:54 · answer #9 · answered by sin_talk 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The fact that a language has roots in other languages doesn't mean that it contains all of the features and functionality of that language.
2007-03-10 12:08:14 · answer #10 · answered by Deirdre H 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋