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I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German. By one estimate

I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German. By one estimate around a third of English words are derived from Latin (via Norman French, thanks to the Norman conquest of Britain in the 11th century.) German doesn't have nearly as many Latin words. It's true that German and Latin both have case systems (accusative, nominative, etc.), but German didn't get this from Latin - they both inherited it independently from proto-Indo-European, their common ancestor. English used to have a case system too but it's been lost. With that being said, my original post had a stupid mistake: I meant to imply that the listed countries don't speak a Latin language, not that they do.

allendoerfer 6y ago
> With that being said, my original post had a stupid mistake: I meant to imply that the listed countries don't speak a Latin language, not that they do. I got that. You are right, German is per definition not a latin language. You win 5 internet points, even though you still did not get the context of my original post, which is why you were downvoted. > I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German. Nobody is interested in how many European languages I speak and it does not matter here, but I do speak German and English and have studied Latin. English might have more Latin words, but German feels way more like Latin than English does, because it is more structured and rule-based, has less exceptions (funnily enough because it has had less influence from French aka Latin). It is not only about a case system, it's also gender of words, conjugation of verbs and the whole structure of sentences. English feels more linearly "one word comes after the other"-style, while German and Latin both rely more on rules and sentences can (or sometimes have to) be taken apart piece by piece. One thing they have in common is the ability to form long sentences with the predicate all the way at the end, making the listener remember the whole thing before finally getting the actual meaning. Another important point is: You can mostly just read both Latin and German, because words are pronounced the same way they are written. We might pronounce some Latin words differently than they were originally prounounced, but since Italian behaves the same, we should be reasonably close.

allendoerfer 6y ago

> With that being said, my original post had a stupid mistake: I meant to imply that the listed countries don't speak a Latin language, not that they do. I got that. You are right, German is per definition not a latin language. You win 5 internet points, even though you still did not get the context of my original post, which is why you were downvoted. > I speak five European languages including German. What you say is the opposite of the truth - English has far more Latin influence than German. Nobody is interested in how many European languages I speak and it does not matter here, but I do speak German and English and have studied Latin. English might have more Latin words, but German feels way more like Latin than English does, because it is more structured and rule-based, has less exceptions (funnily enough because it has had less influence from French aka Latin). It is not only about a case system, it's also gender of words, conjugation of verbs and the whole structure of sentences. English feels more linearly "one word comes after the other"-style, while German and Latin both rely more on rules and sentences can (or sometimes have to) be taken apart piece by piece. One thing they have in common is the ability to form long sentences with the predicate all the way at the end, making the listener remember the whole thing before finally getting the actual meaning. Another important point is: You can mostly just read both Latin and German, because words are pronounced the same way they are written. We might pronounce some Latin words differently than they were originally prounounced, but since Italian behaves the same, we should be reasonably close.