Sören Kuklau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> German is Indogermanic, as is English.
Although that is true you mean Germanic.
Indogermanic is the same as Indoeuropean and encompasses most languages
in Europe and many from India. The word Indogermanic was never much
used outside Germany, and I think even in Germany they prefer the
word Indoeuropean these days. Less confusing, as you illustrate.
> French, Italian, Spanish etc. are Romanic.
> Russian etc. are... hmm... Hunnic?
Slavic, also a branch of the Indoeuropean languange family.
I think it's quite funny really, that German is always held up
as such a difficult language for English-speakers to learn.
In reality it's probably one of the easiest, being very
closely related to English. Only Dutch and its dialects
get closer. (English (though a Germanic language) has a lot
of common vocabulary with the Romance languages which makes
them relatively easy too.) German also has the advantage
that there is an almost 1-1 relationship between spelling
and pronunciation, something that cannot be said of English.
German would be simpler for English-speakers to learn if they
were taught basic English grammar in their English classes
first. That would also help them to know when to say who/
whom, and when to say "Anne and I"/"Anne and me".
Certainly the non Indoeuropean languages (Japanese, Chinese
(any kind), any African language (except of course Afrikaans),
any native American language, Finnish, Hungarian etc.) are are
all going to me more difficult for an English speaker to learn.
The same applies to the Greek and Slavic branches of the
Indoeuropean family.
--
Erik Corry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Interviewer: "Real programmers use cat as their editor."
Bill Joy: "That's right! There you go! It is too much trouble to say ed,
because cat's smaller and only needs two pages of memory."
