Does anyone think Spanish and English will merge, much like the Normans...

[theDoctorisIn]

If anything, languages have a tendency to split and diverge, rather than merge.

 

[konradv]

Language is the uncontrollable, unstoppable, and unkillable evidence of the collective consciousness.

Not at all "unkillable," unfortunately.

Agreed, languages are dying all the time.

Lists of endangered languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[LilOlLady]

The human race will not survive long enough to find out. WE are beginning to self destruct already.

 

[Unkotare]

'
Long before English and Spanish have time to creolize, the way French and English did, they both will be inundated and submerged by Globish. Already, in most of the major cities of the world, people communicate more and more in a pidgin of various languages. Eventually, these pidgins will evolve into creoles, with recognizable grammar.
.

No, that is not going to happen. What is most likely is that the process underway now will continue where a few dozen dominant languages become more and more widely known and spoken and 'smaller' indigenous languages are lost to time. A very unfortunate process, but then so is the extinction of animal species, which has also occurred inevitably throughout time.

 

[Unkotare]

English is not of Latin descent despite French and Latin influences (and many other influences for that matter). English is a Germanic language.

Sort of Germanic. It has a lot of Germanic vocabulary, but the syntax is Celtic and there's the Norse influence, too, and all the words adopted from other languages. It's really a mutt language which, like the hybrid vigor of mongrel dogs, is its greatest strength.

English has been influenced over time by a great many sources, but it is at its root a Germanic language, stemming from the same language family as modern German and such dead languages as Gothic.

 

[Unkotare]

The human race will not survive long enough to find out. WE are beginning to self destruct already.

Yeah, yeah you want to take everyone with you because you are getting close to the end, we get it. Shut up and eat your Jell-O.

 

[numan]

English is not of Latin descent despite French and Latin influences (and many other influences for that matter). English is a Germanic language.

Sort of Germanic. It has a lot of Germanic vocabulary, but the syntax is Celtic and there's the Norse influence, too, and all the words adopted from other languages. It's really a mutt language which, like the hybrid vigor of mongrel dogs, is its greatest strength.

Unkotare is correct, and you are not.

English has nothing to do with Celtic !!

It is essentially a Low Germanic dialect of West German. Its nearest living relative is Frisian :

Good butter and good cheese
Is good English and good Friese !

Old English, in every way, is very close to Old Saxon in north-west Germany.

After the Norman Conquest, English was heavily creolized with Norman French -- its grammar was cut back to bare bones and enormous amounts of French vocabulary infiltrated the language. Today, the total vocabulary of English is dominated by words of French origin, and by words which came in later from Latin and Greek. The grammar of English is definitely Germanic, and the thousand or so words which are most commonly used in everyday speech are mostly of Germanic origin.
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[Unkotare]

After the Norman Conquest, English was heavily creolized with Norman French --
,

Linguistically speaking it's really not accurate to term the influence of French on English after the Norman Conquest as being "creolized." That actually means something specific that doesn't apply to those circumstances.

 

[numan]

After the Norman Conquest, English was heavily creolized with Norman French --

Linguistically speaking it's really not accurate to term the influence of French on English after the Norman Conquest as being "creolized." That actually means something specific that doesn't apply to those circumstances.

Technically, you are correct. But I think it helps us to understand how radically English was changed by looking at it as a creole.

I also think it helps us to understand the Chinese language by regarding it as a prehistoric creole. Chinese certainly resembles a creole in comparison to its sister languages Tibetan and Burmese -- and it does, like English, contain very faint traces of a case system in its pronouns -- notably the marked tendency, in ancient Chinese, to use "wu" (EMC "ngo") as first-person subject "I", and "wo" (EMC "nga") as first-person object "me".
.
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[The2ndAmendment]

So now I know I'm not the only nerd who burns through linguistics in books and internet articles alike.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

The "merger" of sorts, occurred long ago.

 

[Katzndogz]

Maybe they were talking about Cantonese, or Russian, or Farsi.

 

[whitehall]

The way the union based education is going the probability is that the English language will evolve into variations of the "F" word. The Hispanics already picked it up.

 

[longknife]

A serious side to the discussion -

Spanish and English are already meshed!!!

Examples:

construction - construci'on
construct - construir
Nativity - Natividad

and litterally thousands of other words with Latin roots!!!

In addition, we Americans have added hundreds, if not thousands, of Spanish words to our everyday useage.

All languages evolve. It's inevitable.

 

[Unkotare]

All languages evolve. It's inevitable.

Not always, just as not all animals evolve. Some adapt advantageously to changing environments and some die out.

 

[Unkotare]

.....

With both Modern English and Spanish being of Latin descent,.......

This is wrong.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Languages have much more of a tendency to fracture, rather than merge.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Languages have much more of a tendency to fracture, rather than merge.

Heh. Looks like I said the same thing 4 years ago, when this thread was new:

If anything, languages have a tendency to split and diverge, rather than merge.

 

[Unkotare]

Languages have much more of a tendency to fracture, rather than merge.

Like all living things, they change in response to environment and circumstances.

 

[longknife]

.....

With both Modern English and Spanish being of Latin descent,.......

This is wrong.

You are right. The major influence of Old English was High German. French followed and that had the Latin influence. There was also a good deal of Norse.