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Saul Luizaga schrieb:
> Then you are not far from understanding Spanish, French is a brother of
> Spanish and AFAIK also English, having relatively common origin.
Well, /part/ of English is a brother to French; some other part is
brother to German, and yet some other is brother to Danish, Irish or Welsh.
The British Isles, despite their geographic isolation, have had their
share of (successful) invasions and occupations, making English a
hodgepodge of languages: To the originally Celtic-speaking population
(being the root of Welsh and Breton), the Romans brought Latin, the
Angles, Saxons and Jutes contributed Germanic languages, the Scots
(which were originally of Irish origin) added Gaelic, the Danes brought
another Germanic language, and the Normans introduced French. It appears
that it was not until medieval times that English became anything close
to a stable language.
Western (left of the Rhine) and mediterranean continental Europe, on the
other hand, saw a long Roman occupation, leaving a strong Latin
footprint in all the languages, that dominates over all the other
influences these languages have assimilated over time (be it Germanic
languages in France and Spain during the Migration Period, or Arabic in
Spain during Moorish occupation, or the original native languages spoken
before the Roman occupation).
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