Is English a hybrid language?

LoveUniHateExams

The short answer is no, it is not.

I have heard one or two proposals that it is, including from Langfocus, a usually excellent YouTube channel.

But no, English is actually a Germanic language which has borrowed many words from other languages.

Here are several reasons why English is Germanic at its core ...

1. Verb forms

English has weak verbs, just like German. Weak verbs keep their stem the same and add -t or -ed at the end.

to play - spielen

I play - ich spiele

I played - ich spielte

I have played - ich habe gespielt

English and German also have strong verbs. These have a vowel change in the stem, without -t or -ed at the end

to sing - singen

I sing - ich singe

I sang - ich sang

I have sung - ich habe gesungen

Mixed verbs have vowel change in the stem and -t or -ed ending

to think - denken

I think - ich denke

I thought - ich dachte

I have thought - ich habe gedacht

2. Word order of adjectives ...

Adjectives come before the noun

a fast car - ein schnelles Auto

a black dog - ein schwartzer Hund

3. Common everyday words are similar ...

man - Mann

hand - Hand

finger - Finger

foot - Fuss

house - Haus

hundred - Hundert

thousand - Tausand

I think that most linguists consider English to be a West Germanic language.

And they are 100% right

TD

I agree.

I've also wondered at times if some of the quirks of American English are due to the German influence. (Substantial amount of German settlers in North America.)

For example, "Dumb" as a synonym for stupid. It's a lot like the German word, dumm, which does mean stupid.

Or the American usage of the word "already" as an intensifier. It functions exactly the same way the German word, "schon" does. --Do it already! / Mach es schon!

Or cardinal numbers as another example. American English omits the word, "and" for numbers higher than 100, just like German. --One hundred five / einhundertfünf

LoveUniHateExams

Yes, good points.

Also, I only compared English and German, but the more Germanic languages you include, the stronger the case becomes.

For example

man - Mann - man

hand - Hand - hand

finger - Finger - finger

foot - Fuss - fot

house - Haus - hus

hundred - Hundert - hundra

thousand - Tausand - tusen

The third column is Swedish. Pretty much any speaker of any Germanic language can look at that and see something very familiar.

I am multi-lingual (both in Roman and Germanic languages), English is in most cases structurally the same as Germanic languages, but it borrows a LOT of words and most grammar exceptions are similar to French. Basically it’s a Germanic language, with a strong influence from French/Romance-like grammar but the early English didn’t want to deal with things like gendered words and implemented the rules without the reason (the gender).

I do think that older English is structurally closer to old Flemish (especially West Flemish) and Frisian which are Dutch ‘dialects’, Flemish also borrows heavily from French, which is where I see similarities.

I’m not sure when borrowed grammar and words make a hybrid language, I’m not a linguist, but the case can be made it is a hybrid, a significant amount of words you use daily are Romance.

Things like human (Latin humanus), manuscript and manual (Latin word man for hand) etc etc.

Queequeg

Anony Maus,

Multilingual here too. Agreed, I think a case could be made that English is a hybrid. This isn't a negative thing. The number of adopted words in English is why it's superior to, for example, French, because there are so many more words that you can use to express yourself.

Btw, what do you think of Icelandic?

LoveUniHateExams

what do you think of Icelandic?

Icelandic is a highly conservative language, i.e. it has changed very little over the centuries. This means that it is practically the same language as Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. Icelanders today can read the old sagas with zero training.

Icelandic has kept case endings and the three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter).

The closest living language to Icelandic is Faeroese.

Icelandic, Faeroese and Nynorsk are grouped together as Western North Germanic. Sometimes just Icelandic and Faeroese are considered insular Scandinavian. The two Norwegian standards (Bokmaal and Nynorsk), Danish and Swedish are sometimes considered continental Scandinavian.

LoveUniHateExams

@Anony Mous

Can you give examples of borrowed grammar?

BTW I agree that there's nothing wrong with hybrid languages, if indeed English is a hybrid language.

I think Jamaican English is a hybrid language - the vocabulary is English and West African languages, the grammar is mostly African languages.

LoveUniHateExams

More evidence that English is a Germanic language ...

Let's go back in time a little, to the language of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and compare archaic English with modern English and German.

I have - I have - ich habe

you have - thou hast - du hast

she has - she hath - sie hat

^^^ This clearly isn't borrowed. It shows how English and German started off quite close and have grown apart for various reasons.

Let's go back further, to Old English. English used to have 4 grammatical cases, again just like modern German.

the king - se cyning - der Koenig

to the king - to tham cyning - zu dem (zum) Koenig

^^^ Look at Old English's version of 'the' in the dative case. It ends in -m, just like German.

Diogenesister

TD Or cardinal numbers as another example. American English omits the word, "and" for numbers higher than 100, just like German. --One hundred five / einhundertfünf

Aha! You've explained something I always wondered about!

I'd imagine the influence comes not only from German settlers, but also all the non Germans whose mother tongue is Yiddish, which of course is German derived.

Phizzy

It depends how you define Hybrid in regard to natural language. But I think we can understand how English developed when we look at the history.

What is quite unusual is the decision made about 1500 or a bit later ? to include a lot of Latin or Latin derived words, and some Greek, but I guess we should be grateful, we have a large vocabulary now to choose from, but a confusing one in some instances, where we do not know the etymology personally, and cannot ourselves see how the word came to be used as it is ! But this was not language evolving by osmosis.

Hence my Dictionary of Etymology gets some use !

Is English a hybrid language?

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