Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

>
>
> What about natives? The loss of gender makes English a lot easier to
> learn for its natives, but I'm sure it did not occur for foreigners'
> benefit. I think you're greatly overmagnifying the importance of
> foreigners for the development of a language. Just my opinion.
>

Then again, England's North spoke a Scandinavian language for quite
some time, so the loss of gender may well be due to a creolization of
English dialects, if I understand the term correctly. You may well be
right, although I'm still not convinced on the shibboleth idea, it
sounds a bit too forced, less natural, to me.

>
>
> I actually started to learn Dutch some years ago, but lost interest as
> there was little opportunity to speak it here.

Or especially read it -- unlike German, in which I can find many books
in the university library.

I got what you're saying, that Dutch is close enough to a modern
descendant of Old Saxon. Also Swedish somewhat resembles it and has
many words from MLG (yes Danish too but Danish has undergone some
major phonological shifts).


Andrew