Ismael
Could the English language be in any aspect considered more conservative than German? German is typically regarded as being the second most conservative Germanic language after Icelandic, but in your opinion, is there any linguistic aspect where English could be considered more conservative than German?
2018年5月30日 23:20
解答 · 3
English is more conservative in the phonology of its consonants. English has preserved Proto-Germanic /θ/ and /w/, which have become /d/ and /v/ in German; English has preserved initial /s/+consonant, which became /ʃ/ in German; final consonants in German are devoiced; and then there's the High German Consonant Shift, whereby voiceless stops became fricatives or affricates (/p, t, k/ > /f~pf, s~ts, x/) and voiced stops became voiceless (/b, d, g/ > /p. t, k/) in German, but in English they remained the same.
2018年5月31日
Nice question, had to think a bit for this one. Also not quite sure about your "conservative" - I have a rough idea, though. ;) 1) The differences among German dialects are greater than those among English ones. Bavarian and Low German differ so much in vocabulary and pronunciation that a speaker of the former may in some cases not understand a speaker of the latter. I find that in the English language the variations among dialects (British, American, Australian, Indian etc.) are less pronounced. In my opinion, this attributes a greater flexibility to German in its adaption by local groups of native speakers. 2) Medical terms. English mostly draws on Latin / Greek in order to label diseases, and if you don't know either language, you have to guess or look up what the doctor said :D. In German, we usually have an equivalent "common sense" name for every "scientific" name, e.g. Pneumonie / Lungenentzündung, Appendizitis / Blinddarmentzündung, Bandscheibenvorfall / "Rücken".
2018年5月31日
Conservative in what way? Hard to measure this in a language, no?
2018年5月31日
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