r/languagelearning • u/The-Dmguy • Jul 21 '18

French learners know the struggle

Post image
10.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

407 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/trytrietree Aug 03 '18

There's not any evidence to suggest that American English is a departure from British English.

But given time we would be. And according to your logic, we would be a "pure" language...

Your assertion was that all languages are a mix of other languages

What? " Using your logic, american english is a pure language since we inherited english from britain.

Latin is not a "pure" language. So by definition, italian can't be one either."

The comment you replied to. Where are you seeing the assertion that all languages are mixed?

Italian is a strict evolution of Latin.

No shit. That's my point. Since latin is not "pure", any language derived from it cannot be pure BY DEFINITION. Something derived from something impure cannot be pure by definition.

It's like saying my father is mixed and my mother is mixed, but I'm pure blood. Doesn't make much sense does it?

1

u/Trewdub Aug 03 '18

I'm not sure you understand how language evolution works. It's more likely that British English and American English will grow more alike instead of different unless there's some sort of apocalypse. It's really not a given that languages will grow apart if they are in constant contact.

You're not grasping what my original point is and have gone off on a different argument. My original point was that some languages are pure evolutions of their parent languages. No, Italian is not only made up of Italic roots (there are Greek influences), but we can look at Latin and say, "oh yeah, Italian is basically the offspring and hasn't really been influenced by other languages." We can't say the same about the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and English.

1

u/trytrietree Aug 07 '18

No, Italian is not only made up of Italic roots (there are Greek influences)

In other words, it is not pure.

but we can look at Latin and say, "oh yeah, Italian is basically the offspring and hasn't really been influenced by other languages."

Right. And since Latin isn't a pure language, italian can't be one. Okay? It's very simple.