Brief Note on OE

[David L. White]

[ Moderator's note:
  The following qouted material is taken from a posting by JoatSimeon at aol.com
  dated 30 Apr 2001 00:01:04 EDT.
  -- rma ]

> English has a massive freight of lexical items from Latin and the Romance
> languages; in total (though not in frequency of use) almost as much as it
> derives from its Germanic parent.  And its syntax bears very little
> resemblance to Proto-Germanic or to Old English.

> This, however, affects the _genetic_ relationships involved not at all.
> English is a Germanic language, and if we had no record of Old English, we
> could reconstruct it (and the intervening stages) quite accurately from
> cognate languages and the modern speech.

        Not really.  There is no evidence of the so-called short diphthongs,
an essential part of OE as it is traditionally construed (but see Daunt
1939), in other Germanic or in later English, notwithstanding the somewhat
desparate and confused efforts of Kuhn and Quirk to show otherwise in their
response to Barritt and Stockwell.

Dr. David L. White