Re: [OT] Is English just badly pronounced French?

On 2024-03-31 05:15:53 +0000, shawn said:

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:03:50 +1300, Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
wrote:

On 2024-03-31 03:48:30 +0000, suzeeq said:

On 3/30/2024 7:28 PM, Rhino wrote:

 I apologize in advance to Americans who are inevitably aggrieved by all
things French just on principle but this video actually makes a pretty
good case for saying that English is badly-pronounced French to a large
extent.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUL29y0vJ8Q [18 minutes]
 When he explains all the English words that are borrowed from French
with only slight spelling and pronunciation changes, you may well be
persuaded by his argument.

 I wondered why the Brits call cookies 'biscuits'. Then I realized it
comes from the French word for cookies 'bicotte'. They also call
eggplants 'aubergines' and zucchini 'corgettes'. There's probably
dozens of other words I can't recall now.

 The English language originates from a melding of many sources with
words being 'borrowed' from other languages, including French, German,
Gaelic, Celtic, etc.   Some words have altered over time, but some
words (e.g. rendezvous) have stayed the same as the original.
 "American English" is a sub-version that has its own unique spellings
and meanings for words. Partly because (despite hating the British
rule) they have stubbornly stuck to out-dated versions of words, as
well as out-dated measurement systems, that the original Pilgrims
brought with them rather than staying contemporary with *real* English.

 Though my understanding is because of the spellings and words that we
have continued to use in the USA, our form of English is closer to the
English of Shakespeare than that being used in England today.

Yep, that's what I said: "oudated".  :-p
New words have of course had to be made up for things that didn't exist back then, which is another reason there are different words for the same things in *real* English and "American English", and to a lesser extent "Australian English" or Canadian English", etc.).

To a much lesser extent, there are also some different meanings (not
spellings that I can think of) for words in "Australian English" and a
few other regional variations.