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Are Romance languages really easier to learn than Germanic ones for English native speakers? If so, why? [closed]

Apparently some English speakers find Romance languages easier to learn than Germanic languages. Considering that English is itself a Germanic language, shouldn't the opposite be true?
POpKAS's user avatar
  • 11
2 votes
4 answers
393 views

Why words in many romance languages don't have more than one part of speech, unlike words in English

I have recently just realized that in English, sometimes the same word will have different part of speech depends on the way you pronounce it. For example, record can be a noun or a verb depends on ...
Yan Zhuang's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
431 views

Common language root for dom, domain

Earlier today I was wondering about the similarity of domain (eng), domaine (fr) and the words for home or house dom (rus), dům (cz) makes me think they have some common root, is that true? If so, ...
mathreadler's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
1k views

Why did English "man" and Latin "homo" take both the senses "gender-neutral human" and "male adult"?

Why did English "man" and Latin "homo" take both the sense "gender-neutral human" and "male adult"? According to etymonline.com, English "man", and incidentally Latin "homo" (which originally meant "...
Vun-Hugh Vaw's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
714 views

Is /ɡ/ Germanic and /dʒ/ French in English ge-/gi- words?

I've recently noticed that in English words starting with "ge-" or "gi-", when the "g" is pronounced /ɡ/, they tend to be etymologically Germanic, while the words where the "g" is pronounced /dʒ/ tend ...
CJ Dennis's user avatar
  • 1,242
13 votes
1 answer
4k views

Do the words "angst" and "anxiety" share a common root?

The English word angst, taken from German Angst, seems to ultimately originate from Proto-Germanic *angustiz. This word has descendants in many Germanic languages, including, but not limited to, ...
Fiksdal's user avatar
  • 898
1 vote
0 answers
180 views

Why were prefixes repeated as postverbal prepositions?

French: s'abstenir de    Spanish: abstenerse de    English: abstain [from] (v.) [<--] late 14c., "to withhold oneself," from Old French abstenir (14c.), earlier astenir (13c.) "hold (...
user avatar
29 votes
5 answers
7k views

Why does English not have a cognate of words like heter, in Swedish, or llama, in Spanish, etc?

This is something that I think is present in most languages. If I were to present my self in English, I might say: My name is DisplayName. Where as in other languages I can both say: Mitt namn ...
DisplayName's user avatar