English is a Slavic language?

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FlatEarthDenial

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English is a Slavic language?
« on: May 01, 2016, 01:21:38 AM »
My native language is Croatian, I've studied English and German and English seems to be, in some cases, more similar to Croatian than to German. Here are some words to compare:

English-Croatian-German
be-biti-sein
stand (verb)-stati-stehen
water-voda-wasser
two-dva-zwei
three-tri-drei
seven-sedam-sieben
twenty-dvadeset (pronounced dwah-yeest)-zwanzig
am (1st person singular present of to be)-sam-bin
us (pronoun)-nas-uns
me (pronoun)-me-mich
mother-mater (archaic)-mutter
brother-brat-bruder
sister-sestra-schwester
rather (adverb)-radije-lieber
first-prvi-zuerst
grave-grob-grab
no-ne-nein
yes-je (3rd person singular present of biti)-ja
sun-sunce-sonne
tree-drvo-baum
day-dan-tag
night-noc-nacht
boat-brod-boot
home-dom-heim
live-ziv-leben
eat-jesti-essen
cow-krava-kuh

The correspondence seems to be even systematical: f in English corresponds to p in Croatian, th in English corresponds to t in Croatian, t in English corresponds to d in Croatian, i in English corresponds to e in Croatian (nine-devet, six-sest, five-pet), and so on.
Maybe some of the words I've listed don't share the same root, but just sound very similar.
As for the grammar, English is, for example, more similar to Croatian than to German in the way it creates the interrogative sentences. The verb do might correspond to the Croatian interrogative particle "Da li" (in the beginning of a sentence).
The definite article "the" may correspond to the Croatian demonstrative pronoun "ti" (these).
The indefinite articles "an" and "a" may correspond to the Croatian pronoun "jedan" (usually translated as "one").
I am not a professional linguist, and I don't have the knowledge or skills needed to evaluate my hypothesis, so, what are your thoughts on this?
« Last Edit: May 01, 2016, 03:32:39 AM by FlatEarthDenial »
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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2016, 02:02:07 AM »
They are both Indo-European. There the similarities end.

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FlatEarthDenial

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2016, 03:26:38 AM »
If we allow the etymology of the modified loan-words to be wrong, then there are even more similarities:
English-Croatian-German
flame-plamen-feuer (even following the rule, visible in the names of numbers, of f in English corresponding to p in Croatian)
stranger-stranac-fremder
robber-robac (archaic)-dieb
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FalseProphet

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2016, 04:06:11 AM »
Comparative linguistics does not work that way. That's still the flat earth kind of "science"

Let's make it short. Old English ("Anglosaxon") is mutually intelligible with Old Low German ("Old Saxon"). It is not mutually intelligible with Old Slavic ("Old Church Slavonic"). Not even remotely. Since at this time (800 AD) all Slavic dialects were easily mutually intelligible, English can't be a Slavic language.

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FlatEarthDenial

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2016, 04:46:15 AM »
Comparative linguistics does not work that way. That's still the flat earth kind of "science"

Let's make it short. Old English ("Anglosaxon") is mutually intelligible with Old Low German ("Old Saxon"). It is not mutually intelligible with Old Slavic ("Old Church Slavonic"). Not even remotely. Since at this time (800 AD) all Slavic dialects were easily mutually intelligible, English can't be a Slavic language.
How it is then that English is in so many ways more similar to Croatian than to German?
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Symptom

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2016, 04:55:21 AM »
Dette er rein idioti. Er dette resultatet av å ikke spise kjøtt? Slavisk meg i ræva.
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FalseProphet

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2016, 05:39:48 AM »
Comparative linguistics does not work that way. That's still the flat earth kind of "science"

Let's make it short. Old English ("Anglosaxon") is mutually intelligible with Old Low German ("Old Saxon"). It is not mutually intelligible with Old Slavic ("Old Church Slavonic"). Not even remotely. Since at this time (800 AD) all Slavic dialects were easily mutually intelligible, English can't be a Slavic language.
How it is then that English is in so many ways more similar to Croatian than to German?

It is in many more ways more similar to German than to Croatian.

Child, yes, you do find cognates between English and Croatian, that have been lost or consiberably altered in Contemporary High German. That's because they both eventually originate from Proto-Indoeuropean (3000-3500 BC)

But you find much more cognates between English and German. That's because they both originate from Proto-Germanic (0-300 BC)

By the way "robber" and "strange" are French loanwords. That's why both words do not exist in German and in Old English.
The rest of your "proofs" are common indoeuropean words shared by most indoeuropean languages. That a few of them happen to be quite similar among not closely related languages is not that surprising. It's an effect of normal probability distribution.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2016, 05:43:32 AM by FalseProphet »

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FalseProphet

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2016, 06:44:53 AM »
Dette er rein idioti. Er dette resultatet av å ikke spise kjøtt? Slavisk meg i ræva.

Dum lik kutuker.   :(

Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2016, 07:17:41 AM »
English is one of the languages which contains an extremely high proportion of words from other languages, due to the British Islands' history of settlement by many different cultures over the centuries. We have some borrowed Germanic words, some from the Romance languages, some from Celtic origins, and undoubtedly some have been imported from Slavic  languages. But overall, that does not mean the language has that root. I suggest reading "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson for an interesting look at how English has developed as a language.
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FalseProphet

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2016, 08:11:33 AM »
English is one of the languages which contains an extremely high proportion of words from other languages, due to the British Islands' history of settlement by many different cultures over the centuries. We have some borrowed Germanic words, some from the Romance languages, some from Celtic origins, and undoubtedly some have been imported from Slavic  languages. But overall, that does not mean the language has that root. I suggest reading "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson for an interesting look at how English has developed as a language.

The only Slavic loanword in English that I know is Czech "robot". There are more loanwords from Malay.
There can be by definition no Germanic loanwords in English, but you probably mean German loanwords.

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Papa Legba

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2016, 09:28:02 AM »
The only Slavic loanword in English that I know is Czech "robot".

Which explains this thread.

Thanks!
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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #11 on: May 01, 2016, 09:52:06 AM »
There can be by definition no Germanic loanwords in English, but you probably mean German loanwords.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the finest example of semantic pedantry so far.
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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #12 on: May 03, 2016, 06:25:41 PM »
Dette er rein idioti. Er dette resultatet av å ikke spise kjøtt? Slavisk meg i ræva.

Dum lik kutuker.   :(

Nice try.  :D
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FalseProphet

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Re: English is a Slavic language?
« Reply #13 on: May 03, 2016, 10:02:10 PM »
Dette er rein idioti. Er dette resultatet av å ikke spise kjøtt? Slavisk meg i ræva.

Dum lik kutuker.   :(

Nice try.  :D

Ja, Nynorsk kan jeg ikke, men jeg kan Oud Norsk. En litt.