This was fascinating, Klaus! Grimm’s law may be the explanation for why whenever I fly KLM and they make the announcements in Dutch, they sound to me like English being slightly garbled by a faulty loudspeaker. What I’m hearing as garbling is actually the consonants that haven’t shifted all the way to English.
I also like your point that spoken English is almost entirely Germanic, which makes me think of John McWhorter’s observation that while English has formal and informal written registers, formal spoken English is very rare. I wonder whether formal spoken English is more Latinate, like the written version?
I like the analogy of the rock layers in the sentences!
This was fascinating, Klaus! Grimm’s law may be the explanation for why whenever I fly KLM and they make the announcements in Dutch, they sound to me like English being slightly garbled by a faulty loudspeaker. What I’m hearing as garbling is actually the consonants that haven’t shifted all the way to English.
I also like your point that spoken English is almost entirely Germanic, which makes me think of John McWhorter’s observation that while English has formal and informal written registers, formal spoken English is very rare. I wonder whether formal spoken English is more Latinate, like the written version?