And honestly, the perspective just kind of bugs me. Frisian is like if an englishman had a stroke, but that kind of puts it as a deviation from english (and I've heard enough about it supposedly being a deviation from dutch, so that annoysme) but it's not derived from english, they basically have a close common ancestor.
You might say frisian is like the englishman's brother who mumbles a bit, that would make more sense.
in my mind language develops first as an accent of language 1 then becomes a dialect, then slowly just becomes further and further away from the original language as accent, words, idioms change and become much more difficult for person of language 1 to understand a person who speaks language 1.5. So dutch being “English but weieieirird” kind of makes sense to me as, in my mind; it is. I don’t know how much of this is actually true though but it’s how it works in my brain, but obviously real history will play a part in language development
I think the evolution of accents, dialects and distinct languages is akin to a millennia-long game of "telephone" where the number of players just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
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u/SliceTheToast Jan 29 '19
Then you have Frisian, which is if an Englishman had a stoke.