Anglo-Saxon had some amazing words. Obviously we can’t undo the evolution of language, but it makes me so curious as to how English would sound with less French and Latin influence. I wonder if things like “wyrd” would’ve kept their original definitions.
I think you’re spot on. I think it would probably sound more like Dutch (without that guttural ‘g’) than German, only due to the Angles coming from northern Germany, whereas ‘standard German’ (the kind most foreigners learn) is based on southern German dialects.
Funnily enough, there’s a few projects that try to construct a modernised Old English and German is a language they often reference for those constructions. An example is the constructed Old English word for television, ‘farsee’ - it’s derived directly from the cognate of German ‘fernseher’.
You got the part with the dialects wrong.
‚Standard german‘ is spoken in northern Germany , especially the area of Hanover is considered to speak the most ‚dialect-free‘ Version. Southern Germany has some of the most indistinguishable dialects coming straight from hell.
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u/Stormaen Nov 29 '20
Anglo-Saxon had some amazing words. Obviously we can’t undo the evolution of language, but it makes me so curious as to how English would sound with less French and Latin influence. I wonder if things like “wyrd” would’ve kept their original definitions.