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[–] 13 points 2 days ago (4 children)
  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire's influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.

    That's how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Because modern English is a combination of ancient Celtic languages with the various languages of the British Isles's numerous populators and conquering forces across history, including but not limited to: Latin, German, Norse, and French. And spelling wasn't really standardized until the printing press was invented, due in part to class stratification. But that's another story lol. Suffice it to say, it's more than a bit of a hodgepodge and you just gotta take it for what it is.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (3 children)

    What words come from Celtic languages? I thought it was all Germanic with Latin and French words being borrowed later.

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  • [–] 2 points 22 hours ago

    You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago

    You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago

    You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    Where the words come from. Remember: English is many languages in a trench coat, not really its own set of hard rules.

    Hell, even languages with hard rules like Japanese have some exceptions even without the modern trend of borrowing words from other languages!

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