Surely it's hard . Has Danish something in common with Hungarian? (Probably I'm wrong). In comparison English it's easier, at least about the grammar part (pronunciation is another matter). :)
But beautiful in the sense of a pastry, goes very nicely with coffee- wienerbrød men noget tungere. Otherwise, sentiment aside, I wouldn't really say it was all that 'beautiful' a language. No great range of expressive vocabulary (though some quirky and neat ones), nor do most consider it a pleasant language to listen to, though not as bad as some. But old, with more of its ancient Germanic origins vocabulary still in use than you'd think.
Oh yes, very true. And my uncle owed a bakery that made the best wienerbrød! It is quite quirky, isn't it? And there are some commonalities with Old English too (considering that the English integrated some Danish into their speech when the Danelaw was in effect ... that and the Norman influences)
Hungarian and Finnish have linguistic similarities, reminiscent of asiatic linguistic groups, which is what you might be thinking of. English is a bit of a hodge-podge, with Saxon English (Germanic), Gaelic, Danish, Norman French, and Medieval Latin all in the mix. Naturally messing up the grammar too. Luckily most of the basic languange and common words come from Saxon English, and so forms some sense of grammatical structure. And also a great deal of vocabulary in common with other Germanic languages such as Danish.
Yes, I actually found myself mixing Danish words into Old English text because of the similarities, words like fiskas and fuglas (fish and birds) is akin to fisk and fugl ... but having Danish made it easier to pronounce Old English because OE is more of a Germanic language than the more modern version of English. Sentence structure and grammar are also similar. (I suppose it helped that I took four years of university Latin as well - not for vocabulary, mind you, but more for etiology, grammar syntax lessons)
Amberwaves & Hannes, thanks for all of this interesting information. :)
(づ￣ ³￣)づ
ME equivalent of fisk & fugl= fish & fowl, so still to be found, as in 'neither fish nor fowl'.
My brother does medieval Latin, so the linguist & etimologist , I'm just a historian.
Sometimes getting sidetracked and way-off topic can be fun and educational. LOL
I studied Latin when I was in high school. Then you're a historian, sounds good. ヾ(☆▽☆)
Ah, I am also a historian, but threw in a couple of languages so I could read the old texts in their original forms...and fugl does work better as fowl LOL
All of you need to calm down, so there was a glitch in the site letting us know there was an update, but this hysteria is getting a little silly. Have some tea, meditate and relax before ranting, please ... it is not like it's the end of the world.