While not a form of German, English, of all varieties, is a Germanic
language, decended from Gothic and Old French for the most part.
Paul Secular does NOT speak proper English. There is no such thing as
ENGLISH english. There are various dialects and branches of English, some
of which are found in the British Isles, none of which are ENGLISH. If we
wanted to get all prescriptive and whatnot, we still wouldn't be able to
say that Paul Secular speaks English, as that name is reserved for RP
British English, not the Islington-based dialect he speaks.
and really, if Paul is as smart as he says, he should remember at least
some of the linguistics discussions we had last year (although if I
remember correctly, the generally ended with him saying that he didn't
know what I was talking about and that he didn't care to learn. Not a
particularly intellectually curious attitude, is it? One would think that
a modernist (in Paul's sense of the term) would also be an intellual...)
alexis, cunning linguist
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