Re: R: Re: English oddities

Mangiat wrote:

> English has 'it', German 'es', Swedish 'ett', Latin 'id'. Where's Dutch
> 'het' from? Perhaps analogy with 'hij' (male)?
In Old English, "it" was "hit"--the "h" was lost.  OE "hit" and Dutch "het" are
probably cognates.  As for the relationship between these and the German and
Swedish forms, I don't know.


> German has 'schön', Dutch 'schoon' (?). Where's the English cognate?
> Shouldn't it be 'shoon' (beautiful is from French)?
The absence of an English cognate is hardly surprising, considering the amount
of lexical replacement that has taken place.  Among the Germanic languages,
English is by far the odd man out when it comes to vocabulary.  One could
almost think of English as being a creole, with a Germanic substrate and a
French/Classical superstrate.

Matt.