If English were like other Germanic languages we would say things like "he works not" or "Speak you English?". But instead we say "He doesn't work" and "Do you speak English?". The only other languages in Europe that do this are the Brythonic Celtic languages: Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.

Thanks for that addition. Would you know of more grammatical substratums to add? I think I'm not the only one who likes to read such information. (Or you can add them to part two of the obscure loan word sources.)

Germans will point to a picture of themselves and say, "Das ist ich." "That is I."

In the same situation, Norwegians say, "Det er jeg." "That is I."

French people say, "C'est moi," not "*C'est je."

Generations of English teachers told their students that they should say, "It's I," because that was supposedly "logical."

But ever since the Norman French invaded England, English speakers have said, "It's me."

We also say "Who, me?" where a German would say, "Wer, ich?" "Who, I?"

A French person would say, "Qui, moi?"

"Sei tu" You are you, but "E lui" it is him. The third person usage of the object pronoun has become the norm.

Sprachbund being the term used for a group of languages that share grammatical features because of mutual influence rather than inherited similarities.

English is a Germanic language, but it's syntax has a strongly Western Romance flavor. it has a strictly SVO word order, rather than the Verb-Second order of all the other Germanic languages.

In German it would be "Das bin ich" - "That am I"

So in both languages we have the use of conjugation for verbs. But the rules for this are different.

Edited to add: This should have been a reply to post #2!

Besides giving us a lot of doublets like shirt-skirt, it is also the cause of the loss of grammatical case and gender in English, as shown by the fact that case and gender survived longer in the south of England. Linguist John McWhorter suggests that this is the result of a huge number of Norse migrants to the English Danelaw who learned English only imperfectly.

but only or mainly in the personal pronouns, e.g.,

N: he, she, it
G: his, her, its
A & D: him, her, it

Admittedly, this is only a vestige of the former case system in Old English.

Verb-initial word order, crazy consonant mutations, unusual consonant distinctions (like Welsh "ll&quot ...

That "ll" is prevalent in some Native American languages. And I know it's also in Zulu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_fricative

Yeah, those consonant mutations are bit hard to get used to at first. But after a while they seem to be so natural.

Words
Slogan, cam (camshaft), smashing, o'

Thanks!

I should have said Q Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Manx...Maybe Cornish)
Which might make sense because in Irish/Scottish legend, they were in Egypt for awhile.
I think in Cymric legend descent is claimed from the melchizedek priesthood.
Anywho, hope I got those tidbits right as I read that stuff a looking time ago.

o_O

There are obvious ones that refer to Japanese culture, such as samurai, sushi, and kabuki, but here are two that aren't quite so obvious.

"Head honcho." A lot of people think that this is Mexican Spanish, but it actually comes from the Japanese hanchô, "squad leader."

Another stealth borrowing is "tycoon," from taikun, or "great lord" under the feudal system.

Tai meaning Great--like typhoon and Taiwan. Of course, the Japanese ripped off a lot from their southern neighbors.

I am pretty comfortable in countries where Latin or Germanic is the basis of the native language (and of course, it's written in Roman letters!). When I was in Japan, I truly felt like a Stranger in a Strange land (with apologies to Heinlen) but I fell in love with it, and the way Japanese can either be spoken so quietly or yelled from the back of a truck in the middle of Shinjuku, by barkers who're trying to get your attention. It mirrors the dichotomy of Tokyo, a city where your senses are overloaded in one neighborhood, abutting another with a Shinto Temple where you only hear the running waterfalls.

Languages are so amazing, they just open a window into the soul of a culture.

Tai-feng "great wind"

I once heard that honcho was introduced by Basque sheepherders from the Euskara jauntxo little lord or boss.

Wolf

(Sows)

Chinese attempt at saying the word "business"

1864, "brewery," from Fr., from M.Fr. brasser "to brew," from L. brace "grain used to prepare malt," said by Pliny to be a Celtic word (cf. Welsh brag "malt&quot .

Yiddish: Maven and Copacetic.

And everyone knows Arabic: Alcohol, and Algebra. I'll take the first, y'all can keep the second!

Coffee is also Arabic.

Coffee - from "kahwa" in Arabic, which became "kahve" in Turkish, cafe in Spanish, and Coffee in English

Lime and Lemon, also derive from Arabic, because they were first imported from the Arab world. Same goes for Spinach which was imported to Spain by Arabs.

Jar, guitar, and the literal translation of "chemistry" became alchemy in English.

(I was an Arabic linguist).

Te: From tê in Amoy dialect, spoken in Fujian Province and Taiwan. It reached the West from the port of Xiamen (Amoy), once a major point of contact with Western European traders such as the Dutch, who spread it to Western Europe.

'Bundok' means mountain in that language. Apparently American soldiers picked it up during the occupation of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American war.

"Tepee" is Lakota.

The use of "dumb" to mean "stupid" and the use of "fresh" (not so common anymore) to mean "impudent, out of line" come from German immigrants. "Dumb" originally meant "mute."

"Skirt," "like," and "egg" are words that were brought to England by the Vikings, who ruled the north of England in the region known as the "Danelaw." Even though both Old English and Old Norse were Germanic languages, these particular forms were Scandinavian in origin and replaced the original Old English forms.

The way I understand Viking movement from a piece in Nat'l Geo long ago, is that Danes went east to the Brit Isles, Iceland and America. The Norwegian vikes went down the coast of France while Swedish vikes went inland into Russia following rivers and portaging their lightweight boats over land becoming community leaders due to their organization skills, settling in Kiev, and going all the way down to the Mediterranean where they were often hired as mercenaries around what is now Istanbul.

Am I Swedish or Norwegian you ask?
No, I am neither Swedish Norwegian...