this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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It must confuse English learners to hear phrases like, "I'm home", instead of "I am at home." We don't say I'm school, or I'm post office. (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by ParabolicMotion@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[โ€“] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My uneducated guess is that England had so many colonies throughout history that a lot of languages affected English and we have this Frankenstein of a language

[โ€“] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 months ago

That's part of it, but I think a bigger part is all the countries that colonized the British Isles. English has elements of Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. It has elements of Latin languages from Latin itself to French. The British Empire definitely resulted in words being brought back from the various colonies, but the English they spoke then was fairly similar to what we know today. It was already this weird, bastardized Germanic / French language.