GERMÄNGLISH

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Germänglish (or Germenglish) is an a posteriori, macaronic conlang which fundamentally incorporates the corpus and grammar of both modern German and English, though not entirely nor evenly. Germänglish is not an IAL, nor was there any attempt to purge non-germanic words (since the conlang is also partially based around modern English and will therefore inherently contain words of Latin origin).

Germänglish Grammar

The author's goal with Germänglish was to create a modern day hybrid of German and English. However, he didn't want to purge German of all of its traits (that wouldn't seem fair). He did want to reduce some of its complexities, such as the case system.

He decided to retain a (simplified) gender system for nouns, but this serves no grammatical function other than to add a little depth to the language. Also, rather than refer to this as 'gender', he chose to call it 'noun classification'.

Typical German/English traits in Germänglish are: prepositions, umlaut, standard VSO/V2 word order, verb inversion, and verb agreement.

Germänglish Phonetics

Germänglish is quite phonetic, with a 1-1 letter to sound ratio. Spelling has taken on a Germanic feel too, especially noteable among non-germanic words, and there is a significant reduction in silent letters and non-diphthonic vowels, such as ou/ue in through/blue. Pronunciation wise, Germänglish is perhaps not as gutteral as German, and sounds that do not exist within both languages (such as the th in the English the/bath or the gutteral r in the German rot, grün) have been purposely omitted in order that both English and German natives can speak and pronounce Germänglish consistently.

The sound of Germänglish compared to its "parents"

Finally, although Germänglish is fundamentally based on German and English, it is not necessarily engineered to sound exactly like them. Invariably (and quite rightly), it will take on its own personality and flavour. One could almost describe Germänglish as a 'baby' language in much the same way as the Dutch describe Afrikaans as 'baby Dutch'. But then again, every language and dialect has its own traits and nuances.

Germänglish Semantics

On a semantic level, Germänglish leans more towards English in the sense of adpositional phrases: Place-Manner-Time, and word order follows SVO in both coordinate and subordinate clauses, although auxilliaries do send the main verb to the end, as in German.