Hello, Ytain and everyone.
Ytain, you have made the correct observation in regards to English. Most languages that are what I call "artificial" are not really made up of completely new words or sounds, but rather of a change in pronunciation mainly of "pure" vowels into "half" vowels and slight movements in the consonants (place of articulation and manner of articulation - voiced to voiceless or voiceless to voiced). Please look at the consonant chart below.
What I call pure vowels (I don't need anyone to tell me otherwise especially as "experts") are the vowels whose sounds are "clearly distinguishable from each other" and are used by the "primitive/aboriginal" (primitive as in primary and original) languages (one can check many of the tribal languages and see and hear how these vowels are very clear). I am referring to the vowel quadrangle where you can see A, E, I, O, U, Ă, î and in IPA (a, e, i, o, u, ə, ɨ). Please look at the vowel quadrangle below.
In addition to this change in vowels, there is a change in stress and intonation of the words that actually make them sound so different. Take for example the simple word TRANSPORT and hear or see this word pronounced first in Romanian, then in Italian, Spanish, French, English, German and Russian. Russian is much closer in stress and pronunciation to Romanian than even the so-called "Romance" languages, and the simple reason is ... because Russian is actually a form of DACO-Romanian.
I believe that the FREE DACIANS (the ones who escaped the take-over by Rome) moved northward towards Ukraine and later Russia. Even before the time of the Dacians, the Getae were found in the Russo-Chinese space (see Tocharian mummies). Presently, I am working on a big table of Romanian-Russian cognates (so many words that are close in pronunciation and meaning) and even on a small table of Romanian-Thai cognates (Thai language is a mix between Pali - a Hindu dialect - and Khmer and Chinese.
For those who still believe Romanian borrowed from Russian, you should start learning Russian to see for yourselves how the meaning of the original words in Daco-Romanian had changed once they moved into Russian. I also think Rus from Russian means RED ... because "roşu" (/roʃu/) means "red" in Romanian. The latest Russian word that has made its way to me is the pronoun "our" (feminine/masculine) - /naʃa/ and /naʃ/ that have exactly the same pronunciation in Daco-Romanian - naşa/naş. When I first heard "nasha Russiya", I thought they were talking about GOD-Mother Russia because "naşa" means "godmother" and "naş" means "godfather" in Romanian. What they were saying was "our (fem.) Russia".
As a Romanian growing up in Romania, I was told that Romanian was a mongrel language that borrowed many words from all the other languages surrounding it. So far, I have found that it is the other way around. Many of the so-called Slavic languages are actually "changed" Russian. Many of the so-called Germanic languages are actually "changed" German (because German overall has a much clearer phonetic pronunciation than its sister languages). At one time, all of these languages were part of the Pelasgic space and then later part of the bigger Thraco-Getae-Daco Carpatho-Danubian space.
I have much more to say here in regards to many things that I have discovered by myself. Also, many Romanians have been working on Romanian language and found many amazing similarities with Sanskrit as have been shown. I have to say so long for now because of lack of time. I will return with more information later.
FC10
ytain said:
In regard to Romanian language, I want to offer also a different perspective from a deaf's viewpoint. In Romanian language there are no two or more words that look same when lipread, the phonetic rules are more stricter, that applies to almost all words of Romanian origin. When I lipread in English, it is more difficult to ascertain which words are being spoken because many words look same, like these three words: mall, ball, poll. And English has no strict phonetic rules that applies to all words, forcing me to create additional memory (phonetic representation for every word) for the whole English vocabulary. From what I observe of myself during lipreading in English, I seem to be slower than in Romanian (biased here obviously since Romanian is my mother tongue), and I seem to have less time to ascertain whether the speaker would try to manipulate me or not.
I wonder if the English language contains some sort of obfuscation effect on the phonetic aspect of the language making it more difficult whether the speaker manipulates the audience or not?
Ytain