>than English-speakers (and, I'm guessing, other Romance (Latin-based) and Greek-influenced languages) do.
The implications behind this that you intended are obscure. Did you mean to imply that English is separate or part of the greco-romance-influenced languages?
Grammatically speaking, English is a germanic language: vocabulary was influenced by Latin (and ancient Greek), but English grammar is derived from German. Yes, German has things like pluperfect tense and even two cases of subjunctive forms (IIRC, English has only one subjunctive form).
One big similarity between English and Greek/Romance languages is the use of auxiliary verbs (usually variation of "to be" or "to have") to specify tense. For example, "tha eiha kanei" (mod. Greek) and "j'aurais fait" (French) carry essentially the same meaning as "I would have done" in English. English does use more than the auxiliary verbs -- as in use of the words "would", "will", etc. -- but the similarity is there. I don't know if this was [Unknown site tag]'s original intent, but it was one thing that came to mind immediately.
I meant that English is Greek-influenced and, while not quite being a Romance language, is influenced by them. But I was in fact a bit sloppy -- not just in my phrasing, but in forgetting that the largest impact of Latin was vocabulary, not grammar. But I see enough grammatical similarities to wonder just how much Romance grammer did creep in (as ichur72 points out, it looks as though some did), or whether the commonality harks back to their mutual Indo-European roots. I don't know German grammar, so I'm starting out unaware of just how closely English still resembles it. I do recall reading in a history-of-English article that there were some grammar changes from hte Germanic orgins as far back as Old English, but I don't remember how significant they were described as being.
I'm already in over my head here reading the comments about Hebrew and Japanese; if anyone wants to pile a bunch of German stuff on top of the pile I'm chewing my way through, well this thread is being a Learning Experience in the good sense of that phrase, so go ahead.
Speaking of nuances...
The implications behind this that you intended are obscure. Did you mean to imply that English is separate or part of the greco-romance-influenced languages?
Grammatically speaking, English is a germanic language: vocabulary was influenced by Latin (and ancient Greek), but English grammar is derived from German. Yes, German has things like pluperfect tense and even two cases of subjunctive forms (IIRC, English has only one subjunctive form).
Re: Speaking of nuances...
Re: Speaking of nuances...
I'm already in over my head here reading the comments about Hebrew and Japanese; if anyone wants to pile a bunch of German stuff on top of the pile I'm chewing my way through, well this thread is being a Learning Experience in the good sense of that phrase, so go ahead.