On: Linguist claims that English Is a Scandinavian lan...

[Svip]

Estonians have an easy time too,[1] learning English apparently. So clearly English is also a Finno-Ugric language.

[1] Based on the fact that almost all Estonian youth (16 - 26 years old) can speak English properly.

[Svip → Svip]

But being serious for a moment: Wasn't it during Old English that English was mostly heavily influenced by Old Norse? Who can forget the Norwegian, Danish and Jutes' invasions? As an example, just look at Beowulf, famous for being a work in Old English.

In this link, the author highlights that Old English uses the Dutch/German approach to sentence structure. (Although, a “Ich lese das Buch” / 'I read the book' / »Jeg læser bogen« structure is also possible in German.)

But Middle English is actually mostly heavily influenced by French (1066 and all that), and surprise surprise, French also uses a SVO (subject verb object) structure, « je lis le livre ».

Maybe he should have used better examples.

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Edit: German grammar.

[timc3 → Svip]

Do you have access to a wide range of media in English that isn't dubbed or translated from an early age?

[Svip → timc3]

Oh, I am not Estonian. But Estonian television is not dubbed, merely subtitled.

I just don't believe that 'X population is generally good at speaking Y language' means that 'X's mother tongue is related to Y' is a sound argument.