Thanks
And 'ken' means life?
( DeadEyeDick, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 19:04, 2 replies)

no...
...it means 'know'. Yah ken?
Apologies if that question was meant to be ironic. I'm pure giving mahself the dry boak today with the seeming collapse of my sarcdar.
(jennymnemonic, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 19:13, closed)

Nope
ken usually means know. I don't really understand why that is lol, the weirdest one I know of is for eyes, we say "een". Strange when I think about it.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 19:14, closed)

cos
it's from the Norse. Same with the lovely Dundonian/Fife substitution of 'jamp' for 'jumped.'
(jennymnemonic, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 19:14, closed)

Norse, but also maybe Friesk or some other such Germanic language
I'm learning Dutch at the moment (don't ask...) and "kennen" means "to understand" and there are a number of other similarities.

My girlfriend was listening to two blokes speaking some heavily colloquial form of scots English, almost bordering on Scots itself, and for a moment she swore they were speaking Dutch - she could even understand what they were saying.

English's closest relative is Scots, then it's Friesk (and then I think Dutch), it just so happens that even after 1000 years the English north of the border has less French than that south of it.
(Frozen_Banana Shaved against the grain; thoroughly unrewarding., Mon 22 Mar 2010, 19:22, closed)

the english cognate of
ken/kennen/kunnen/koennen etc is can

makes sense when you think "I know how to do something" is the same as "I can do something".
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Mon 22 Mar 2010, 22:52, closed)