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Origins of the English Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 7 25 March 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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"According to one survey [I guess they're referring to Pyles, T. & J. Algeo (1993): 'The Origins and Development of the English Language' (see footnote in source)], the percentage of modern English words derived from each language group are as follows":
Latin (including words used only in scientific/medical/legal contexts): ~29% (red) French: ~29% (blue) Germanic Languages: ~26% (green) Greek ~6% (orange) Derived from Proper Names: ~4% (purple) and Others: ~6% (yellow) 
[source: Foreign language influences in English, Wikipedia] What strikes me as even more fascinating are the "lists of words in the English language which are known as 'loanwords' or 'borrowings', which are derived from other languages" far and wide, most of which fall in the Others category. These include (I've left in the main groups above too): Australian Aboriginal, African, Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Etruscan, Finnish, French (including Anglo-French), Gaulish, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indian (including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu), Indonesian (including Javanese, Malay (Sumatran), Sundanese, Papuan (Irian Jaya), Balinese, Dayak and other local languages in Indonesia), Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Malay, Maori and other words from indigenous languages of the Americas, Norwegian, Old/Middle English, Old Norse , Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkic, Ukrainian, Welsh, and Yiddish. [source: Lists of English loanwords by country or language of origin, Wikipedia] Aren't languages and philology just simply amazing! :D Edited by Teango on 25 March 2010 at 10:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 7 25 March 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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The classical definition on language relationships is based on sound shifts and the idea that a central core of words survives, and that the relationships based on this basis define a tree structure. A competing theory, the vawe theory, sees languages as something that happens when influences from different sources compete.
In the case of English there is no doubt which model describes the situation best. There are some Germanic core words, but the sound structure, grammar and all vocabulary outside the central core has now little in common with the Anglosaxon predecessor. In fact English has more the character of a Creole based on Anglosaxon, French and Latin, which became stabilized during the period where French was the language of the ruling class. Edited by Iversen on 25 March 2010 at 11:33pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5425 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 7 26 March 2010 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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Read The Mother Tongue. It's very, very interesting (this is coming from someone who doesn't care much for the history of English). It starts with the theoretical Proto-Indo-European and goes through the history of English. It talks about how works used to be spelled more phonetically (or pronounced more how they are spelled, in some cases) and it talks about various loanwords and such.
Edit: It also talks about how flexible the English language is, and how we take loanwords from almost every language. Edited by Johntm on 26 March 2010 at 4:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6771 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 7 26 March 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged |
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It's an interesting theory, Iversen, but creolization tends to be a quick process and English doesn't have most of the
qualities that characterize creoles. Most of the French influence occurred during the Middle English period, but it was still a gradual process that took place unevenly throughout the British isles over the course of 500 years. I still think the view that English is a divergent Germanic language with heavy French influence is the correct one, especially considering how much of our core vocabulary is Germanic. If English were a French creole, we'd expect it to look more like broken French with a simplified verbal system and Saxon bits mixed in. Edited by Captain Haddock on 26 March 2010 at 4:30am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 7 26 March 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
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Well, I see modern English as broken Anglosaxon with a simplified verbal system and French and Latin bits mixed in, - though with the reservation that the verbal system of Anglosaxon largely has been discarded, but to fill the void a unique parallel verbal system based on 'continuous' forms has been established. The only truly Anglosaxon remnant in the modern English grammar the opposition between 'strong' and 'weak' verbs.
It is debatable how long time it took the Normans to crush Anglosaxon to smithereens, but I would say that the process took less then those 300 years that mark the use of (Normannic) French as the sole language of the court and nobility. The end of one of the volumes of the 'Anglosaxon Chronicle' (known as 'known the Peterborough Continuations', which was continued up to 1154 - is actually written is something cathegorized as Early Middle English, which among other things is marked by total chaos in the orthography. Given that William the Conqueror arrived in the year in 1066 it seems that Anglosaxon was so fundamentally changed within the first 100 years after the conquest that it hardly can be said to be the same language, in spite of the survival of some core words like pronouns, numbers and the notion of strong verbs. In this quote from www.anglik.net you can compare Old English and Middle English from around 1380: Old English Soþlice on þam dagum wæs geworden gebod fram þam casereAugusto, þæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod. Þeos tomearcodneswæs æryst geworden fram þam deman Syrige Cirino. And ealle hig eodon,and syndrige ferdon on hyra ceastre.(...) Middle English (translation by John Wycliffe, c. 1380-83) And it was don in tho daies, a maundement wente out fro the emperour August, thatal the world schulde be discryued. This firste discryuyng was maad of Cyryn, iustice of Sirie. And alle men wenten to make professioun, ech in to his owne citee.(...) In between we find the language of the Peterborough continuation: "Þa the suikes undergæton ðat he milde man was and softe and god, and na iustise ne dide, þa diden hi alle wunder" (1137) (Þ = unvoiced th, ð = voiced th. The word "wunder" is related to 'vondr', evil, in Old Norse, i.e. a purely Anglosaxon word which has since been lost) ("When the traitors understood that he (Stephen) was a gentle man, and soft and good, and did not execute justice, they committed all manner of atrocity.") One of the amusing things here is the negation "na" (in a double negation as in French), which reminds me more of Scots "nae" than of English "not". The verb "diden" still has its plural -en, but the language here is nevertheless closer to Middle or even Modern English than it is to pure undiluted Anglosaxon from 1066. Notice the same plural form in the last sentence of the quote from 1380. I don't know when this form was discarded, but it is likely that it happened in speech long before the writing was changed. Edited by Iversen on 26 March 2010 at 10:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6771 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 7 26 March 2010 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
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Those two comparisons are very interesting. Still, as different as they are, almost all the "new" words and grammar
in the Middle English version are still Germanic — just different Germanic. I suspect our knowledge of the process is very incomplete. Britain would have been full of unwritten dialects, and you had large parts of England speaking Danish as well. Edited by Captain Haddock on 26 March 2010 at 1:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 7 of 7 26 March 2010 at 11:28am | IP Logged |
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The language used in the second continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle reminds me much more of Early Scots and Early Northern Middle English (such as Northumbrian). I have a little experience with Old and Middle English, but for Scots you'd be better off double-checking this with more knowledgeable members like Cainntear of course.
The English of this period would have been heavily influenced by the Anglo-Scandinavian of the Danelaw at the time, but even more interesting in the case of this manuscript, there seem to be an awful lot of novel mixed forms of Norman influence in the middle of it all (which makes sense considering it's a good few generations on from the Norman Conquest), and so may well point to the birth pangs of a new evolutionary step in the English language: "The continuations are also unique in their linguistic shifts. When copying from Winchester, they preserve the orthography and syntax of late Old English, and when they get to events for which they have no copy text the language abruptly changes to a newer form. Given that the loan would have taken place just before the continuation, the change in language reflects either a dramatic attempt at greater vernacular by the continuation authors or a significant and quick change in the language itself as Norman influences spread. Because the chronicle is in prose, the artificiality of verse form does not entail the preservation of linguistic archaisms, and historians of English can trace the beginnings of Middle English in these pages." [source: Peterborough Chronicle, Wikipedia] Edited by Teango on 26 March 2010 at 11:42am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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