http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ A place to discuss all kinds of stuff! en Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:56:32 +0000 http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/topic/history-of-english-and-other-languages#post-9429 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:13:06 +0000 star magic 9429@http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ <p>Interesting reading. Now I will have to go think about this for awhile, right after I fix my damn clock...stupid batteries................ </p> http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/topic/history-of-english-and-other-languages#post-9027 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:04:29 +0000 leonard 9027@http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ <p>EVAn OWEn...tried some fermented green oats &#39;milk&#39;!!!...holy oats, I see(d) boats &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/bb-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_razz.gif&quot; title=&quot;:P&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/topic/history-of-english-and-other-languages#post-8952 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:02:39 +0000 leonard 8952@http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ <p>BOY oh BOY!!!...the art of A living lAwyer and the holy spirit of food...HOT and WELL done job, EVAN!!!...let us speak and [seek]..creet..(sew*Age) seak... &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/bb-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_razz.gif&quot; title=&quot;:P&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/topic/history-of-english-and-other-languages#post-8947 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:10:17 +0000 Evan Owen 8947@http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ <p><center><strong>Immigrant Threads in the Fabric of English</strong></center></p> <p> “Ancient vocabulary is superior, and ancient vocabulary when abbreviated is superlative.” (“Old words are best, and old words when short are best of all.”)<br /> Words are the clothing in which we dress our thoughts. Today we will be examining the fabric of that clothing, the warp and weft of our English language, and how it was woven.<br /> Compared to Winston Churchill’s “Old words are best” quote, my silly polysyllabic paraphrase about “ancient vocabulary” is almost in a different language. That’s not far from the truth, for English exhibits a curious dichotomy in its vocabulary. (English shows an odd split in its words.)<br /> Let’s illustrate this with a couple of lists of words. First:</p> <p> hand, voet, vader, moeder, komen, gaan, eten brood, drinken water</p> <p> You probably caught most of that; it’s just English with a heavy accent, right? Actually, all these words are Dutch.</p> <p> Now consider another list:</p> <p> administration, benediction, censure, deplorable, franchise, government, reference.</p> <p> Common English words, to be sure, which I copied straight from a French dictionary.<br /> So comes the question: what are all these foreign words doing in the English language?<br /> To answer that question, we have to go back about 1500 years, before there was an English language, and the typical resident of what is now England spoke Welsh or Latin. In the chaos that followed the collapse of Roman rule in Britain, hairy hordes of sword-swinging Saxons swarmed across the Channel from what are now northern Germany and the Netherlands, and in three centuries of bloody conflict, drove the native Britons into Wales and Scotland. Viking and Danish invasions followed from 800 to 1000 AD. The north Germanic languages of the invaders became the foundation for English, while the speech of their siblings who stayed behind evolved into Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian -- thus resulting in the similarities we see today.<br /> Then came a new wave of invaders. In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy in northern France, crossed the Channel and defeated King Harold and his Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Hastings. He confiscated their lands and turned them over to his followers, creating a French-speaking aristocracy, and reducing the Anglo-Saxons to serfdom.<br /> Gradually, the speech of the conquerors and the conquered interwove into a new language, as the French took English wives, French children found English playmates, and the sheer size of the Anglo-Saxon majority forced the French to learn <em>Angle-ish</em>, if only to give orders to their serfs. But the new language bore the imprint of the old class division.<br /> The Anglo-Saxon serfs did the hard work; the French nobles enjoyed an easy life of leisure. For example, the serfs raised the livestock, which the nobles then confiscated for their own consumption, leaving the peasants to survive on oatmeal. Thus we call sheep, cows, and swine by their Anglo-Saxon names while in the field, and by their French names, mutton, beef, and pork, when on the table. Also, “hard” and “work” are Anglo-Saxon words, but “easy” and “leisure” are French.<br /> Again, when we try to sound more sophisticated, we use longer words of French origin. For example, we “elucidate” a subject rather than “throw light on” it, or speak of “benevolence” instead of “good will”, even though the meaning is the same. As in the earlier Dutch and French word lists, our words for tangible nouns and simple actions are usually of Anglo-Saxon origin; those for abstract concepts more often come from French. Even today, this dichotomy persists in our language, this split has stayed in our speech.<br /> With Anglo-Saxon and Norman French forming the warp and weft of its fabric, English has been embroidered by borrowings from many other languages. Latin, once the language of learning, has ironically given us “et cetera” and “miscellaneous”, useful words which spare us a considerable amount of needless thought. For the names of hard sciences, Arabic has contributed “algebra” and “chemistry”. Greek has provided the names of human sciences such as “anthropology” and “psychology”, and like Archimedes, we might shriek the Greek “eureka!” on having a sudden insight. The German “gesundheit” is familiar to anyone who has sneezed in America. Voices can “crescendo” in volume, even if they are not singing in Italian. We’ve borrowed “machismo” from Spanish, since it describes arrogant masculinity better than any word in English. Irish Gaelic gave us “slogan,” “blarney,” and “whiskey,” three words indispensable in the vocabulary of American politics. The west Africans’ “OK” has become the American word for “alright”, and their “jazz”, meaning lively, describes the music invented by their American descendants. First Americans donated the names of new-world animals and plants such as skunks, chipmunks, and squash; the Aztecs in particular served us such tasty morsels as tomato, avocado, and chocolate. (Talk about mixed metaphor: now we’ve spilled food on our fabric.) Yiddish schlemiels, gung-ho Chinese, and Polynesians with their taboos, have added other colorful threads to the tapestry of English.<br /> There are those who decry the influx of immigrants and their impact on our society, and alarmists warn that even the primacy of English in our country is threatened. But analysis of our language reveals that this is old news, that English is a language <em>created</em> by immigrants, and the words we speak echo the mingling of peoples in our past. Indeed, if it were not for foreign influences on our language -- Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, Greek, Oriental -- such thoughts about immigrants would be utterly unpresentable, for there would be no English words in which to dress them! </p> http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/topic/history-of-english-and-other-languages#post-8946 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:07:14 +0000 Evan Owen 8946@http://www.hotforwords.com/forums/ <p>From time to time, we get requests in the HotForWords comments for <strong>[a history of English]</strong> or some other such sweeping category. This forum is to provide an answer to those requests, and to provide a place for us to share our knowledge and perspectives on the development of English -- or other languages, if we wish.</p> <p>We may wish to explore some specialized topic: the great vowel shift, for example; the development of a particular dialect; or the influence of a particular language on the development of English (Greek, for example).</p> <p>Links to other sites offering related information are encouraged.</p> <p>Proto-Indo-European might be an interesting topic: was there ever one single European language? Where did it originate? How did it differentiate into all the related Indo-European languages?</p> <p>Let&#39;s use our brains and have fun. </p>