Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
I just finished "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" by John McWhorter, a short but very interesting book on some theories about the origins of peculiarities in English. I enjoyed it so much I think I got carried away with my review below.
Germanic tribes invade England in 5th century bringing along "Old English". Then Vikings in the 8th century that give us a lot of duplication since they speak a variant of old english (dike, ditch). Norman invasion in the 11th century where French becomes our elite language of arts and science and we gain some more words (army, logic). Later during the Hundred Years War, French gets a downgrade and the elite fall in love with Latin. This gives us tons of words including a hierarchy of "fanciness" - 'ask' (old English) is mundane, 'question' (French) is middle class, but 'interrogate' (latin) is fancy-pants. This envy of latin also gives us some interesting "fake rules" that are still with us today. Since latin can't split an infinitive nor end a sentence with a preposition, these latin lovers of a few centuries ago decided that English should be more like latin and following these rules marked you as a member of the elite class in Britain. (So the next time someone tells you not to end a sentence with a preposition, tell them it's a fake rule invented by some European effete liberals with a hardon for Latin and being above the unwashed masses.)
Actually, on that note, the book rants against proscriptive grammarians. For another example, he recommends punching in the mouth the next person who says that English doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun, like "I don't know when our mysterious person will return to claim their wallet." "They" has been used that way for over 6 hundred years. Shakespeare does it! I think 600 years is enough time for grammarians to notice that the language does have one and gets by just fine, thank you.
Some history...English is considered in the Germanic family of languages which appear to have originated somewhere near Denmark from a parent tongue often called Proto-Germanic. We have no written record of it, but looking at all the similarities in the germanic family of languages, we have a pretty good idea of what the language was like. BTW, when looking at other Germanic languages, it becomes obvious that English is quite the bastard child with many more differences that the other children of Proto-Germanic. The big differences are
1)an overuse of the verb "do" as in "Do you want to go to the store?" or "He did want to go to the store"
2)a huge preference for the participle present tense, i.e. you say "I am singing" not "I sing" if someone asks what you are doing
3)A huge amount of simplification in language from a lack of gender nouns (our spoons aren't feminine and our chairs aren't masculine) and an almost total lack of verb conjugations to no 'remembering yourself', etc.
Why did all these difference pop up in English but not the other Germanic languages? 1 and 2 are very strange in indeed, very uncommon in all of Indo-European languages...oh, except in the Celtic languages (Welsh, Gaelic, etc.). When the Germanic tribes took over the northwestern half of Britain, many celtic tribes continued living in the other half. The mixing over centuries between two established languages like this, on a small island, led to #1 and #2 bleeding over from the celtic languages. Germanic tribes really ruled the island but there were significant pockets of celts and these celts learned their language and then also German as a second language. They were exposed to it over centuries, learning both languages. In these sorts of scenarios, languages become "peppered" or "seasoned" with grammar constructs from the sublanguage. The present tense in the celtic languages was the "ing" verb and so they tended to use that in English too. They mastered the language of course over the centuries, mastered it to the point of adding their own unique touches.
The third item from above is also easy to explain. Grammar rarely becomes spontaneously much simplified unless the language gets "mangled" by a group of non-native speakers, for example, only one *dialect* out of all the other germanics has shed genders, and pretty much none of the Indo European languages have. Amazingly, this happened. Large, vicious tribes of Vikings attacked Britain in the 8th century. These mostly male invaders came, killed some people, and then founded colonies on the northern coast. Needing supplies and women, they would quickly become immeshed in the remaining Brits in the area. These waves of Vikings trying to learn a new language as they lose their own in each wave results in a huge simplifying mangling of the language. As they dominate more and more of the island, their simplified English spread and eventually supplanted the complicated Old English.
Surprisingly few people study the origins of English before Middle English (somewhere around the Hundred Years War, after the Brits kicked the French out of England and started using English again as the ruling language). The huge gap between the "staid official language of kings", Old English, and Middle English hundreds of years later, give rise to lots of fascinating mysteries. I highly recommend this book if you like light treatises on language origins, although he does rant a bit about the poor quality of most language analysis. =)
All of these deducations come with a surprising amount of evidence. To extend his analysis with a little bonus at the end, McWhorter analyzes some other peculiarity that Germanic languages have that other Indo-European languages do not. Think back to the days of "Proto-Indo-European", the language that birthed the Indo-European languages (like Latin) and Proto-Germanic. There are 2 oddities that stand out nicely. First, p, t, and k words in Proto-Indo-European (like say pater and tres), became in Proto-Germanic f, th and h words respectively (like father and three). This "fricative-ing"of the language is very odd. It doesn't just happen. Also consider some of our weird irregular past tenses, like sink, sank, sunk or draw, drew. That's not indo-european at all, but it is in German. Again, it's interesting that germanic languages have greater simplification of verb conjugations. English and German have few common verb conjugational endings, but Spanish has at least 7. Also, there are an awful lot of words in Proto-Germanic that can't be traced to Indo-European roots, like sea, ship, sail, sword, carp, eel...(interesting words, right? All words common to a primitive, warlike, sea-faring race) Why? Because Proto-Germanic also got mangled! The interesting part is, where did this come from? Well, Proto-Germanic was spoken in the last few centures, B.C. Was there a language that had all of these characteristics spoken around there in the European area? Why yes! The Semitic family of languages (like say Aramaic) has all three of these characteristics. The semitic languages ruled all of the middle east and Phoenician was one common one used by a sea-faring race! They were known to have sailed up past Portugal in that time period. Quite a coincidence! In fact, remember the game Baldur's Gate. Baldur was an ancient Norse God the origins of which are murky. He is known as having the greatest ship in existence. Interestingly, the Phoenicians had a god Baal which they called Baal'Addir often shortening it to Baldir in their writing (remember the phoenicians had written language very early), and they had ships whose technology greatly exceeded that even of the Vikings centures later. Makes ya think doesn't it...
Germanic tribes invade England in 5th century bringing along "Old English". Then Vikings in the 8th century that give us a lot of duplication since they speak a variant of old english (dike, ditch). Norman invasion in the 11th century where French becomes our elite language of arts and science and we gain some more words (army, logic). Later during the Hundred Years War, French gets a downgrade and the elite fall in love with Latin. This gives us tons of words including a hierarchy of "fanciness" - 'ask' (old English) is mundane, 'question' (French) is middle class, but 'interrogate' (latin) is fancy-pants. This envy of latin also gives us some interesting "fake rules" that are still with us today. Since latin can't split an infinitive nor end a sentence with a preposition, these latin lovers of a few centuries ago decided that English should be more like latin and following these rules marked you as a member of the elite class in Britain. (So the next time someone tells you not to end a sentence with a preposition, tell them it's a fake rule invented by some European effete liberals with a hardon for Latin and being above the unwashed masses.)
Actually, on that note, the book rants against proscriptive grammarians. For another example, he recommends punching in the mouth the next person who says that English doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun, like "I don't know when our mysterious person will return to claim their wallet." "They" has been used that way for over 6 hundred years. Shakespeare does it! I think 600 years is enough time for grammarians to notice that the language does have one and gets by just fine, thank you.
Some history...English is considered in the Germanic family of languages which appear to have originated somewhere near Denmark from a parent tongue often called Proto-Germanic. We have no written record of it, but looking at all the similarities in the germanic family of languages, we have a pretty good idea of what the language was like. BTW, when looking at other Germanic languages, it becomes obvious that English is quite the bastard child with many more differences that the other children of Proto-Germanic. The big differences are
1)an overuse of the verb "do" as in "Do you want to go to the store?" or "He did want to go to the store"
2)a huge preference for the participle present tense, i.e. you say "I am singing" not "I sing" if someone asks what you are doing
3)A huge amount of simplification in language from a lack of gender nouns (our spoons aren't feminine and our chairs aren't masculine) and an almost total lack of verb conjugations to no 'remembering yourself', etc.
Why did all these difference pop up in English but not the other Germanic languages? 1 and 2 are very strange in indeed, very uncommon in all of Indo-European languages...oh, except in the Celtic languages (Welsh, Gaelic, etc.). When the Germanic tribes took over the northwestern half of Britain, many celtic tribes continued living in the other half. The mixing over centuries between two established languages like this, on a small island, led to #1 and #2 bleeding over from the celtic languages. Germanic tribes really ruled the island but there were significant pockets of celts and these celts learned their language and then also German as a second language. They were exposed to it over centuries, learning both languages. In these sorts of scenarios, languages become "peppered" or "seasoned" with grammar constructs from the sublanguage. The present tense in the celtic languages was the "ing" verb and so they tended to use that in English too. They mastered the language of course over the centuries, mastered it to the point of adding their own unique touches.
The third item from above is also easy to explain. Grammar rarely becomes spontaneously much simplified unless the language gets "mangled" by a group of non-native speakers, for example, only one *dialect* out of all the other germanics has shed genders, and pretty much none of the Indo European languages have. Amazingly, this happened. Large, vicious tribes of Vikings attacked Britain in the 8th century. These mostly male invaders came, killed some people, and then founded colonies on the northern coast. Needing supplies and women, they would quickly become immeshed in the remaining Brits in the area. These waves of Vikings trying to learn a new language as they lose their own in each wave results in a huge simplifying mangling of the language. As they dominate more and more of the island, their simplified English spread and eventually supplanted the complicated Old English.
Surprisingly few people study the origins of English before Middle English (somewhere around the Hundred Years War, after the Brits kicked the French out of England and started using English again as the ruling language). The huge gap between the "staid official language of kings", Old English, and Middle English hundreds of years later, give rise to lots of fascinating mysteries. I highly recommend this book if you like light treatises on language origins, although he does rant a bit about the poor quality of most language analysis. =)
All of these deducations come with a surprising amount of evidence. To extend his analysis with a little bonus at the end, McWhorter analyzes some other peculiarity that Germanic languages have that other Indo-European languages do not. Think back to the days of "Proto-Indo-European", the language that birthed the Indo-European languages (like Latin) and Proto-Germanic. There are 2 oddities that stand out nicely. First, p, t, and k words in Proto-Indo-European (like say pater and tres), became in Proto-Germanic f, th and h words respectively (like father and three). This "fricative-ing"of the language is very odd. It doesn't just happen. Also consider some of our weird irregular past tenses, like sink, sank, sunk or draw, drew. That's not indo-european at all, but it is in German. Again, it's interesting that germanic languages have greater simplification of verb conjugations. English and German have few common verb conjugational endings, but Spanish has at least 7. Also, there are an awful lot of words in Proto-Germanic that can't be traced to Indo-European roots, like sea, ship, sail, sword, carp, eel...(interesting words, right? All words common to a primitive, warlike, sea-faring race) Why? Because Proto-Germanic also got mangled! The interesting part is, where did this come from? Well, Proto-Germanic was spoken in the last few centures, B.C. Was there a language that had all of these characteristics spoken around there in the European area? Why yes! The Semitic family of languages (like say Aramaic) has all three of these characteristics. The semitic languages ruled all of the middle east and Phoenician was one common one used by a sea-faring race! They were known to have sailed up past Portugal in that time period. Quite a coincidence! In fact, remember the game Baldur's Gate. Baldur was an ancient Norse God the origins of which are murky. He is known as having the greatest ship in existence. Interestingly, the Phoenicians had a god Baal which they called Baal'Addir often shortening it to Baldir in their writing (remember the phoenicians had written language very early), and they had ships whose technology greatly exceeded that even of the Vikings centures later. Makes ya think doesn't it...