Why does English has so much Latin influence? French I can understand, but where did the Latin influence come from? Roman Empire? Did the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman invasion already speak a hybrid language?
Why does English has so much Latin influence? French I can understand, but where did the Latin influence come from...
Dominic Hughes
Alexander Wright
Scientific terms, same as the Greek.
Dominic Perry
Dumbass. 15% of everyday language is Latin. Read the pic.
Owen Wright
from the normans
read this aeon.co
Blake Sanders
So it's not counted as French like the rest because it's directly from Latin? Yeah, I remember reading about that Old French was a lot more similar to Latin.
Angel Russell
Yeah, there often pairs of words in English that are Norman vs directly from Latin, such as "frail" (Norman) and "fragile" (Latin).
Thomas Wilson
Normans
Ryan Phillips
You're all confusing borrowing from Old French with those that came directly from Latin. There had been some Latin loanwords since Anglo-Saxon times, but the major influx came in the sixteenth century with the so-called inkhorn terms
Oliver Martin
Because England was literally a part of the Roman Empire?
Christ, how historically illiterate are you guys?
Isaiah Jones
Gabriel Stewart
Isn't Latin influencing something else that influenced English basically the same thing as Latin influencing English? What difference does it make?
Isaac Parker
It makes a world of difference.
There are a huge number of doublets that illustrate this. Frail/fragile mentioned above is one example, but an even better one would be sure/secure. Both are ultimately from Latin securus, but entered English in the 14th century from the Old French seur, which is a monosyllable and lacks the central consonant. Secure was borrowed in the 16th century direct from the Latin, and is much closer to the original. These two words have obviously different meanings as well.
Bentley White
Because Brits are cultural and linguistic cuckolds.
Evan Barnes
before the roman entrance unto the british Isles we have no written records of any kind for the peoples there
so you can imagine that this would color very strongly the history of writing, and language for the foreseeable future
Dominic Hughes
I just misread the OP.
Alexander Sullivan
This, and thats a good thing.
Charles Howard
Because of science and religion.
Business letters don't account for every day words.
Observe:
>"How are you? Good, well that's good. How's your wife? She's sick? That's a shame. I hope she feels better tomorrow."
100% Native English. You can do an etymology check. The only words that are French or Latin are usually big words that stand out.
William Stewart
From French. It didn't come directly from Latin since the Angles, Jutes, Saxons and Frisians that became culturally dominant in England did so after the Roman evacuation and Latin lost its prestige in England unlike most of Europe. Welsh has a shit ton of Latin in it though, e.g. the word for window is "ffenestr" and in Latin it is "fenestram".
Brody Baker
The distinction between Norman and Latin influences and origin is sometimes vague. Latin was the educational and religious language. English was the common informal language. Norman French was the administrative language as well as that of the upper class.
Samuel Gray
England was never a part of the roman empire
Jace Ortiz
Actually the Greeks wrote about them and so did the Romans before they conquered / entered Britain. Druids were also literate in greek
Jaxson Sullivan
>Why does English has so much Latin influence?
A lot of the has to do with Tudor dynasty efforts to improve the language. English also got a few odd rules like no double negatives from the same source.
Michael Moore
Linguistic injection into old english by monks.
Jason Anderson
>Roman evacuation of Britain
>2017
Read a book man.
Christopher Long
yes there was mention of the land they hailed from in some classic annals, but there was no record the people themselves wrote until the coming of the romans