This is a particular subject that really interests me. Can we talk about the evolution of english?
What i'm interested in is how the language changed, from Anglo-Saxon times to now. How did it evolve? What other languages influenced it? What words changed?
Evolution of the English Language
Kevin Jackson
Cameron Morgan
french and latin replaced a lot of the germanic vocabulary thats about it
Jason Davis
English has all sorts of cool influences, from Celtic languages, Latin, French, and different kinds of German.
Obviously in terms of migrations and conquests, we start with Celtic, move to Latin, then grab some German (Anglo/saxon/jutes), then grab more German (scandinavians), then French (Norman), when the invasions stop.
Xavier Perez
1. Pre-Viking period: some Latin words were brought in. These were so early they don't even look Latin anymore, like candle from "candella". A few quirks are borrowed from neighboring Celtic languages, like "dad" for father, and the frequent use of the verb "do".
2. Viking period: numerous loan words are borrowed, and the sequence /sk/ is re-added to English. This is how we get doubles like shirt and skirt, skin and shin, shell and skull, etc. which all meant the same thing in proto-Germanic.
3. Norman invasion and creolization: English maintains its Germanic-ness, but upper class words are increasingly Latin and Greek. More and more Greco-Latin words will be added from this period up to today. Sometimes Latin words were brought in directly or through medieval Norman French.
4. Great Vowel Shift: This is the primary reason English vowels are so peculiar among European languages. While German and Dutch had something vaguely similar, it was never as extensive as that in English.
This is the "Quick Rundown" version, there's obviously a lot more in the details.
Oliver Sanders
Like a lot of indo European languages, it was greatly simplified, lost cases, became more analytic etc. Except it did these things a lot more than other Indo European languages
Juan Ortiz
Was it total war who started that 'disdain for plebs' meme? Or did that game come out after the meme?
Jace Rodriguez
I think it was Rome Total War that started it, yeah.
Jaxon Sanchez
So in that case, is english in a way "The great melting pot language?" It has so many different influences and has changed so much over 800 years.
Christopher Martinez
It has multiple influences, but it's not a true creole. More of a "melting pot" than say German or French, less so than Haitian Patois.
Dominic Fisher
I see. So what were some common phrases and greetings in Old English? I usually can only find phrases that were said in Middle English.
Brayden Hughes
What I want to know is how accents developed, there must be a hundred accents in the English language between England, Ireland, Scotland and the US
Jaxson Harris
>What words changed?
Gay used to mean happy, we had a really, really, really old textbook for English in class which said this.
And you'll find more of such cases, like recently literally, I love how it pisses of so many people.
I like how places like Veeky Forums introduce all kinds of new words. I thought red-pill and red-pilled was clever and I used it once as an analogy myself (before that), but due to the nature of the communities that use it I'm not sure if it will ever make it into 'mainstream' English.
There are etymologies online, recently I used it to see where hardwired came from, and while it wasn't suprised where it came from the date was interesting. And I find it kind of cool how some scientific or technological jargon slips into mainstream English.
I see for example the use of "glitch" and "bug" being used to describe our psychology and so on and so on. And I've come across meme in a serious way in popular-scientific works, and by that I don't mean it was used in the Dawkin's sense i.e. memetics - which doesn't have much support at all from cognitive scientists, linguists and anthropologists.
Jordan Brooks
>What I want to know is how accents developed, there must be a hundred accents in the English language between England, Ireland, Scotland and the US
This goes against Veeky Forums etiquette but you can also look at /r/linguistics, if the answers here don't satisfy you
Cooper Gutierrez
Actually, that's something i've always been curious about.
Why are American accents so different from British accent even though the USA was a colony of britain?
Landon Ward
Old English is really different from modern English, in many ways it's more like modern Dutch or German (or Frisian, if you know what that is).
Are you familiar with Beowulf? That's Old English.
Hƿæt = what
hū = how
oft = oft, often
þrēatum = soldiers (ancestor of modern "threat")
hē = he
þæs = this
ƿēox = waxed (in the sense of "grew")
under = under
Noah Brooks
American/Canadian accents are actually more archaic than the other accents. There were changes that happened in Britain/Ireland in the 1600s and 1700s that never came over to North America.
Nicholas Richardson
And what were those changes?
Matthew Gray
There were three major influences on English.
The first and deepest influence came from the vikings, we borrowed pronouns (they/them/their), grammatical endings (the strong verb past participle ending -en, from Old Norse -inn), copula (are, from ON plural forms in er- replacing OE sind), and lots of every day words (anger, give, guest, egg, fuck, law, happy, sister, trust, ugly, to name a few).
By the Middle English period English had a much more Scandinavian feel, I don't agree with the article that Old English completely died out but the section on syntax illustrates what I mean.
sciencedaily.com
Second, in the 13th and 14th century as the Normans switched to English many French words poured into the language, especially ones relating to culture, military, and government.
The third and final influence came from Latin in the 16th and 17th centuries, when as English was in the process of replacing Latin as the language of science and learning in England tons of Latin words were used in writing (see: Inkhorn terms), many of which eventually entered the vernacular.
Brody Bell
>British accent
no such thing
Connor Evans
Loss of rhotacism (aka they don't pronounce r unless a vowel follows it), vocabulary changes (no longer calling autumn "fall"), vowel changes (shifting the vowel in grass from /æ/ to /ɑ/) it seems like there's other stuff I'm forgetting.
David Reyes
French is way more of a melting pot language than English
Daniel Parker
youtube.com
Check this channel out you might find some interesting stuff
Aiden Stewart
I see. I always did wonder why these changes happened. Were they enforced by the culture or just natural?
Andrew James
Unless someone pulls out a paper which looks at all the foreign influences in these two languages and quantifies it, we will talk besides eachother and go nowhere.
Owen Robinson
My understanding is that it was natural.
While I'm willing to entertain the idea that French is more creolized than English, French is not a full creole language. Hell, there are a ton of creoles based partially on French.
Jaxon Green
>While I'm willing to entertain the idea that French is more creolized than English, French is not a full creole language.
I'm neither of those anons I replied to, I'm just saying that it would be good to show some sources otherwise you talk besides eachother.
My dream is that Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums will use citations, I've seen it at least once and she did it really formally.
Leo Flores
>Veeky Forums using citations
>ever
Mason Perez
Any good book recommendations in evolutionary linguistics?
Gabriel Gomez
Trask's Historical Linguistics
Nicholas Nelson
"disdain for plebs" is a trait one of the helenistic factions had in the game, so yes, it's taken from there
Caleb Nguyen
Veeky Forums did it
Juan Jones
ty user
Isaiah Lewis
English "apple" came from German "up-fell" with same meaning. English "weather" came from Slavic "вiтep" meaning "wind" so "weather" literally "state of the wind".
Joshua Sanders
I'm interested how people feel about the current possible evolution of English. There are three possibilities:
World Englishes; different cultures around the world adapting English for their own needs. This doesn't have to mean only things like Singlish, but can be as simple as a culture using a word that has no translation in English or would feel wrong to translate.
English as a Lingua Franca: This is related to World Englishes but focused on the English that people around the world use to communicate between cultures (rather than WE which is about communicate in cultures). The idea is that the language of global communication will become less anglo-centric and more diverse and possibly more simple.
English as linguistic imperialism; Anglo-centric English, with it's specific cultural references and gatekeepers will dominate the global English speaking milieu. This analysis can also bring to light the unfairness of English being a "global language" but Anglos still wanting to "own it". You also get the native/non-native binary, which makes little sense in a world where plenty of "non-native" speakers can speak perfectly good English for communication,.
Hudson Thompson
You're welcome user.
No, German "Apfel" and English "Apple" are related, but one does not descend from the other, they are both descended from Proto-Germanic "aplaz". Similarly the Germanic words for weather (English weather, German Wetter, etc.) and the Slavic words are descended from Proto-Indo-European "wedhrom".