Excerpts from “English Language: How the Language ...



Excerpts from “English Language: How the Language Developed” (Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia, vol. 3, 1927)

There is an old saying in Europe that Italian is the language to use when you want to sing, French when you want to make love, and English when you want to do business. This is only a popular saying, of course, and not more than half true, but it does show that different languages have different characters just as different peoples have, and that each one has a different taste to the mind.

It is true enough that English is a good language in which to do business, for probably . . . the greater part of the world’s commerce is conducted in English. But English is good for many other uses besides business. Indeed it is one of the richest languages spoken today, with more variety and flexibility than almost any other, and it is spread over a greater part of the earth’s surface. English is made up, like the people that developed it, of many national inheritances and foreign importations, and its history and growth make a very interesting study.

Have you ever dug a hole beside a stream and seen the different layers you find as you dig, sand and gravel and small stones one above the other? If you study down into the English language you will find that it was formed in much the same way.

Of course in speaking we do not notice these layers at all. The words all mix together, so that often in a single sentence you will say words that come from all the different layers. If you say for instance, “My mother received a good telegram,” you have used words from four different sources. “Mother” is a very old word and comes from the original Indo-European root language; “received” is a word of Latin origin; “good” is . . . an Anglo-Saxon word; and “telegram” is from the Greek.

English is classified by philologists or scientists who study words as a Teutonic or Germanic language . . . [This is because] the Teutonic words are the framework of the language, the connecting words and the simple fundamental names or ordinary things . . . in ordinary speech about four-fifths [or 80%] of the words we use are Teutonic. Another reason is that we put our words together with the grammatical construction of the Teutonic languages.

After the Teutonic words the most important are the words of Latin origin which have come to us either from Latin direct, or through the French or Italian or Spanish, but especially French . . . At one time the Normans, who spoke French, came over and conquered England and ruled over . . . the Anglo-Saxons who lived there. So it came about that the words the common people used stayed Anglo-Saxon . . . and the words of the wealthy and ruling classes became Latin. For instance as long as a sheep was alive and was tended by the shepherds, who were common people, it was called by the [Anglo-Saxon] word “sheep,” but as soon as it was cooked and came on the table of the noble classes, it became “mutton,” a French word. In the same way “cow” is Anglo-Saxon and “beef” is French; “hog” is Anglo-Saxon and “pork” is from the language of the conquerors. The influence of the church, the classical Renaissance of the 16th century, and the later coining of scientific terms from the Latin, greatly increased this element in English . . .

The Greek words [in English] are much fewer in number and are largely scientific words, like “geology.” We have a number of Dutch words, particularly about the sea, like “schooner”; Scandinavian words (mostly from the old Danish conquest), like “earl,” “take,” “window”; a few Indian words, like “tomahawk”; some Hebrew words, like “hallelujah”; a good many from the Arabic, like “alcohol”; and an assortment of odd words from almost every other language . . .

The language of the old Britons was Celtic and survives in modern Welsh, which is still the tongue of Wales. When the Romans conquered England they introduced a certain number of Latin words in the three centuries that they ruled the island. But when the Anglo-Saxons came over from the north of Europe they brought their own Teutonic [i.e., Germanic] language with them, which is the basis of English, and there was very little admixture of Celtic and Latin from the conquered inhabitants . . .

The periods in the development of the English language are called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and modern English. Old English was spoken from about 449 A.D. to 1100 . . . Middle English was spoken from about 1100 to about 1500 . . . English speech supplanted French in Parliament and in the law courts of England in 1362 . . . .

The dawn of English literature began back in the times when the Angles and Saxons still lived in Jutland and along the North Sea shores, and spoke a Teutonic language that no one can read now without studying it as he does a foreign tongue. In the middle of the 5th century these peoples—the Anglo-Saxons—came to Britain, conquered the Celtic inhabitants, and drove them westward [to modern day Wales]. They brought with them a mass of tales in verse, sung by wandering minstrels in camp and hall. ‘Beowulf’, one of these anonymous tales, was finally written down by some unknown singer . . . The first poet whose name has come down to us was Caedmon, who [translated] parts of the Scriptures about the year 670. The greatest prose writer in Anglo-Saxon was good King Alfred (r. 871-899), who translated Latin textbooks for his people and started the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’.

The Normans, who conquered England in 1066, brought with them the French language . . . they gradually united with [the Anglo-Saxons] and the language of the country became modified and enriched by French . . .

1) What are the main points made in these excerpts about the English language?

2) Can the English language be appreciated without knowledge of its historical development? Explain.

3) Why has English changed over time? Why are these changes important to consider when reading primary sources?

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