The English language is made up of a mixture of European languages:
certainly German but also French, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Latin,
(even some Old English), you name it. It's because we were invaded so
many times and we so admired those who conquered us that we adopted
their spoken tongues! <G>
Generous of our ancestors I say - in the circumstances!
However, for an important period in our history, the aristocracy spoke
French while the peasants spoke "English". This explains, for istance,
why the names of farm animals are derived from Anglo-Saxon/Old Anglish,
e.g. cow, pig, sheep while the name of the meat served to the table is
usually derived from French, e.g. beef, pork, mutton - the peasants
farmed the animals but the noblity ate most of the meat.
I often wonder which language I would have spoken then - I suppose it
would have depended on which language the prettiest girls spoke ;-).
When the nobility finally abandoned French as the "language at court"
and reverted to native English, the language, left to the mercy of the
peasants for so long, had become simplified but very irregular -
perhaps 'bastardized' might be a more accurate description! English is
not phonetic, has hardly has any dependable rules and is a difficult
language to learn for a non-English speaker. However, its structure is
very simple compared to a number of other modern languages: conjugation
of verbs is pretty simple; there is no future tense (we have to add the
word 'will', unlike French in which the ending of the verb can indicate
future tense); nouns are not declined at all; there is no 'gender' or
singular/plural for definite and indefinite articles or adjectives.
Why the inverted commas for gender Ray? It is the right meaning of
the word. I do dislike the modern tendency to use gender instead of
sex.
I was interested to learn that, when the Founding Fathers selected what
should be their national language, English won by *only one* vote. I
guess England was out of favour at the time. Second most popular choice
was German. So (assuming this to be true), if one Founding Father had
voted differently, German would now be the international language.
And then look what they did to it - e.g. "irregardless" or "vocalise" ;-).
Chris (is this not a deliciously off-topic topic?)
--
<|_:-)_|>
C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, England.
+44 (0)7092 251126
mailto:imagopus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
... a nascent photo library.
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