How Do You Say That In English?
English... a language that has almost conquered the world and may yet do so. So how did English become English? Well first, linguists, who nowadays prefer to be called "philologists," classify languages just as we do with relationships between people, in a sort of "family tree." (Here I'm going to continue to use the term "linguist.") There are more than twenty language "families" in the world, and English belongs to the "Indo European" language family, along with German, Czech, French, Spanish, Latvian, Italian, etc, etc. Just because the term "European" is used, doesn't mean that all languages spoken in Europe belong to the Indo European family, as Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, for example, do not. In fact those three languages are related to one another, as well as to Turkish. By the same token, the "European" terminology is deceiving the other way around, as Persian, spoken mainly in modern Iran, Kurdish, spoken in southern Turkey and northern Iraq, and Hindi, one of the main languages of India, are obviously not located in Europe, but they are Indo European. You may be surprised to learn that English is indeed related to Persian, Kurdish and Hindi. (NOTE: The list of languages here is not complete, as there are many other members of the Indo European family, but these are just some examples. The same note will apply to languages mentioned below.)
Further, Indo-European is divided into various subfamily groups, some of which are: Celtic, Slavic, Romance (that is, Latin based), and Germanic. English belongs to the Germanic subfamily. Further still, Germanic is broken into three branches: East Germanic, which no longer has any "living" member languages, North Germanic, which has Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese, and West Germanic, which has German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Afrikaans, Yiddish and English. You should take note that the term is "Germanic," and not "German." Linguists further divide the Germanic languages to particular geographic areas, and it gets very technical, so I'll leave things right here.
The basic idea of these various language families and their subdivisions was that, at some point in mankind's history, people began to communicate through speech. As groups of people separated from one another, variations (called "dialects") developed. Keep in mind, until fairly recently in history, travel wasn't all that easy nor fast, and at various times in history (but obviously not always), a large percentage of people lived and died within a very short radius of where they were born, or they had little, if any, contact with people speaking another dialect or language. Altitude and climate had an effect upon how people talked, and thus there developed a difference in pronunciation of the same words. (Linguists, or at least most linguists, would say that if there are 6.5 billion people on Earth, that there 6.5 billion different ways of speaking, as just as people are individuals, so is our way of speaking.) As time passed, these differences developed into more than just "dialects," but rather into separate languages, although often the relationship between these languages was and is still evident.
I'm not a linguist, so I can't really tell you what criteria they use to call one pattern of speech a "dialect," and another a "language," and I don't believe that all linguists agree anyhow. Certainly in more modern times, with national boundaries more firmly established, that has some effect on the terminology, but again, obviously not a total effect, as Americans speak English (although not all Englishmen would agree on that) but we're separate from England. (I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said, "Americans and the English are two peoples separated by a common language!) Another big difference in a language is whether it is written or spoken.
All languages "borrow" words or terms from other languages, although in most cases, the borrower pronounces or spells the borrowed words in their own manner. Over time, many borrowings have tended to come from military actions, conquests and trade. English is closely related Frisian, German (even more closely to the north German dialects), and Dutch. The reason for this is because the Angles and the Saxons and other Germanic tribes lived in the same general area of northern Europe. Then the Angles and Saxons (along with some smaller Germanic elements) began to raid Britain. Eventually, these Germanic groups overtook Britain, settled there, and established what was to become England.
Frisian is classified by most linguists as a separate language. It is spoken in a very small part of southwestern Denmark, the northwest coast of Germany, and the northeast coast of Holland (or The Netherlands, for the purists). Not surprisingly, it has three "dialects;" that is, variations, each having been influenced by the "larger" language in the region in which it is spoken; that is, Dutch has influenced Frisian speakers in that area, German in that area, and Danish in that area. Frisian and the north German dialects are close to English in many ways, and basic communication between speakers of those dialects and English can be made. I spent a few days in Hamburg, which is in northern Germany, a number of years ago, and there are indeed some remarkable similarities between the dialect of the Hamburg area and English. Just for example, water is spelled the same as in English, although the people I spoke with pronounced the "w" as something between our "w" and the more typical German pronunciation, which is as "v." Standard German, on the other hand, spells it "Wasser," which is pronounced as "vahsser." (Even here, you see the relationship of English and German.)
Over time, there was a reinforcing shot of Germanic speakers into England; these being primarily Danish and some Norwegian speakers, and they gave English some new variations. English, however, was forever changed by the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. Now, this change didn't just happen thirty days after William ( thereafter known as, "The Conqueror") triumphed. There was a big disconnect between the Norman rulers (who spoke a dialect of French) and the Germanic speaking common people. It frequently took hundreds of years for the words English took from Norman French to truly become an established part of our language. We certainly do NOT pronounce them in the French way, as English basically acquired these words through writing, and Englishmen therefore put their own pronunciation to them. These borrowings from the Normans gave English a great deal of flexibility, as some French words gradually supplanted the original English word in one meaning, leaving the original English word to develop a secondary meaning. In "Part Two," I'll give some examples.
Further, Indo-European is divided into various subfamily groups, some of which are: Celtic, Slavic, Romance (that is, Latin based), and Germanic. English belongs to the Germanic subfamily. Further still, Germanic is broken into three branches: East Germanic, which no longer has any "living" member languages, North Germanic, which has Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese, and West Germanic, which has German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Afrikaans, Yiddish and English. You should take note that the term is "Germanic," and not "German." Linguists further divide the Germanic languages to particular geographic areas, and it gets very technical, so I'll leave things right here.
The basic idea of these various language families and their subdivisions was that, at some point in mankind's history, people began to communicate through speech. As groups of people separated from one another, variations (called "dialects") developed. Keep in mind, until fairly recently in history, travel wasn't all that easy nor fast, and at various times in history (but obviously not always), a large percentage of people lived and died within a very short radius of where they were born, or they had little, if any, contact with people speaking another dialect or language. Altitude and climate had an effect upon how people talked, and thus there developed a difference in pronunciation of the same words. (Linguists, or at least most linguists, would say that if there are 6.5 billion people on Earth, that there 6.5 billion different ways of speaking, as just as people are individuals, so is our way of speaking.) As time passed, these differences developed into more than just "dialects," but rather into separate languages, although often the relationship between these languages was and is still evident.
I'm not a linguist, so I can't really tell you what criteria they use to call one pattern of speech a "dialect," and another a "language," and I don't believe that all linguists agree anyhow. Certainly in more modern times, with national boundaries more firmly established, that has some effect on the terminology, but again, obviously not a total effect, as Americans speak English (although not all Englishmen would agree on that) but we're separate from England. (I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said, "Americans and the English are two peoples separated by a common language!) Another big difference in a language is whether it is written or spoken.
All languages "borrow" words or terms from other languages, although in most cases, the borrower pronounces or spells the borrowed words in their own manner. Over time, many borrowings have tended to come from military actions, conquests and trade. English is closely related Frisian, German (even more closely to the north German dialects), and Dutch. The reason for this is because the Angles and the Saxons and other Germanic tribes lived in the same general area of northern Europe. Then the Angles and Saxons (along with some smaller Germanic elements) began to raid Britain. Eventually, these Germanic groups overtook Britain, settled there, and established what was to become England.
Frisian is classified by most linguists as a separate language. It is spoken in a very small part of southwestern Denmark, the northwest coast of Germany, and the northeast coast of Holland (or The Netherlands, for the purists). Not surprisingly, it has three "dialects;" that is, variations, each having been influenced by the "larger" language in the region in which it is spoken; that is, Dutch has influenced Frisian speakers in that area, German in that area, and Danish in that area. Frisian and the north German dialects are close to English in many ways, and basic communication between speakers of those dialects and English can be made. I spent a few days in Hamburg, which is in northern Germany, a number of years ago, and there are indeed some remarkable similarities between the dialect of the Hamburg area and English. Just for example, water is spelled the same as in English, although the people I spoke with pronounced the "w" as something between our "w" and the more typical German pronunciation, which is as "v." Standard German, on the other hand, spells it "Wasser," which is pronounced as "vahsser." (Even here, you see the relationship of English and German.)
Over time, there was a reinforcing shot of Germanic speakers into England; these being primarily Danish and some Norwegian speakers, and they gave English some new variations. English, however, was forever changed by the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. Now, this change didn't just happen thirty days after William ( thereafter known as, "The Conqueror") triumphed. There was a big disconnect between the Norman rulers (who spoke a dialect of French) and the Germanic speaking common people. It frequently took hundreds of years for the words English took from Norman French to truly become an established part of our language. We certainly do NOT pronounce them in the French way, as English basically acquired these words through writing, and Englishmen therefore put their own pronunciation to them. These borrowings from the Normans gave English a great deal of flexibility, as some French words gradually supplanted the original English word in one meaning, leaving the original English word to develop a secondary meaning. In "Part Two," I'll give some examples.
Labels: English, Frisian, Germanic languages, Indo-European
posted by Randy at 11:21 PM
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