The Evolution of English (How to water-down a language 101)
– Gargee Dixit
TY BSc Economics
Dear Reader, I want you to know that there are 16 ways to say the word ‘THE’ in German. (These are definite articles; there are 9 ways to say indefinite articles if you were curious.) As a German Language Student, do not ask me how I’m doing! German, albeit frustrating and arduous to learn, is an exact and intentional language. That, however, cannot be said about the other foreign language I know – English. English, in my uneducated opinion, is so basic and constricting. During my German lessons, my teacher has to resort to Marathi- my mother tongue to explain certain phrases or grammatical structures because English doesn’t simply capture enough intentionality (the vibes are off). So why does English seem so overwhelmingly vanilla?
The Roots: Mapping the language tree
English is a Germanic language. Essentially, there is an Indo-European language family through which all your ancient languages, like Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit originated. A subset or branch of this family tree was the Germanic languages. Germanic languages are divided into three groups: West Germanic, which includes English, German, and Dutch; North Germanic, which includes Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese; and East Germanic, which is now extinct but mostly comprised of Gothic languages.
So what happened to English that made it the youngest child of the West Germanic Languages? Let’s take a history lesson. About 1600 years ago, the southern part of the current-day England was inhabited by many small agglomerations of people, kingdoms and small cultural groups and primarily spoke Celtic languages. The other linguistic group present there was the Roman soldiers, who spoke one or more dialects of Latin. Around the 5th Century CE, several groups moved from the northern parts of Europe to modern-day England. This conquest was known as the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the Roman province of Britannia. These groups spoke Germanic languages, and hence, when they settled in England, they transformed the Celtic-Latin local language into the English language. This form of English is what we know today as ‘Old English’. Fun fact: They named this area ‘Angle-Land’, which became ‘England’. This form of English retained a lot of the ‘complex’ grammar structures that we see today in German; however, it was about to change, due to the French. Of course, it’s always French.
The Norman Conquest of England
The Norman Conquest was a military conquest of the British Isles by William, the Duke of Normandy ( a place in France). His victory in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 cemented him as the ruler of the British Isles and brought about huge social, economic, political and of course linguistic changes. Latin and later Anglo-Norman (a dialect of the French /Romance language family) became the official languages in administration and law. They slowly seeped into the literary circles as they were the languages of the ruling class as well. This resulted in English lurking in the shadows until the 13th century rolled around. Interestingly, some linguists have pointed out that abstract/ law/ administrative nouns in English are typically loan words from French. An example of this is the words liberty, equality, fraternity coming from Liberty, Égalité, Fraternité. This era of English was called ‘Early Middle English’ and it is associated with English losing a lot of grammatical similarities with its Germanic languages, like the loss of case endings and subject-verb-object fixed word order.
Let me explain this by comparing it with German. In German, there are 4 cases – Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive. Modern-day English still retains the Nominative (subject case) and Accusative (direct object case). However, during this era, the Dative case, which was the indirect object case and the Genitive case, which showed possession, were dropped in English. If we have to say “I gave a gift to my mother” in German, the ‘to’ preposition is dropped and the noun directly takes its place. “Ich gab meiner Mutter eine Geschenke” The loss of the Dative or indirect object case in English led to over-reliance or a shift towards the usage of prepositions to fill this gap. Due to the loss of case endings in English, we have to follow a pretty stringent Subject-verb-Object sentence structure, while in German or languages with case endings, the sentence structure can be twisted around while keeping the meaning intact. Such restrictions might be one of the reasons why English seems so elementary to me.
After this drastic change, English slowly morphed into the language we come across today. The Viking Invasions in England led to some Norse words making their way into the English vernacular. Common words like berserk, gun, and slaughter come from Norse loan words. Fun fact: Although the days of the week come from Roman/Anglo-Saxon origins, Thursday is an evolved form of Thor’s Day. In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chauncer, renowned for the Canterbury Tales, repopularised the English vernacular. This era of the English language was called Late Middle English. Slowly and steadily, the advent of the printing press, the English Renaissance, and William Shakespeare, making up hundreds of words, led to the English language that we roughly know today. English as a language is known to ‘borrow’ words frequently from other languages, with no regard to its structures. This quote perfectly encapsulates what I feel about this language.
“Personally, I always say that English is a language that beats up other languages in dark alleys and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary”
Is English actually that easy, though?
Again, in my uneducated opinion, the lack of structure and uniformity puts English in a weird place. It is an easy language to pick up partly because it is a global lingua franca. A lingua franca is a language that is adopted as a common language among people whose native languages are different. Soft power and politics play a role here as well. Historically, languages like French and English, which have been globally used, got to this point because of colonialism, empires forcing the colonies to adopt their language. Increasing globalisation and the need for an integrated world order have also led to the popularity and sheer mass presence and exposure of the English language globally. However, I do acknowledge that due to the modpodge language that it is, it doesn’t follow its own rules about phonetics. Many times, the Orthography, or the conventional way of spelling, is so inconsistent that there are spelling bees in English. This kind of spelling system is called opaque orthography, as in there is no one-to-one relationship between the sound and its representation in text. (Why is onomatopoeia spelt like that? I specifically have gripes with this word.)
I think in English, I write in English, and I learn in English. My opinions might be biased while analysing the evolution of English, because I am exposed to it 24/7; however, I can admit that English is not that bad. It is an agglomeration of many languages and cultures, which makes it interesting to study etymologically. Sometimes, though, I do feel its limitations creeping up on me while I want to express something. For a language used by billions of people, it feels strangely inadequate. Like an uneven, patched-together quilt of a language that became universal not because it’s the best, but because it just happened to be there.