I've always found linguistics fascinating, and of course I've focused on my own native language, English. Recently I came across a theory that English may have gotten its subject-verb structure from British Gaelic, which had the same thing, during the period of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the centuries before the Vikings showed up.
I don't know if it's true, of course, but I thought you might be interested. As far as Viking-trade pidgin, there is probably something to that. English is such an imperial language, too--not only was it adopted by subject populations, but it has more loan words from other languages than any other as far as I know.
If we like a word from another language, we just steal it and use it ourselves. So yeah, in a way, English is a piratical language but that makes me like it even more. Screw grammatical authority! We'll speak as we wish!
If there's another language that is as great at stealing words from others, it's Spanish. It has a ton of words from both the Moors and the native populations of the Americas in it, some of which eventually got picked up by Americans.
I'm very interested! If you could point me towards any specific resources I'd love to learn more.
Although this whole series has been super-harsh on English so far, English is, for the most part, a perfectly good language. I think it has problems, and I think its defects might contribute to mental illness (there's a reason the Bible of General Semantics is called "Science and Sanity"), but I think that what English allows me to do is amazing and incredible. It's clearly very versatile and functional, and is arguably the most useful language a person can speak at the point in history. I'm also comparing it to Spanish, which might be one of the world's most logical languages. If I were comparing English to say, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Basque or another super-difficult language, I would probably be appreciating English more.
I imagine I'll probably loop back around at some point and praise the virtues of the English language. But for the next little while I'm be more focused on critiquing it. I'll probably throw out a bunch of disclaimers along the way because I don't want people to feel that I'm just beating up on English for the sake of being a hater.
I'll look for that bit about Gaelic sentence structure influencing Old English. It was some history short on YouTube, I believe, and by a Brit, which doesn't narrow it down much at all.
The one thing I learned when I learned Spanish was that neither language is perfect, just as nothing created by humans can be perfect. Spanish is a more logical language than English--more rationally structured, for sure--but as my native Mexican teacher told us, there are some concepts in English that simply don't exist in Spanish.
The example she used was "wonder." There is no precise Spanish equivalent, none of that old Germanic mysticism. OTOH, which one sounds like a better name for a beautiful flying insect, butterfly or mariposa? Spanish wins hands down, IMHO.
I've always found linguistics fascinating, and of course I've focused on my own native language, English. Recently I came across a theory that English may have gotten its subject-verb structure from British Gaelic, which had the same thing, during the period of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the centuries before the Vikings showed up.
I don't know if it's true, of course, but I thought you might be interested. As far as Viking-trade pidgin, there is probably something to that. English is such an imperial language, too--not only was it adopted by subject populations, but it has more loan words from other languages than any other as far as I know.
If we like a word from another language, we just steal it and use it ourselves. So yeah, in a way, English is a piratical language but that makes me like it even more. Screw grammatical authority! We'll speak as we wish!
If there's another language that is as great at stealing words from others, it's Spanish. It has a ton of words from both the Moors and the native populations of the Americas in it, some of which eventually got picked up by Americans.
I'm very interested! If you could point me towards any specific resources I'd love to learn more.
Although this whole series has been super-harsh on English so far, English is, for the most part, a perfectly good language. I think it has problems, and I think its defects might contribute to mental illness (there's a reason the Bible of General Semantics is called "Science and Sanity"), but I think that what English allows me to do is amazing and incredible. It's clearly very versatile and functional, and is arguably the most useful language a person can speak at the point in history. I'm also comparing it to Spanish, which might be one of the world's most logical languages. If I were comparing English to say, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Basque or another super-difficult language, I would probably be appreciating English more.
I imagine I'll probably loop back around at some point and praise the virtues of the English language. But for the next little while I'm be more focused on critiquing it. I'll probably throw out a bunch of disclaimers along the way because I don't want people to feel that I'm just beating up on English for the sake of being a hater.
I'll look for that bit about Gaelic sentence structure influencing Old English. It was some history short on YouTube, I believe, and by a Brit, which doesn't narrow it down much at all.
The one thing I learned when I learned Spanish was that neither language is perfect, just as nothing created by humans can be perfect. Spanish is a more logical language than English--more rationally structured, for sure--but as my native Mexican teacher told us, there are some concepts in English that simply don't exist in Spanish.
The example she used was "wonder." There is no precise Spanish equivalent, none of that old Germanic mysticism. OTOH, which one sounds like a better name for a beautiful flying insect, butterfly or mariposa? Spanish wins hands down, IMHO.
fun fact! butterflies used to be called “flutter-bys”.
Much better word! Mariposa is still better tho…
I called them flutterbies in the first grade. The teacher slapped my palm with a ruler every time I did so I would learn to say “butterfly.”
100%. I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually circle back as I start appreciating the good things about English.
I think I’m going to start using more embedded referents like whence, thence, heretofore, whom, etc…
Cool musings! Language drives thoughts drives language drives thought drives languages…. SOV great pic and point with the Hulk!
Interesting. Thank you