What You've Always Wanted To Know About The English Language - And Never Dared To Ask

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Why is it that Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese students of English can read English texts quite easily, the more highbrow the better, but have problems when it comes to talking about simple everyday subjects whereas German, Dutch and Scandinavian students learn to talk relatively easily but have problems understanding difficult written texts? The answer lies in the history of the English language which, by the way, is not a very long one. In fact, English is the youngest language there is and the only one of which a date of birth is known or, more precisely, the date before which it didn’t exist. Let’s go back to the time when Germanic tribes crossed the North Sea from what is now Denmark and northern Germany in the 5th century AD. The Celtic speaking previous inhabitants of the British Isles were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to the Brittany coast of France. Celtic words survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Kent, Severn, Avon, Thames). The Germanic tribes traded with and fought with the Latin-speaking Roman Empire which led to the inclusion of Latin words (camp, fork, kitchen, street, table) The introduction of Christianity also brought many Latin (and some Greek) words. In the 8th and 9th century Vikings from Scandinavia conquered and colonised England adding many Norse words (sky, egg, window, husband, anger) to the language. They’re also responsible for a grammatical simplification including the loss of grammatical gender and case endings of nouns. The language is called Old English. The time of Old English ended with the Norman conquest in 1066 when Norman-French came to England. For a long time both languages co-existed. The English farmers bred animals - ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine - every German can understand these words at once because in German they’re nearly identical. The Norman-French conquerors, the upper class, were interested only in eating the animals. That is the reason why the words for meat are derived from French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, venison). One can’t say that the two languages mixed. This term is only used when a completely new language, a hybrid form, comes into being. The two languages existed side by side for about 300 years. The Norman kings and the nobility as well as all people engaged in administration spoke and wrote Norman-French whereas the common people continued speaking English (which they hardly wrote). Because of this written English prefers words of Latin origin, spoken English prefers words of Germanic origin. Gradually the two languages influenced each other and mingled. By the end of the 14th century, the dialect of London had emerged as the standard dialect of what is now called Middle English.. What makes learning English such a hard job for foreigners, no matter from which language they come, is the sheer amount of words. The vocabulary of English is the largest of any language. The estimated number is currently 450.000 words! For nearly every concept there are two words to learn. We call them synonyms because they mean the same but they wouldn’t exist side by side if there weren’t a difference. The difference is the stylistic use. We have to learn what people *say* and what they *write*. They may write that they had a *brief encounter* but would rather say that they had a *short meeting*, wouldn’t they? But not only synonyms are responsible for the vast amount of words. Since the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples around the world. The ever growing British Empire, and the Renaissance of Classical learning are the reasons that many more words have been integrated into the English language. So many words and such small brains! An averagely intelligent and educated person knows and uses only between 5.000 and 6.000 words. How can English speaking people understand each other at all if they all use only 5.000 words out of the existing 450.000? If they don’t use the same 5000 words, then they may all speak English but not understand a word of the others’ speeches. This can’t happen, though, because deep in their hearts people whose mother tongue is English are Germanic. Even though only about 5.000 words have remained from the Old English period they are the basic stock of the language: household words: parts of the body, natural elements, most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs as well as the grammatical structure. Imagine a solid tree trunk. That’s the Germanic base with innumerable branches and twigs sprouting out of it. These are the words derived from whichever language the British got into contact with, from Arabic over Farsi to Sanskrit.