The Roots of English

[John Hall]

I've always told my students something like this:

English is a combination of languages. It's about 40% Latin, 40% Germanic languages, 10% French, and 10% from various other languages.

How accurate is this description?

[fluffyhamster]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 04037.html

[jotham]

How do you distinguish between Latin and French? If a word can be described as of French origin, wouldn't that also be Latin? Can it not be? I suppose there could be a Latin origin that isn't French, but why mention French at all if Latin is a category?

[lolwhites]

I'm not sure where your percentages come from, but what is far more revealing is the origins of words that are actually used, as opposed to simply counting the words in the dictionary without regard to frequency. I'll try and find the article later (as I'm at work now), but IIRC, corpus data shows that the overwhelming majority of words used in everyday speech are of Germanic origin.

Since the Romans left Britain before the Angles and Saxons arrived, bringing with them the languages that evolved into English, I think it's highly unlikely that 40% of English vocabulary comes directly from Latin.

[jotham]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Influencegraph.PNG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows:

Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Other Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English): 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%
Other estimates have also been made:

French, 40%[3]
Greek, 13%[4]
Anglo-Saxon (Old English), 10%[5]
Danish, 2%[6]
Dutch, 1%[7]
And, as about 50% of English is derived from Latin--directly or otherwise--[8] another 10 to 15% can be attributed to direct borrowings from that language.

[JuanTwoThree]

Common misconceptions are:

that the Roman occupation left a substantial linguistic legacy in Britain. It didn't.

that the Normans were "French". In fact they were Nor(se)men and had only been speaking Gallo-Romance, probably not very well, for about 200 years, just across the Channel from the Saxons from whom they weren't so very different and whose language they may well have understood long before the Conquest.

Actually Latinate words came in centuries later when a lot of new words were needed, as they still are. They were not always well received:

"Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that wee never affect any straunge ynkehorne termes, but to speake as is commonly received: neither seeking to be over fine or yet living over-carelesse, using our speeche as most men doe, and ordering our wittes as the fewest have done. Some seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mothers language. And I dare sweare this, if some of their mothers were alive, thei were not able to tell what they say: and yet these fine English clerkes will say, they speake in their mother tongue, if a man should charge them for counterfeiting the Kings English."

http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/inkhorn.html

Interestingly most of that Early Modern English comes straight from Old English with only the tiniest smattering of Norman "French".

I think it is fair to distinguish between on one hand the tortured route taken by Latinate words that had been affected not only by Oïl but also by the Normans' version of it and on the other the direct borrowings from Latin hundreds of years later.

A good example might be "chivalry" (1292 reflecting the continued influence of French afer the Conquest) from caballus which is Late if not slangy Latin for horse coming via French with a change in meaning from its original one of "horsemanship " (which is pure Old English) versus "equestrianism" (1656) that goes straight to the earlier Latin "equus".

[JuanTwoThree]

Anyway, a dictionary is the last place to count: there'd be pages and pages of Latin and Greek based words that nobody uses and/or most people don't even know.

As lolwhites has said it's more interesting to think in terms of words that do get used. This would vary from person to person, obviously. A Dales farmer would use a very high proportion of OE based words, I suppose. But a scientist's Latin or Greek based vocabulary might be in higher proportions, if s/he was talking about science and not swearing a lot, of course.

Even a scientist talking about science is still basically using Germanic English:

"Microshutters" are tiny doorways that bring stars and galaxies very far away into better focus. This new technology will go aboard the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched into space in a decade.

The microshutters will enable scientists to block unwanted light from objects closer to the camera in space, letting the light from faraway objects shine through. To get an idea of how these tiny little "hairlike" shutters work, think about how you try to make something look clearer – you squint. By squinting, your eyelashes block out light closer to you. That's similar to how the microshutters work."

from the Nasa site. Mind you, that's a scientist talking to us thickos, unlike a scientist addressing other scientists:

The fabrication and operation of surface micromachined light modulators are described. In particular, comb-driven polysilicon microshutters for interrupting a focused laser beam of 5 μm in diameter are characterized. The shutters are suspended by novel compact meander springs, which favor their application in dense light modulator arrays. Torsional micromirrors working in a reflection mode, having two mirror states, were realized using the same technology. Electrical pulses of less than 2 μs are sufficient to switch the mirror position"

whatever that means

[lolwhites]

According to one Malcolm Galfe, something like 80-90% of everyday English is Anglo Saxon, but this includes determiners and prepositions. I heard this on Radio 4's Do You Know What You Are Saying" programme, presented by Melvyn Bragg. Not an academic source, but interesting nonetheless.

You can find the podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/rou ... what.shtml but you'll need Realplayer or Real Alternative to liisten to it.

[JuanTwoThree]

The Romans didn't adopt many Celtic words because they already had words for all the things they encountered. Nor did the Germanic tribes "need" many words from the Romano-British. From what little I can remember they had already borrowed words like "wine" and "street".

They didn't have to go far so the plants and animals were similar. Going further, like the Spanish to America or the British to Australia seems to involve borrowings of not much more than names of unfamiliar food and animals etc.

All this may be common sense but has it got a name? Or is it Somebody's Rule?

[Andrew Patterson]

There are a few words that have come in from Celtic languages. Krysstal.com lists loads but is not to be trusted as it lists dialect words that are absolutely not derrived from the Celtic languages.

Wikipedia lists:
Adder
Bard
Booth
Bow (archery)
Brock
Coney
Coracle
Corgi
Druid
Flannel
Flummery
Penguin
Roach
Whelk
Yew


It also lists some lifted direct from Welsh but Bach, Cwm (geology, a corrie) and Eisteddfod are the only ones I'm familiar with.

Strangely, "cwch" is not listed.

[JuanTwoThree]

Encarta says:

"It (OE) borrowed few proper nouns from the language of the conquered Celts, primarily those such as Aberdeen (“mouth of the Dee”) and Inchcape (“island cape”) that describe geographical features. Scholars believe that ten common nouns in Old English are of Celtic origin; among these are bannock, cart, down, and mattock. Although other Celtic words not preserved in literature may have been in use during the Old English period, most Modern English words of Celtic origin, that is, those derived from Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, or Irish, are comparatively recent borrowings.

The number of Latin words, many of them derived from the Greek, which were introduced during the Old English period has been estimated at 140. Typical of these words are altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, and pear. A few were probably introduced through the Celtic; others were brought to Britain by the Germanic invaders, who previously had come into contact with Roman culture. By far the largest number of Latin words was introduced as a result of the spread of Christianity. Such words included not only ecclesiastical terms but many others of less specialized significance."

In other words, very little influence in either case.

Geographical place names are interesting: A parallel might be North America. The settlers/conquerors sometimes asked the Native Americans "What's the name of that river/mountain?" but almost always named their settlements themselves. So rivers and mountains in England (The US) sometimes have names which are Celtic (Native American).

So you can have a mountain with an impeccably Welsh name like Pen y Gent (PenyGent ?) slap in the middle of Yorkshire.

[John Hall]

Thanks for your posts. They have all been very interesting.