History of English

First Britons were Celts http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/celtic.html

Celtic languages Scots & Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton

A few Celtic words in Modern English Whiskey = uisgebaigh = water of life

Roman empire spoke Latin

Romance languages are descendants French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,

Romanian

Latin used up until 19th/20th century: Scholars & scientists all over Europe Catholic Church services Most high schools

Latin influences on English

Romans traded with Britain Conquered it about 100 AD Ruled it to about 500 AD

Through Church, scholars, scientists

Through French

Angles & Saxons & Danes &..

Invaded England 500 to about 1300 England is from “Angle land”

Much of English is from Anglo-Saxon

Related to: German, Dutch Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic

Vikings From Scandanavia Now Norway, Sweden, Denmark

Good sailors, even reached Canada

Often tall, and blond or red-headed

The great fears

China: guys on horses, Mongol, Manchu, …

Good fighters, not very civilized

Great Wall to keep them out

It did not work: Yuan & Qing Dynasties

Europe: Vikings coming by ship

Good fighters, not very civilized

Map

1066 William the Conqueror

Duke of Normandy (in France) Conquered England Defeated Harold, the last Saxon king

Peasants still spoke Anglo-Saxon So animals are cow, pig, sheep, deer

Nobles spoke French Meat is beef, pork, mutton, venison

Anglo-Saxon → English

Vowel changes for plural: tooth/teeth, man/men, mouse/mice, foot/feet, house/houses, …

Vowel change for tense: break/broke, read/read, fight/fought, get/got, sit/sat, drink/drank, ... will/would, may/might, ...

F → V

Plurals wife/wives, life/lives, wolf/wolves, thief/thieves, half/halves, knife/knives, sheaf/sheaves, loaf/loaves

Noun/verb change belief/believe, life/live, ...

'en' ending

Plurals Oxen, children

Verbs broken, taken, given, gotten, …

Adjective drunken, shrunken

Two ways to say same thing

Normal English, from Anglo-Saxon I broke my arm.

Technical/medical, often from Latin I fractured my ulna.

All the rude words are Anglo-Saxon.

Where does English come from?

Count the words in a dictionary

More than half are from Latin

Count the words used in a book

More than half are from Anglo-Saxon

English borrows everywhere

Arabic: algebra, algorithm, …

Czech: robot

Finnish: sauna

Indian languages: pyjamas, bungalow, ...

Chinese: typhoon, Long time no see, ...

Latin for logic & rhetoric

QED = quod erat demonstrandum

= which was to be proved

Reductio ad absurdum

= assume x, prove an absurdity, so not x

Flawed arguments:

Ad hominem = “to the man”

Ad populum = “to the people”

Latin plurals, technical English

cactus/cacti*, nucleus/nuclei, focus/foci, radius/radii, …

formula/formulae*, nebula/nebulae, vertebra/vertebrae, ...

forum/fora*, medium/media, …

* = regular English 's' or 'es' also used

“data” is odd

In Latin, it is the plural of ”datum”

Can be used that way in English: That's an interesting datum These data are interesting

More often, used as non-count noun That's an interesting piece of data This data is interesting

More...

index/indices*, matrix,matrices*, appendix/appendices, …

thesis/theses, axis/axes, crisis/crises, basis/bases, parenthesis/parentheses, ...

phenonmenon/phenomena, criterion/criteria, … (but photons, electrons, ...)

Rare, but possible

Hebrew: kibbutz/kibbutzim

French: beau/beaux, bureau/bureaux, tableau/tableaux