![]() If you think back to sociolinguistics, when we talked about languages in contact, we talked about of lingua franca that goes to a pidgin that goes to a creole. It really encapsulates what happens when you have two mildly, but not really, related languages pushed together and combining. However, there's a big change that happens if you were to read, for example, The Canterbury Tales, that is Middle English-in fact, in the middle of Middle English. You would be bilingual, especially in the middle classes, in both Norman French and the English that was being spoken. This meant that every part of the upper half of English society or British society, if you were in middle class or higher you were learning and you were speaking French. ![]() Everything changes in 1066, and if you know the history of the British Isles, you know what happens: William the Conqueror leaves Normandy, which is the northern part of France the Normans spoke Old French-although interestingly, they were genetically more Viking than French-so they brought Norman French to the Court. Old English has a full case system, it is highly complex with how it combines its terminology, it is very synthetic and realistically, very fusional. It is not easy to read at all in fact, if you know German you might pick up some words, maybe, but, honestly, not much it's very, very difficult to read. Beowulf is Old English in fact, Beowulf, when you look at it, it is very similar to Old High German, which is, if you will, the parents or ancestor to Modern German. Before that, if you want to know what English used to sound like before the Norman invasion, read Beowulf. Despite what you might think when you try to read Shakespeare, that's actually Modern English. When we're talking about English, we're talking about Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Yet, a lot of that has to do with how English came to be in the first place, so let's talk about the various stages of English, what that means, and specifically get a little bit into the Great Vowel Shift. ![]() English does not follow that rule in fact, it's one of the perfect examples of not following that rule, and that is the Great Vowel Shift. We tend to say that vowels change but not radically over the course of the history of the language. When we talk about why English has a very different setup, one of the big areas has to do with the vowels. Let's start talking a little bit about why English is so weird-okay, not exactly weird, but you get the point.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |