From Old English to Modern English

[Tiarnan O'Corrain]

Also, the language shows summat about social conditions,
I'll recite the old chestnut:
	cow(A-S)=raw		beef(Norman)=cooked
	pig			pork
	sheep			mutton
The original schizophrenic heart of the English language.

Tiarnan O'Corrain <stih8005 at bureau.ucc.ie>
^^^^^^^^^^^^


-----Original Message-----
From:	Umberto Rossi [SMTP:urossi at programatic.it]
Sent:	Monday, May 05, 1997 10:41 AM
To:	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject:	From Old English to Modern English

> Curious...when did English become English and not...German Old English
> (ever been forced to read Beowulf)?  

When it was enhanced by means of an injection of French words, and 
simplified its grammar (one small example:  Anglo-Saxon--what you 
call OE--had declinations, like Latin or Russian;  English got rid of 
them).  All this happened after 1066 and before 1500.  As for the 
reasons:

- languages keep changing, and there's no way to stop that process 
(though the use of writing can slow it down);  English is a language, 
so it changes;

- the conquest of England carried out by French-speaking Norman
noblemen explains the amount of french words in English (usually
pronounced in quite a different way:  one small example is "danger").

Umberto Rossi

"A commission is appointed 
To confer with a Volscian commission 
About perpetual peace"--and nobody told me!