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Great article; will keep this in mind for my email/Slack messages at work. One nitpick: > The Romans arrived in Britain a couple of thousand years ago, and br
by yellowapple 6y ago
Great article; will keep this in mind for my email/Slack messages at work.
One nitpick:
> The Romans arrived in Britain a couple of thousand years ago, and brought Latin with them. Local tribal leaders had to learn Latin, or else. So they did, and Latin became the language of religion and administration — which is why the words ‘religion’ and ‘administration’ come from Latin.
I'd argue the Normans have much more to do with that; the Romans might've brought Latin with them, sure, but the Old English that came after the Romans lost control was chiefly Germanic (especially considering prior conquests/arrivals by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, all of whom spoke Germanic languages). The much-more-recent Norman conquests are what "Latinized" English, by enforcing French as the language of administration (and Latin as the language of religion, as it was for as long as the Catholic Church existed up until the Protestant Reformation made non-Latin languages acceptable for church).
Further, at the time of the Roman conquest few (if any) people in what's now England were speaking anything resembling English; the native peoples of the British Isles were Celtic, and accordingly spoke a Celtic language, very different from any Germanic language like English.
- jacobush 6y agoAnd the Germanic tribes in the British isles even had a discourse among them - "what can we do to avoid ending up like the Celts when the Romans came?"
- selimthegrim 6y agoMeaning not getting conquered?
- jacobush 6y agoYes, but now that I think about it, I may be misremembering things - I think they (anglo-) Saxons tried to learn something from how the Romans were defeated. So frustrating that the details elude me right now, please someone fill in if you know. I think it was at the time of Alfreds rule.
- chrisdone 6y agoI agree. I read the same passage and had the same complaint. I just finished a Great Courses lecture series on the Norman conquest of England, and the professor makes this very comment. And also argues that the melding of Norman--not 'French', Norman was a sister to Old French that looks more like Vulgar Latin--and Old English is what gives modern English its vast vocabulary, roughly twice the size of Spanish; as many words have the Germanic and Romance varieties. You can 'meet' someone or 'encounter' someone, etc. Ironically, "Norman" comes from "north men", as Normandy was settled by Scandinavian invaders who "went native" in France. Then they "went native" again in England, forgetting their original Norman.
- yellowapple 6y ago> not 'French', Norman was a sister to Old French that looks more like Vulgar Latin I mean, at that point in time it might as well be "French", right? Obviously not modern French, but an ancestor (or uncle?) thereof. I've done quite a bit of (amateur/casual) reading into the histories of English and Norse languages, but the Norman part I haven't exactly dug into yet (beyond exactly how it influenced modern English and induced a lot of the differences from Old and Middle English) so now my curiosity's a bit piqued.