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So wait. The English once used C to mean what we now notate as "120" and the Romans used C to mean "100"? Wouldn't that have been super confusing when the Eng
by csense 6y ago
So wait. The English once used C to mean what we now notate as "120" and the Romans used C to mean "100"? Wouldn't that have been super confusing when the English sent trade ships to mainland Europe? Especially in the days when England was a Roman colony?
And at one time the British spoke German? Fascinating. I always thought the single biggest language influence on British was French (because William the Conqueror), and the pre-Conquest indigeneous British was a mix of Celtic, Roman, and Norse from the Vikings that's more-or-less unique. How'd they end up speaking German?
- flukus 6y agoThe Romans weren't super consistent either, at least when it came to the size of their military units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion > How'd they end up speaking German? You've probably heard of Anglo Saxons? After the Roman withdrawal came the Anglo Saxon invasion from Germany and Old German became the predominant language of England, even the name comes from these invaders (Angles -> Angle Land -> England). After that the Vikings and French added their layers to varying degrees, Celtic languages remained dominant in Ireland, Scotland and Wales until much later.
- guerrilla 6y ago> Old German You mean Old English or Anglo-Saxon. Also, they came not just from what became northern Germany but also from what is now Denmark.
- kevinmchugh 6y agoWho did William conquer? The Anglo-Saxons. If you know where Anglia and Saxony are, well, it's easy to see what happened. German grammar is pretty easy to pick up for English speakers. Lots of sentences are constructed the same way in German and English.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoAnd we glom words together the same way, just maybe less gratuitously
- roywiggins 6y agoAs I understand it, the various bits of medieval England could barely agree on units among each other. "England" is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that showed up and settled down in England after Roman rule ended. They brought their own proto-Germanic language with them and displaced the local languages- and to some extent people too. French was a comparatively small addition, it contributed a lot of vocabulary and spelling and so on, less so grammar. The Norman invasion was not a lot of actual people- enough to staff up a new aristocratic class speaking French, not enough to displace the local language or people so much.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoWell, maybe not so much language. What we call 'swear words' are Saxon(?) for ordinary things, but demonized because they are not the sanitized 'correct' Norman words e.g. fuck vs sexual intercourse, shit vs defecate and so on. That's pretty much displacing language? Certainly language got changed permanently.
- exporectomy 6y agoProbably the same way Americans and English can trade despite their gallons being different. Or the Australians and the Americans despite their dollar being different. It was only last century that for the English, a billion was 1e12 while it was 1e9 for Americans. I'm sure it was a pain but humans can manage details like that.
- gumby 6y agoEnglish is a Germanic language (as are German, Swedish, Dutch, etc). The largest components of its grammar are similar to other Germanic languages, as is a lot of vocabulary (butter, swine, cow, deer....). A bunch of French words were grafted on recently (not in 1066 but over the following couple of centuries), but none of the grammar came with it. As for German-speaking people in England specifically: well, George I and George II spoke German (and French), not English. George III was the first Hanoverian king to speak English. Not surprisingly, he was mad :-)
- mnw21cam 6y agoA fairly decent rule of thumb is that most of the short words in English come from Germanic roots, and most of the long words come from French. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule.