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Norman/Saxon meat/animal word pairs are interesting; the saxons were the hunters and farmers, and the normans ate the meat. This led to a bunch of word pairs:
by quickthrowman 5y ago
Norman/Saxon meat/animal word pairs are interesting; the saxons were the hunters and farmers, and the normans ate the meat. This led to a bunch of word pairs:
Beef/cow
Poultry/chicken
Pork/pig
Veal/calf
Mutton/sheep
There are other areas of English vocabulary with dual Saxon/Norman words as well.
Bill Bryson has a great book that explores how English became what it is now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue It’s an easy read with lots of interesting info.
- Mediterraneo10 5y agoPlease don’t recommend Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue. Bryson has no actual background in linguistics and there is a factual error or urban myth on nearly every page of that book. There are loads of pop-sci “history of English” books written by people who were actually competent in the subject.
- quickthrowman 5y agoThanks for the heads up, I looked into criticism of this book and I won’t recommend it in the future. If you happen to see this reply, would ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English’ by McWhorter be a better choice for a pop-sci history of English? r/Linguistics seems to be fine with him.