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If Old English lacks Brythonic influences because, as the article speculates, Angles and Saxons settled in thoroughly latinized regions, are there many traces o
by usrusr 3y ago
If Old English lacks Brythonic influences because, as the article speculates, Angles and Saxons settled in thoroughly latinized regions, are there many traces of that pre-Norman latin in Old English? That's something I've often wondered when considering that simple mental model od English as "a Germanic language with lots of 11th century French sprinkled in".
(That model may be too simple, but it got me through school at least, filling many gaps in my French vocabulary with "whatever the English say they isn't almost the same as in German")
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThe problem would be determining that Latin words entered Old English directly from the Latin spoken in England, instead of being part of the Latin influence on Old English while it was still spoken on the continent. English already had such Latin loanwords as street (from Latin strāta ‘paved road’) before the Anglo-Saxons set off to to invade England.