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> it's pretty easy to understand "broken English", which again is part of why it works so well for trade. Which, while I'm here geeking out about linguistics a

> it's pretty easy to understand "broken English", which again is part of why it works so well for trade. Which, while I'm here geeking out about linguistics anyway, allows me to break out one of my favorite tidbits about the history of English: "Broken English" is super easy to understand in large part due to the fact that Modern English was forged as a sort of pidgin at the intersection of Old English, Scandinavian, and then French. The crazy admixture of peoples in England between 800 and 1200 meant that most of the complicated grammatical bits of the language got sanded down to the essentials. English lost grammatical gender, its full case system, noun classes (mostly), most declensions, and on and on. What replaced all that is actually a relatively simple grammatical system (on the scale of Indo-European systems) that relies a lot more on adding words than on modifying suffixes. And adding words is a game anyone can play—you may not pick the same modifiers as a native would, but you'll get your point across!

philwelch 2y ago
Is this also why English has so many words? I know we doubled up on words by keeping both the Anglo-Saxon and Norman French words for the same basic concepts, but did we really be up with even more to make up for the simpler grammar?
- lolinder 2y ago
  Probably not. Most of our words are content words, and the near-duplicates are, as you say, the result of borrowing from various other languages. These words don't serve a grammatical role and we could make do without them just fine. The words that serve to replace grammatical features that exist in other Indo-European languages are a very small subset of our words—words like "will", "may" the prepositions, and similar. Non-natives will reach for other words to substitute for these grammar words when they're unsure which grammar word to use, but I don't think that's why those other words exist.
garof 2y ago
"The Year 1000" by Lacey and Danziger explains this well in slightly more detail, with some references, for anyone that would like to learn more. The other reference I have on the shelf that I will check for this is David Crystal's "The Stories of English". Any other good references out there?

philwelch 2y ago

Is this also why English has so many words? I know we doubled up on words by keeping both the Anglo-Saxon and Norman French words for the same basic concepts, but did we really be up with even more to make up for the simpler grammar?

lolinder 2y ago
Probably not. Most of our words are content words, and the near-duplicates are, as you say, the result of borrowing from various other languages. These words don't serve a grammatical role and we could make do without them just fine. The words that serve to replace grammatical features that exist in other Indo-European languages are a very small subset of our words—words like "will", "may" the prepositions, and similar. Non-natives will reach for other words to substitute for these grammar words when they're unsure which grammar word to use, but I don't think that's why those other words exist.

garof 2y ago

"The Year 1000" by Lacey and Danziger explains this well in slightly more detail, with some references, for anyone that would like to learn more. The other reference I have on the shelf that I will check for this is David Crystal's "The Stories of English". Any other good references out there?