Fascinating site - thanks for pointing it out !
Having had to read Chaucers "prelude toThe Canterbury tales " for Eng. Lit. at school I think that the English themselves didnt speak English, as opposed to a German dialect, until quite recently in historical terms.
If you tried speaking in Chaucerian English today when you were out shopping I dont think you’d buy very much.
that’s really just saying that English is a Germanic language that has gone through a lot of evolution in the past 600 years. But that’s not the same as concluding it wasn’t a separate language until recently.
To support your thesis, have you compared Chaucerian English with 14th century German to show that they’re essentially the same language?
Lust4Life writes:
> Having had to read Chaucers "prelude toThe Canterbury tales " for Eng. Lit. at
> school I think that the English themselves didnt speak English, as opposed to a
> German dialect, until quite recently in historical terms.
That’s not a good way to put it. Modern English is derived from the languages of speakers of various Germanic languages (from the northern coast of what’s today known as Germany and the Netherlands) who emigrated to England around 450 -500 A.D. The language they spoke as it slowly evolved is usually referred to these days as Old English from 500 A.D. to 1000 A.D., as Middle English from 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D., and as Modern English from 1500 A.D. to today. None of these can be called a dialect of German. Modern standard German (sometimes called High German) also slowly evolved during that period. English isn’t a German dialect anymore than German is an English dialect. English is closer to Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands) than any other modern language. English, (High) German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and a few other languages can be called Germanic languages, in the sense that they are all part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family, but they aren’t dialects of German. To be dialects of a language they would have to be mutually intelligible, and they aren’t.
King Edward the Confessor might be surprised to learn that he spoke Middle English. The cutoff date between Old and Middle English, as I learned it, was set somewhat arbitrarily at 1100. This being the next round figure after the Norman Conquest, and allowing a few decades for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to die out.
Frisian is the closest language to English, but that doesn’t mean English and Frisian speakers could understand more than a few words of each other. The closeness lies in that Old English and Old Frisian were quite similar-- but the two have diverged a lot since then. It is possible to come up with a few brief sentences that are intelligible in both English and Frisian, but on the whole-- it’s a foreign language.
Defining dialects as mutually intelligible can be quite dodgy. If you took a Piedmontese and a Sicilian (who had no formal schooling) and put them in a room together, they would be unable to talk to one another much, apart from sign language. (Italians are fluent in Hand Gesture, at least.) But telling them that they both speak dialects of “Italian” won’t help them.
Of course he would. As far as he would be concerned, he would think he spoke modern English.
You know what I meant!
Johanna writes:
> King Edward the Confessor might be surprised to learn that he spoke Middle
> English. The cutoff date between Old and Middle English, as I learned it, was
> set somewhat arbitrarily at 1100. This being the next round figure after the
> Norman Conquest, and allowing a few decades for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to
> die out.
King Edward wouldn’t know what the difference between Old and Middle English was. I’ll accept your definition though. 1100 A.D. is the boundary between Old English and Middle English then.
> Frisian is the closest language to English, but that doesn’t mean English and
> Frisian speakers could understand more than a few words of each other. The
> closeness lies in that Old English and Old Frisian were quite similar-- but the
> two have diverged a lot since then. It is possible to come up with a few brief
> sentences that are intelligible in both English and Frisian, but on the whole-- it’s
> a foreign language.
And I didn’t say that English and Frisian are mutually intelligible. All I was saying was that the modern language that English is closest to is Frisian.
Yep. On the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1099, everyone in England suddenly switched languages. 
Warning! Warning! At 12:01 June 26, 2007, we will cease to speak Modern English and begin speaking Hypermodern English. (The change was timed to co-ordinate with the release of Paris Hilton from jail.) If you find yourself unable to communicate with someone at that time, you forgot to synchronize your watches.
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
begin speaking Hypermodern English/QUOTE]
d00d WTF
u r0xx0rs
Post-modern?
pO$7//\0d3rN 3ngli$|-| sUxx0rz! 
AABE, is your board ID a Genesis reference (Squonk)?