In my last posting I should have said "in 1934, 68 years ago." Granted English, or any other living language, doesn’t change at a fixed rate.
A key point Burnam made about Beowulf (incidentally, according to the text at the posted link, the passage I quoted was from about Line 1650! :eek: :o), was the next-to-last paragraph on the topic, p. 170, op. cit.:
Put very briefly, the reason Old English is so unlike today’s–or, for that matter, Chaucer’s, Malory’s, or Shakespeare’s–language is that following the Norman Conquest [this corroborates your posting, Gjorp], England officially became a French-speaking nation–and remained so for several centuries. The profound influence of Norman French, the language of William the Conqueror, upon the “native” Old English brought by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons when they themselves invaded Britain about A. D. 450, is responsible for the radical alterations which took place in English between Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales.
To Wendell Wagner: This seems to be the point Tom Burnam intended to make, and I believe he succeeded, your appraisal of his background in linguistic history notwithstanding. Absit invidia. 
dougie_monty, Burnam’s flat assertion that the Norman period is what changed Old English into Middle English is, um, about half right.
It was once thought to have been that way. But current thinking holds that English interaction with Danish during the two centuries before the Norman Conquest had already started the process of eroding away inflections. The written Old English language may have held on to the inflections for years after they had started to be left out of colloquial speech. What the Conquest did was to submerge written English for a time, so that when it re-emerged as Middle English, it was written as spoken. Also, being temporarily cut loose from the more conservative literary language must have accelerated the process of change.
My point was that if you want to learn about the history of English, learn it from a book about that subject, not from a trivia book or a book about writing. Even a popular introduction to the history of English like Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way would be a better place to start than Burnam or Fleisch’s books, which are only incidentally about the subject. (And this is despite the fact that Bryson is a journalist, not an expert on English linguistics, and there are a few errors in his book too.)
Oddly enough, I found a comment about the Danish influence on Norman-era English in, of all places, a book titled A Child’s Geography of the World, written in the early part of the 20th Century by Virgil M. Hillyer, who died in 1931. In a part of his book devoted to Scandinavia, he noted that in Danish:
lamp is lampe
house is hus
cow is ko
And he followed that by pointing out that, rather than the Danish copying us, we copied them, the Danes’ military, political, and cultural influence on Britain at the time being what it was.
And the Beowulf passage Burnam used in his book puzzled me when I first read it. If mathelode was the Old English for “spoke,” why is the modern German for “spoke,” sprach? (thus so similar to the English form)
The first line of the passage would read in modern German:
Sprach Beowulf, des Ecgtheows Sohn.
Why is the German so similar to (modern) English? I read the passage Burnam quoted–granted my pronunciation of Old English is quite rusty–to a native speaker of German; he said it sounded like Irish or a related language. (Indeed, Hillyer, in his chapter dealing with Scotland, said the Scottish word for “baby” is bairn.) I also know a retired reference librarian, who seems to know all there is to know about the language and English literature; I think it’s safe to assume she was an English major in college. I’ll take this topic up with her and get her appraisal.
“Speak” is derived from an Old English word (that meant just “speak”) that had an “r” in it. It’s not clear why the “r” dropped out by the time of Middle English. “Speak” in English and “sprachen” in German both derived from a proto-Germanic word. It appears that in most Germanic languages today the most common word for “speak” derives from that word. The word “mathele” which also meant “speak” in Old English dropped out of the language by the time of Middle English.
I got this information from the OED, which is the best source for things like this. Why are you relying on Hillyer and Burnam and Fleisch and friends who have some knowledge of the subject? Why aren’t you looking into more standard sources for information about the history of English?
To Wendell Wagner: I had developed an interest in languages about the time I finished high school in 1967. I had taken four years of French in school; I learned German from books and from a carpenter, born in Kiel in 1922 and in the U. S. since 1966, and have also dabbled in Esperanto, Russian, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. (I also took formal courses in Spanish at El Camino College in 1998 and 1999.)
Sprechen in German is not, of course, the only word in the language I had compared to a possible cognate in English. It was the dissimilarity between the words used in the Beowulf passage Burnam cited, and the words in modern English, that surprised me. If I follow you aright, the “related” roots, in English and German included, had changed in meaning over the centuries, accounting for the Old English word mathele being supplanted by “speak”; which might also explain why the Spanish word for “dog” is perro, no relation to Latin canis, French chien, or Italian cane, for example.
I have also read several volumes (all of which I own; not library volumes I’ve checked out), by Mario Pei, likely the most famous modern authority on languages; and, of course, I follow etymologies in various dictionaires, including the Oxford English Dictionary (to me, as perhaps to you :), the ultimate authority on etymologies and meanings). Pei noted that “cross” derives, of course, from crux in Latin; he said it replaced Old English rood, which appears in Scott’s Ivanhoe, and perhaps in Beowulf, which I’ve rarely encountered, though, of course, I did scan the link as noted above.
In short, I do have access to more thorough sources than Virgil Hillyer, Tom Burnam or Dr. Rudolph Fleisch, but I am not ready or willing to shoot them down solely because they are, as you allege, not foremost authorities. I prefer not to shoot the messenger.
According to the retired librarian, French and Danish both influenced English, before Chaucer’s time–no surprise. But I stand by my comment that the writing style of English has changed since the beginning of the 17th Century, which is one reason Shakespeare and the King James Bible are difficult to comprehend fully. And, unless I am mistaken, the very purpose of language is to communicate ideas, not mask them with a patina of age and ‘graceful expression.’
To the moderator: For some reason my Sept. 12th posting was not indicated as the “Last Post” in the entry in the Search Results, even though it followed one by Wendell Wagner…
I’ve just finished reading “In the Beginning,” which is one of two recent books about the King James/Authorized Version, completed in 1611. Interesting point: because the revising committee’s charge was to preserve, to the extent possible, the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, which (through a couple of intermediaries) was largely derived from Tyndale’s pioneering effort of 1526, the author suspects that the KJV sounded somewhat archaic the minute it was first read.
During the 80 years or so between the original and its descendent, the author says English moved pretty clearly towards abandoning “thou” and its analogues. (He cites Shakespeare, claiming his usage of “thou” versus “you” suggests that people were viewing them interchangeagbly.) But KJV kept the old form, and he speculates that’s because the revisors weren’t authorized to change it. Another anachronism: the word “its” appears only once, quite possibly by accident - everywhere else the KJV uses the older “his” as both masuline and neuter possessive. But that usage too was on “its” way out.
One thing i’d never heard before was that by the 1600s the “eth” ending for the third person indicative was actually pronounced “es,” meaning that it sounded just like the modern version: “passeth” would be pronounced “passes.”
It seems to me that the layout of the Authorized Version, or King James Version, is also partly to blame: Each verse was set up in type as a separate paragraph, which disrupts the “complete-thought” concept of a paragraph modern readers are accustomed to. Case in point: John 18:38; In the AV this verse reads: “Pilate saith unto him: What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.” In contemporary versions, Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is at the end of a paragraph (even in a translation into Esperanto I have).
dougie_monty writes:
> To Wendell Wagner: I had developed an interest in languages
> about the time I finished high school in 1967. I had taken four
> years of French in school; I learned German from books and
> from a carpenter, born in Kiel in 1922 and in the U. S. since
> 1966, and have also dabbled in Esperanto, Russian, Greek,
> Latin, and Hebrew. (I also took formal courses in Spanish at El
> Camino College in 1998 and 1999.)
> I have also read several volumes (all of which I own; not library
> volumes I’ve checked out), by Mario Pei, likely the most famous
> modern authority on languages; and, of course, I follow
> etymologies in various dictionaires, including the Oxford English
> Dictionary (to me, as perhaps to you , the ultimate authority on
> etymologies and meanings). Pei noted that “cross” derives, of
> course, from crux in Latin; he said it replaced Old English rood,
> which appears in Scott’s Ivanhoe, and perhaps in Beowulf,
> which I’ve rarely encountered, though, of course, I did scan the
> link as noted above.
I’m sorry to get so picky about this, but you’re still not consulting the right sorts of books. Mario Pei is not “the most famous modern authority on languages.” He’s also not very accurate. He was a professor of Romance languages who decided to introduce linguistics to the general populace by writing popular books on language. He was a popularizer and not a major authority on language. His books are about 50 years old now. Even when he wrote them, they were considered a little sloppy on the details. By the time you and I read them in the '60’s, they were already a little out of date. (I presume that’s when you read them. I read them in high school, and I graduated from high school in 1970.) Now they’re way out of date. I wouldn’t even recommend them for a beginner as a way to get them interested in linguistics. If you want, I can try to look up some modern books on linguistics and on specific subjects like the history of English. I understand that you know a lot of languages (I’ve only studied French, German, Chinese, and Latin, and I’m rusty in all of them), but I also know from experience that it’s possible to know a lot about specific languages and not know very much about linguistics and thus not know much about how languages work.
(O.K., somebody is going to ask at this point, “Why do you think you know so much about linguistics? It says in your profile that you’re a mathematician.” Yeah, I work as a mathematician. I got a bachelor’s degree in math, and then I decided I was more interested in linguistics. I started on a doctoral program in linguistics and got as far as a master’s in it before giving up because the job situation was so bad. Then I went back into math and started work on a doctorate in that subject. Again I got as far as a master’s degree before giving up on a Ph.D.)
> Sprechen in German is not, of course, the only word in the
> language I had compared to a possible cognate in English. It
> was the dissimilarity between the words used in the Beowulf
> passage Burnam cited, and the words in modern English, that
> surprised me. If I follow you aright, the “related” roots, in
> English and German included, had changed in meaning over the
> centuries, accounting for the Old English word mathele being
> supplanted by “speak”; which might also explain why the
> Spanish word for “dog” is perro, no relation to Latin canis,
> French chien, or Italian cane, for example.
I don’t see the analogy that you’re making here. There were two words in proto-Germanic that meant “speak, talk, discuss, converse, etc.” One of them was the ancestor of “mathele” (and some similar words which appear in older versions of other Germanic languages). The other was the ancestor of “speak” in English and “sprachen” in German (and similar words in other modern Germanic languages). “Mathele” was the most common word for this meaning in Old English, but it disappeared for some reason by the time of Middle English. “Speak” was an occasionally used word in Old English which became the standard word for this meaning by the time of Middle English. It wasn’t a matter of the words changing meaning, but of one of them ceasing to be used for some reason and the other becoming thus the standard word for this meaning.
I don’t know what the history is of how the word “perro” came to mean “dog” in Spanish, and there’s no way I could find out except by going to a library and finding an etymological dictionary of Spanish. I tried Googling to see if there’s something on the web that might be useful, but I couldn’t find anything. It might be that “perro” was derived from some other word in Latin that meant something else, or it may be that it was borrowed from some other language. (Spanish borrowed a fair number of words from Arabic and from Continental Celtic.)
Nitpick: While it’s certainly true that the Norman Conquest of 1066 had a profound effect on the English language, it’s extremely misleading to say “England officially became a French-speaking nation … and remained so for several centuries.”
After the Norman Conquest, the overwhelming majority of Englishmen continued to speak English just as they always had. The only ones who spoke French in the newly-conquered kingdom were the nobility and their retinues–a very tiny proportion of the population.
Because the nobility spoke French, much governmental business was conducted in that language. However, official government records were virtually always kept in Latin, not French.
In post-Conquest England, French was the language of nobility, of literature, and of certain legal proceedings. That sufficed to change English in thousands of ways. But most Englishmen couldn’t speak a word of French, and the country was never “officially” a French-speaking nation.
Wumpus, your comment jibes pretty well with a statement by Virgil Hillyer–ironically, the oldest source I cited, perhaps to the potential irritation of Wendell Wagner. 
In his account of the history of England, Hillyer noted that after the Norman Conquest the royalty, the nobility, and the upper classes in general, spoke French among themselves; he added that they “only spoke English to their subjects, who were not supposed to know anything better.” Similarly, Mike Romanoff, the famed Hollywood restaurateur who claimed to be an heir to the Imperial line of Russia, was once confronted by a heckler who spoke to him in Russian, apparently to expose Romanoff as a fraud. According to Hollywood author Richard Lamparski (he of the Whatever Became Of…? series of celebrity biographies), Romanoff–who was no longer making such a claim about his ancestry-- commented to a friend, “The nerve of that man speaking to me in that barabaric language! We never spoke anything but French at court.”
In any case, Wagner is probably accurate in that French alone could not have influenced English to change as much as it did between Beowulf and Chaucer’s time. I stand by the librarian’s observation that both French and Danish are among the causes. (And note the passage from Matthew 11:12, Wycliffe-Purvey translation, I added in the September 7 posting.)
dougie_monty writes:
> In any case, Wagner is probably accurate in that French alone
> could not have influenced English to change as much as it did
> between Beowulf and Chaucer’s time.
I don’t think I addressed this subject. I think that you’re talking about what Jomo Mojo said.
As you wish.
You are correct, dougie_monty. We even had a discussion about this in an older thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=129863&highlight=language+grammar
called ‘What Ever Happened to Grammatical Gender in English’
The point I was making was that the Danes started the decline in inflection use. Then the Normans came, threw English into the gutters, and left the trend to keep happening.
This is true. What happened was that during the 17th century, people got the idea of making rules for our spelling and grammar. This drastically changed spelling by making rules and applying them to every word (ie 'i before c except after e). Of course, spelling has changed a little bit over the centuries, but not considerably.
That’s why it’s hard to read Shakespeare, he was alive before standardization, but no problem to read the Declaration of Independence.
But of course ye is pronounced with the ‘y’ when it’s the old nominative plural second person pronoun.
This tallies closely with the conclusions of Orrin W. Robinson in “Old English and Its Closest Relatives.”
In the tree he produces of interrelationships of Germanic languages"
“ANGLO-FRISIAN ---- OLD FRISIAN ---- FRISIAN
|
----- OLD ENGLISH ---- ENGLISH”
Dutch is a second cousin to English, in the larger tree. His conclusions are based on language comparisions that are difficult for me to summarize, but they include spelling, pronunciation, phonology, word similarity, etc.
Originally posted by partly_warmer
There’s more to this: American English has ties to Dutch that British English does not, because of the Dutch colony in Nieuw Amsterdam, later New Yorky City (Manhattan). As noted by Mario Pei in Talking Your Way around the World, the Dutch prexence there gave us words like boss, stoop andcole slaw, and names like Schuyler, Schermerhorn and Van Cortlandt.
dougie_monty, this illustrates a fairly well-known problem with taxonomy. In fact I hesitated to add to the discussion because what’s “close” to another thing, or “dependent” on another thing depends on agreeing up front what criteria will be used. However Dutch and Middle English are not as closely associated as Middle English is with other languages by some measures, and I thought it might be useful to add slightly to Wendell’s point.
If we agreed that the more words two languages had in common the more closely related they were, then your Dutch examples would come into play.
If I believed (which I do not) that the influence one language had on another should be measured by the number of distinct phonemes introduced, then your examples would be irrelevant (unless it happened they also introduced many distinct phonemes).
Actually, I’m not particularly comfortable with the utility of the notion of languages being “dependent” on one another at all. But that’s out of scope of this discussion.
As a historian before being any sort of linguist, I am more interested in how one culture socially influenced another. So the examples of how the French language introduced itself into England when the French ruled are of great interest to me because they indicate the degree to which the French were accepted by the typical Briton. By the same token, I’m most interest in how Dutch culture affected our country. I’ve always seen their influence as being scant. The words you mention boss, stoop, and cole slaw – if taken to be the major contributions of the Dutch to American culture – argue this. None of those words are among the top 1,000 most frequently used, probably.
The modern day “Mario Pei” is David Crystal, with his “Encyclopedia of The English Language” and “Encyclopedia of Language”. Still rather like books for smart coffee table chatter, but broader and more amusing. Plenty of food for thought, if nothing else.
There is one word of Dutch derivation you will find on every single SDMB page. Do you know what it is? English Dope comes from Dutch doop.