Having studied many languages, I find that English is the most up-to-date of the bunch and has eliminated many of the shortcomings with which other languages still struggle.
English evolved from its Germanic roots when the Normans invaded and conquered England in 1066. The Normans brought the French that was then in use to the British Isle. (The Normans, though from France, were originally from Norway, hence the name.)
English adopted many of the words that have since changed in French. Many modern French words that begin with an “é” and are followed by a consonant used to be different and more like our English. I don’t think even the French realize this. Here are some examples. Substitute the beginning “é” with an “s” and see what happens: étage, étranger, étudie, école, écailler, écarlate. échalote, écope, épouse, équerre, état, étole, étrangler and étuve. They become stage, stranger, studie (study), scole (school), scaler, scarlet, schalote (shallot), scope (scoop), spouse, squerre (square), stai (stay), state, stole, strangle and stuve (stove) - Voila, English!
The French also did the same to its letter “s” in the middle of words if the “s” is followed by a consonant. They replaced the “s” with an upside “v” over the preceding letter. So the Latin fenestra become fenêtre, bastard became bâtard, nostre became nôtre, etc. But unlike English, French never got rid of the ancient practice of giving genders to objects and then to their modifiers. So French and the other Romance languages require the user to know which inanimate object has which gender. Is a table feminine because a chair which is masculine slides in between its legs? An object with two different names to describe it can have one that is masculine and one that is feminine. Different Romance languages may assign a different gender to the same object. A car can be feminine in one and masculine in the other.
I have tried to trace the origin of this strange practice and believe I have found it. It is the same source as the alphabet. Did you say Greek? Yes, Greek had genders for objects and had an Alpha Beta, but that’s not it. And since it predated Latin, it is not Latin which caught the habit from Greek. It was Hebrew. And Hebrew had the first Alef Beit, which became the Greek Alpa Beta.
English has all the verb tenses that Latin has like present, past, pluperfect, future, conditional subjunctive, and imperative, but it does not require us to conjugate each verb depending upon whether it is in the first, second or third person singular or plural. We also do not use two different “you”s depending on with whom we’re speaking. Some Asian languages cannot differentiate between the present, past and future using their verbs. So one would have to say “I go to work, yesterday” or “I go to work tomorrow” instead of “I went” and “I will go.” And they didn’t have alphabets meaning that each word has a symbol that must be memorized. Can you imagine a Chinese keyboard for typing?
And since English is a Germanic language mixed with a Romance or Latin based language, we have two words for the same thing. Examples are donate (L) and give (G); labor (L) and work (G); and demonstrate (L) and show (G).
I believe that this is why English, but not French or Chinese, is and will be the international language. French used to be known as the international language but has lost out, I believe, because of its insistence on giving each noun and its adjectival modifier a gender, which unlike Italian or Spanish, is not discernible by hearing it. At least the Italians and the Spanish ended each masculine noun with an “o” and each feminine noun with an “a” to let speakers know which arbitrary gender the word is supposed to be.
So aren’t you happy that you know English? Don’t you wish everyone did?
December 2008
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