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History of English
First Britons were Celts http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/celtic.html
Celtic languages Scots & Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton
A few Celtic words in Modern English Whiskey = uisgebaigh = water of life
Roman empire spoke Latin
Romance languages are descendants French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
Romanian
Latin used up until 19th/20th century: Scholars & scientists all over Europe Catholic Church services Most high schools
Latin influences on English
Romans traded with Britain Conquered it about 100 AD Ruled it to about 500 AD
Through Church, scholars, scientists
Through French
Angles & Saxons & Danes &..
Invaded England 500 to about 1300 England is from “Angle land”
Much of English is from Anglo-Saxon
Related to: German, Dutch Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic
Vikings From Scandanavia Now Norway, Sweden, Denmark
Good sailors, even reached Canada
Often tall, and blond or red-headed
The great fears
China: guys on horses, Mongol, Manchu, …
Good fighters, not very civilized
Great Wall to keep them out
It did not work: Yuan & Qing Dynasties
Europe: Vikings coming by ship
Good fighters, not very civilized
Map
1066 William the Conqueror
Duke of Normandy (in France) Conquered England Defeated Harold, the last Saxon king
Peasants still spoke Anglo-Saxon So animals are cow, pig, sheep, deer
Nobles spoke French Meat is beef, pork, mutton, venison
Anglo-Saxon → English
Vowel changes for plural: tooth/teeth, man/men, mouse/mice, foot/feet, house/houses, …
Vowel change for tense: break/broke, read/read, fight/fought, get/got, sit/sat, drink/drank, ... will/would, may/might, ...
F → V
Plurals wife/wives, life/lives, wolf/wolves, thief/thieves, half/halves, knife/knives, sheaf/sheaves, loaf/loaves
Noun/verb change belief/believe, life/live, ...
'en' ending
Plurals Oxen, children
Verbs broken, taken, given, gotten, …
Adjective drunken, shrunken
Two ways to say same thing
Normal English, from Anglo-Saxon I broke my arm.
Technical/medical, often from Latin I fractured my ulna.
All the rude words are Anglo-Saxon.
Where does English come from?
Count the words in a dictionary
More than half are from Latin
Count the words used in a book
More than half are from Anglo-Saxon
English borrows everywhere
Arabic: algebra, algorithm, …
Czech: robot
Finnish: sauna
Indian languages: pyjamas, bungalow, ...
Chinese: typhoon, Long time no see, ...
Latin for logic & rhetoric
QED = quod erat demonstrandum
= which was to be proved
Reductio ad absurdum
= assume x, prove an absurdity, so not x
Flawed arguments:
Ad hominem = “to the man”
Ad populum = “to the people”
Latin plurals, technical English
cactus/cacti*, nucleus/nuclei, focus/foci, radius/radii, …
formula/formulae*, nebula/nebulae, vertebra/vertebrae, ...
forum/fora*, medium/media, …
* = regular English 's' or 'es' also used
“data” is odd
In Latin, it is the plural of ”datum”
Can be used that way in English: That's an interesting datum These data are interesting
More often, used as non-count noun That's an interesting piece of data This data is interesting
More...
index/indices*, matrix,matrices*, appendix/appendices, …
thesis/theses, axis/axes, crisis/crises, basis/bases, parenthesis/parentheses, ...
phenonmenon/phenomena, criterion/criteria, … (but photons, electrons, ...)
Rare, but possible
Hebrew: kibbutz/kibbutzim
French: beau/beaux, bureau/bureaux, tableau/tableaux