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ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟ ᛞᛖᚫᚱ ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹᛖᚱᛋ!

ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟ ᛞᛖᚫᚱ ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹᛖᚱᛋ!
Hello dear followers!

Welcome back from summer vacation! Sabina here and, boy, do we have a treat for you today! Today, we’re going to talk runes! When people see this fascinating little writing system, they tend to think of Vikings, so I guess it makes sense that one of our nordic contributors write this post. For me, runes were the initial introduction to linguistics (though I didn’t realise that at the time), and they are still very dear to my heart, so if I get a bit caught up in it, please forgive me.

Though it might make quite a bit of sense to think about Vikings when seeing a runic inscription, the runic writing system actually comes in many varieties and was used in a number of Germanic languages before the Latin alphabet.

First off, let’s check out some things that differ between the Runic writing systems and the one we are using here today (i.e. the Latin alphabet). There are, of course, a number of them, but let’s check out some basic differences for now.

Let’s start with looking at the material on which most Runic inscriptions are found (it’ll be important in a sec, I promise): Rather than paper, most runic inscriptions are found on wood, stone, or even metal. This may just be due to easy access; it was certainly a lot easier to get a hold of a piece of rock than parchment in the days when runic writing was used.

Now, this is where the material becomes important: runes distinctly lack a rounded shape, most of them being angular. One could argue that this may just have been easier to carve into the hard surface, but some believe that the angular shape actually reveals something more about the origins of the runic writing system. You might be thinking, “it must be somewhere in Scandinavia” because you got hung up on Vikings. That, however, may be far from the truth (though, as in most things concerning historical linguistics, we simply can’t know for sure). Some argue that the lack of rounded shapes in the Runic alphabets may be an indication of an Old Italic origin (remember, Latin is an Italic script). Some Old Italic scripts, e.g. Etruscan or Raetic, share this angular property with the Runic alphabets, and some scholars argue that the Runic alphabets are derived from these, probably through early contact between the Germanic languages and the Old Italic ones. Some even believe that runes might actually derive from the Latin alphabet itself. So, while you might be inclined to think that there is a world of difference between the symbols used to write ‘ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟ’ and ‘hello’, the symbols used in the former may be derived from an ancestor of the latter! (I love writing systems, have I ever said so? Well, it’s worth saying again).

Now, two more things to be noted about the Runic alphabets, before we dig into an overview of the ones that have been used: firstly, in the earliest Runic inscriptions, they didn’t have a fixed writing direction. This means that, unlike our modern script, the earliest Runic inscriptions could be written (and read) either left-to-right or right-to-left (trust me, you want to keep this in mind if you plan to study early runic inscriptions to any great extent. It can get really confusing otherwise, since the writing direction may actually change within the same inscription). It stabilized into a left-to-right pattern later on, though.
Secondly, word division is not commonly used. Basically, itmeansthatrunesarewrittenlikethis. Kinda hard to read, huh? (alright, I was kinda nice to you guys and put in some word division in my hello today but, really, something like this: ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟᛞᛖᚫᚱᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹᛖᚱᛋ would be more correct) Check out the Franks Casket, an amazing little relic with an Old Norse poem written in runes on it, here to see an example of how this may look. Actually, check out the Casket even if you don’t want to see this specifically; it is still awesome. Sometimes word division was indicated by one or more dots, but that was somewhat unusual.

Now, let’s dig into the most famous Runic alphabets, shall we?

Some of you may think that there was just one kind of runic alphabet – you’re in for a treat! There were, in fact, several. We will mention three today: the Elder Futhark, the Younger Futhark and the Futhorc. Notice the names are very similar? Well, that’s because the alphabets are named after the first six letters, which just happens to spell out ‘futhark’ (or futhorc).

The Elder Futhark is the oldest recorded variety of the runic alphabets, used approximately between the 2nd and 8th centuries AD. It consisted of 24 characters, typically divided into three ættir (compare with Swedish ‘ätter’ meaning ‘family/clan’), each ætt including eight characters, as below.

 

As you may know, runes were also considered to have certain magical properties, and the very word ‘rune’ means ‘secret’ or ‘mystery’. Though we won’t go into detail here, the first ætt is typically considered to be the ætt of the Norse fertility deities Frey and Freya. The second is the ætt of Heimdall, the guy who watches for the start of Ragnarrök (the end of the world, in case you missed the movie), while the third is considered to be the skygod Tyr’s1.

Now, the Elder Futhark eventually gave way to the Younger Futhark around the 8th century. The Younger Futhark is a reduced version of the Elder Futhark and only contains 16 letters. The Younger Futhark is the Runic alphabet most people think about when we’re talking Viking runes. However, even in the Viking-countries (i.e. the Scandinavian ones), the Younger Futhark varied. In Denmark, we can recognise so called ‘long-branch’ runes:

While in Sweden and in Norway, we see ‘short-twig’ runes:

Let’s complicate it just a liiiittle bit more because in Sweden, you have yet another set called the Bohuslän runes, used specifically in the west coast region (Bohuslän), north of (and including) the city of Gothenburg (coincidently, my hometown). Interestingly enough, this is a set of not 16 letters but 26; 2 more than the original Elder Futhark.

Alright, now that we’ve covered the Elder and Younger Futhark, let’s step over to the Futhorc. Notice the difference in name? Based on what we’ve said previously on language change and the early Germanic dialects, do you think you could guess who used these runes?

Do you have an answer in mind? Is it perhaps the Anglo-Saxons? In that case, you are absolutely right!

The Anglo-Saxon runes, or the Futhorc, is an extended, rather than reduced, version of the Elder Futhark. Instead of the Elder Futhark’s 24 letters, the Futhorc has between 26 and 33 letters (yeah, I know, but I can’t give you a definite number!). How they wound up in the UK (where you can find them on, for example, the Franks Casket mentioned above or the Kingmoor ring, which is inscribed with a magical formula) is still much discussed, though one hypothesis is that it was developed in Frisia. The language of Frisia, Old Frisian, is a closely related kin to Old English and, indeed, we do find that these runes were used also in Old Frisian. Another suggestion is that the Vikings brought them over and the Anglo-Saxons modified them a bit and then spread them to Frisia.

Anyway, the Futhorc was used from approximately the 5th century and was used in England all the way up to the 10th or 11th century. Its use was in decline from about the 7th century, and it largely ceased after the Norman Conquest. Despite this, you can actually see a couple of the old runic symbols tagging along during the Middle English era, as well, specifically the letter wynn <ƿ> and the letter thorn <þ>. Now, while these might look similar, do not mix them up! In Modern English, the former is the letter <w> while the latter is the digraph <th>, so you may get very confused if you do. Also, if you are to read a Middle English manuscript you might come across a letter that looks suspiciously like <y>. Don’t confuse that one, either. It may be either wynn or thorn, and the scribe just missed the line that connects the rounded shape to the vertical line. In fact, this kind of confusion is exactly where we get ‘ye’, as in ‘ye olde’, from.

Right, sidetracked. Getting back to it.

Anyway, the Futhorc looks like this:

Quite a difference from what we saw in the Elder and Younger Futhark, huh? Like everything else in language, variation is the spice of life; it just adds a bit of zest, don’t you think? (Though, admittedly, making it all the more difficult to learn.)

I’ve hammered you with runes for quite a bit today, haven’t I? I did try to restrain myself, honest, but runes are just so awesome, I couldn’t help myself.

Until next time, ladies and gents. I hope you enjoyed our little runic talk! Come back to us in two weeks when our amazing Riccardo will be here to talk to you about the endangered languages of Italy!

References

1Check out our reference D. Jason Cooper’s more in-depth account on the different ættir here

Most of our references today are from a marvellous little page called Omniglot. You’ll find our source regarding the Elder Futhark, the Younger Futhark and the Futhorc right there as well as some general info on the runic writing systems. Also, the original runic pics modified for the purposes of this post are to be found on Omniglot, in the links that have been provided. Take a look and be dazzled! Also check out the Futhark on ancientscriptscom, our second source for the different hypotheses regarding the origin of the runic writing system. Enjoy!

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Fun Etymology Tuesday – Sweden

Tjena! Hej! Hallå! It’s fun etymology time!
Since we’re on the subject of names for nations and people, we thought it was appropriate to include the motherland of 50% of the HLC: Sweden.

The road to this name takes some interesting turns. Essentially, the name was borrowed from Middle Dutch and Low German (‘Zweden/Sweden’), where it probably was a dative plural of ‘Swede’. It was, however, not borrowed into English; the form first appears in Scots in the 1500s, as ‘Swethin’/’Suethin’/’Swadne’ etc. (consistent spelling was not a thing back then, as our regular readers will know).

In Old English, the name for Sweden was ‘Sweoland’ or ‘Sweorice’ (‘rice’ basically meant ‘country’ so this makes sense (cf. German ‘reich’)). This was adapted from the Old Norse ‘Sviariki’ (app. “land of the Swedes”), which developed into the Modern Swedish form ‘Sverige’, pronounced /’sværjɛ/, through various phonological changes (the more archaic ‘Svea Rike’ also survives in Modern Swedish, used in certain contexts).
The ‘Sweo’-part comes from Old Norse ‘Sweon’ (pl.; Modern Swedish ‘Svear’) which is the name for one of the North-Germanic tribes who lived in Sweden at least from the viking ages, but probably earlier, and onwards.

In English, the Scots form ‘Sweden’ then started to be used as the name for the people, not the country, in the early 17th century:
“Another part [of their country is] usurped..by the Swedens.”
(attested 1613, example from the OED)

Phew, did you follow that? Basically, the name ‘Sweden’ came to English through Scots, where it had been borrowed from Dutch and German – it is unclear when this form started to be used for the country in English, but forms of ‘Swed(e)land’ are used up until the 18th century (while ‘Sweden’-forms are used as a name for the country in Scots from the start).

With that, this Swede signs off!

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Patron Saint of August, 2018

Hey guys! Today, we here at the HLC want to introduce you to a new little series: Patron Saint of the month!

We will introduce you to some of the great movers and shakers in the linguistic world, starting off with the great Angus McIntosh! You might recognise the name? Yeah, that’s because we here at the HLC have mentioned the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics a couple of times.

Now, you might be wondering, what did this Angus McIntosh do to get a whole centre named after him. And we’ll tell you!

Angus McIntosh was born near Sunderland in 1914. Being interested in the English language, he is said to have been a catalyst to JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien started sketching out ideas for the epic stories while convalescing from an ankle injury, which he incurred during a game of tennis with professor McIntosh.

In 1948, professor McIntosh became the first Forbes professor of English language and General linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, where he spent the rest of his academic career dedicated to the advancement of the field. Most famously, McIntosh, together with Michael Samuels and Michael Benskin, devised a method now known as the “Fit Technique”, a revolutionary method used in the study of historical dialects. The impressive result can be seen in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME), still considered an essential reference-work in the study of English historical linguistics.

McIntosh worked tirelessly on behalf of linguists everywhere, and, in 2013, the Institute of Historical Dialectology was renamed to Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics, a wonderful place for researchers and students of historical linguistics alike. Being associated with the University of Edinburgh, the alma mater of all of us here at the HLC, it is only appropriate that the man whose work helped create this marvellous place is our first Patron Saint of the Month!

If you want to know more, check out our source for this piece, where you can find loads more on the life and work of this Patron Saint, here.

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Chaos? Nah, just a vowel shift

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

 

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

1

Gosh, English pronunciation can be really tricky at times, can’t it? Interested in knowing why?

Well, of course you are! Let’s dive into it together!

As the excerpt above clearly shows, English spelling is often considered a bit ’off’, poorly corresponding to the written word. That’s true, it often doesn’t. But why is that?

Well, while it is not the only reason behind this tricky correspondence between the spoken and written word, today’s topic does explain a lot: the ‘Great’ English Vowel Shift (let’s stick to calling it the GVS from now on) came along and messed things up quite a bit.

Some of you will probably have heard about the GVS before; it was a significant sound change that occurred primarily during the Middle Ages. This sound change affected the long vowels of Middle English, causing them to shift like so:

 

2

Great, so… we done here? You now know everything there is to know about the GVS, right?

Nah, not really.

First, the GVS is actually considered by a lot of linguists to be a process of at least two phases3:

The first phase is considered to have lasted up until approximately the year 1500. During this phase, the long high Middle English vowels /i:/ and /u:/, pronounced similar to the vowels in Modern English meet [mi:t] and lute [lu:t], diphthongised and eventually became the modern English diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, the pronunciations you find in mice [maɪs] and mouse [maʊs]. The vowels immediately below them, that is /e:/ and /o:/4, raised one position, falling into the slots previously held by /i:/ and /u:/.

In the second phase, often considered to have been active between the late 16th to mid-17th centuries, the remaining vowels, that is /ᴐ:, a:, ɛ:/, raised one position in height.

What we eventually wind up with is a system of vowels completely changed from its predecessor.

Now, why would that happen?

As with a good number of things in historical linguistics, we don’t exactly know. However, there are two leading hypotheses out there.

The first is the so-called push-chain theory, which was introduced by the great German philologer Karl Luick as early as 1896. Luick argued that the GVS must have been initiated by the movement of the lower vowels /e:/ and /o:/. The two vowels, for some mysterious reason of their own, started to move toward the high vowels /i:/ and /u:/. As they drew nearer, /i:/ and /u:/ started panicking because, it is sometimes argued, they couldn’t raise any higher and remain vowels (instead becoming yucky consonants, bläch).

Well, can’t have that, can we? In pure desperation, /i:/ and /u:/ look for a way out. And they find one—move in (or out, if you will). So, that is precisely what they do, they move in: they become diphthongs, lower and, suddenly, Middle English /i:/ and /u:/ become modern English /əɪ/ and /əʊ/, eventually becoming /aɪ/ and /aʊ/. Tadaa, we have the first steps to a modern English vowel system.

Luick’s hypothesis is actually quite elegant in a way because it successfully explains the lack of diphthongisation of /u:/ in the northern dialects of British English. In these dialects, the vowel /o:/ had previously fronted, becoming /ø:/. The northern dialects therefore didn’t have a vowel /o:/ to push /u:/ out of its place, and the diphthongisation never happened there (pretty neat, huh?).

The second of our hypotheses, the drag-chain theory, was introduced by Otto Jespersen in 1909. Now, Jespersen argued that it was equally likely that the diphthongisation of the high vowels initiated the shift. Basically, Jespersen’s reasoning was like this:

The high vowels, i.e. /i:, u:/, shifted and became diphthongs. That left a ‘gap’ in the vowel system. Horrified, the lower vowels scrambled to move up the ladder to fill the gaps. All of the sudden, Middle English /a:/ became early Modern English /ɛ:/, Middle English /ɛ:/ became early Modern English /e:/ and so on (the back vowels tagged along, too), and so, harmony was restored.

Now, the (to me, at least) flaw of this hypothesis is that it doesn’t account for the non-diphthongisation of northern /u:/, but then again, Luick’s hypothesis claiming that the high vowels couldn’t raise any higher has been noted to be somewhat limited—the high vowels could have done several other things to avoid becoming consonants5. But that’s a different discussion.

Regardless of which of these hypotheses you want to consider more likely, this is the ‘Great’ English Vowel Shift: a huuuuge chain shift that took centuries to complete and affected all long vowels of Middle English. That’s a pretty big deal.

Now, you might be wondering what this has to do with spelling, right? Well, you see, the thing is that English spelling started to become standardized during the ongoing GVS. What this means is that we have a bunch of words where the written form corresponds to a pronunciation that is centuries old. So, basically, meet and meat, both pronounced [mi:t] in British English, are spelled differently because, when those high and mighty people speaking Middle English decided that there was a correct way to spell those words, they did have distinct pronunciations!

So, next time you get annoyed by having to look up how you spell something, just stop and consider that you’re actually spelling the word the way it was pronounced about 600 years ago. Pretty cool, huh?

 

 

 

 

Oh, oh! I almost forgot! Have you been asking yourself why I keep using ‘’ around ‘Great’? No? Well, I’m going to tell you anyway!

The ‘Great’ was introduced by Jespersen and, frankly, while the GVS did indeed have a huge effect on the English language, vowel shifts happen all the time. So, take the ‘Great’ with a pinch of salt and a shot of tequila and we might get on the right track of things.

 

 

 

 

Side notes

1.   There is nothing to say that either of these hypotheses is an accurate description on the initial process of the GVS. Long before I took my first bumbling steps into academia (actually, about a year before I was even born), Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell noted that it may just be the desire to see a systematic aspect of language and discount its random quirks. So, don’t take it too seriously.

2.     If you’d like to read more about the GVS and other hypotheses, please take a look at Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden’s dissertation work The Chronology and regional spread of long-vowel changes in English from 2010. It’s a really interesting read and introduces a lot more on the subject than I could possibly cover here.

Sources

1 This is an excerpt of the excellent poem The Chaos by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité (Netherlands, 1870-1946). Translated by Pete Zakel.

2 This is one of the common ways to depict the GVS, a similar one can be found in most textbooks on the subject. See, for example, Historical Linguistics by Theodora Bynon (1977: 82)

3 See for example The Cambridge History of the English Language (2008) in which Roger Lass writes about this division into two phases. A similar explanation can be found in most textbooks on linguistics that deal, in some way, with historical linguistics (though I really recommend reading Lass’ explanation if you wish to know more about this).

4 Really, I would like to give you examples of these sounds, but I can’t. They’ve basically disappeared from modern English, though they can, most likely, be found in some dialects of English today. Examples can be found of /e:/ in some variants of Scottish English, for example in mate [me:t], but other than that, I can’t seem to find enough examples. If you do find them, though, please let us know! We would love to know more!

5 See, for example the critique by Charles Jones in A History of English Phonology (1989).

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Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, there were two brothers who very much enjoyed stories. They travelled their country looking for folk tales, each one darker and grimmer than the last… There was no happily ever after in sight and, though their stories have changed much since, the original tales are still found out there for those brave enough to seek them…

Prepare yourselves, my dears, because this… this is the story of the brothers Grimm.

*

Or not! Actually, it is the story of one of the brothers: Jacob Grimm. And it won’t be grim in the least but full of fun linguistic facts!

Today, we’ll be talking about what is known as the First Germanic Sound Shift, Rask’s Rule or, most commonly, Grimm’s Law.

Riccardo touched upon this topic in last week’s post on the comparative method, a method that was pretty much born with this particular observation. The first to notice the correspondence that would eventually become Grimm’s Law was Friedrich Schlegel, a German philologist, in 1806. Rasmus Rask, a Danish philologist, extended the ‘rule’ to to other PIE languages in 1818 and, eventually, Grimm included German in his book Deutsche Grammatik, published in 1822.

Now, they noticed a regular sound change that affected certain Proto-Indo-European (PIE) consonants. They also noticed that this particular sound change only affected the Germanic languages, e.g. German, Dutch, English, Swedish, etc.

But what is it?

Well, Grimm’s Law describes how certain PIE consonants developed in Proto-Germanic, particularly early Germanic stops and fricatives. Now, you might want to refresh your memory on phonological terminology before continuing, but there can be said to be three parts of the chain shift that is Grimm’s law:

  1. PIE voiceless stops became voiceless fricatives
  2. PIE voiced stops became voiceless stops
  3. PIE voiced aspirated stops became voiced stops or fricatives.

That might be a bit abstract but it basically works like this:

PIE PGmc¹ PIE PGmc PIE PGmc
p > f b > p bh > b
t > θ d > t dh > d
k > x g > k gh > g
kʷ > xʷ gʷ > kʷ ghʷ > gʷ

 

Consider these words in Latin, English and Swedish and compare them to their PIE root:

 

PIE² Latin English Swedish
*ped- pēs foot fot
*dwo- duo two två
*genu- genū knee³ knä

Now, why would English and Swedish have <f>, <t> and <k> where PIE and Latin have <p>, <d> and <g>?

Well, because English and Swedish, being Germanic languages, underwent Grimm’s Law and thus changed the PIE sound */p/, */d/ and */g/ to /f/, /t/ and /k/ respectively. Latin, on the other hand, is an Italic language and didn’t undergo this change, thus keeping the sounds of PIE (or at least approximately, though exactly how close these sounds are is a bit difficult to say with certainty).  

Why would this happen, you might wonder? What would make one sound shift to become another sound?

Well, we don’t really know exactly how it started or why. It might be what is called a ‘pull chain’, meaning that one sound shifts, leading to a ‘gap’ in the phonological values of the language. As a result, another sound shifts to fill that gap and a third sound shifts to fit the gap of the second one and so on and so forth.

But, it is also possible that it worked the other way around, meaning that one sound started to shift and basically pushed another sound out of its place, thereby leading to a chain shift. This is called a push chain.

But as to how such a chain started? Well, that part is still kind of shrouded in mystery. Perhaps two sounds became too similar to each other and became difficult to distinguish from each other, forcing a shift? We might never know.

What we do know, however, is that Grimm’s Law did affect all Germanic languages, leading to a distinction between that language family and its PIE-derived sisters.

But there are also a good number of exceptions from this rule. For example:

Why does PIE *bʰréh₂tēr (“brother”) become Proto-Germanic *brōþēr but PIE *ph₂tḗr (“father”) became Proto-Germanic *fadēr?

In ‘brother’, the development follows Grimm’s Law, i.e.  t > þ, but in ‘father’ it does not. Instead of the, by Grimm’s law, expected development, i.e. t > þ, the Proto-Germanic word developed t > d. Why is that?

Well, cue Karl Verner; a Danish linguist who in 1875 formulated what is now known as Verner’s Law, an addition, if you will, to Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law explains such occurrences as ‘father’, showing that voiceless fricatives, e.g. *f, *s, *þ, when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and becomes fricatives, e.g. *β, *z,*ð

Now, you might be thinking that this is all very interesting but why is it important? ‘cause I can pretty much promise you, that if there is anything the budding historical linguist is aware of, it is Grimm’s Law.

Well, while it is fascinating in its own right, its discovery showed us something much greater than we had ever thought possible before: that sound change is a regular phenomenon, not a random process affecting only some words.

This discovery not only set historical phonology apart as its own field of study but also means that we can predict and understand phonological developments, a discovery that cleared the field for the comparative method.

And without the comparative method, of course, our field of inquiry would be so much poorer as we would largely be unable to properly understand the relationship between languages and the historical developments of those languages.

And wouldn’t we all be a lot poorer for that lack of understanding?

So, next time you watch Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel, remember that Jacob Grimm not only provided you with these stories but helped design the most used, and important, method in historical linguistics to this day. Not a bad contribution, right?

Join us next week when our awesome magician Riccardo is back! This time, he’ll be talking about the magic of umlaut and ablaut, so if you’ve ever wondered why it’s ‘mouse’ but ‘mice’ but not ‘house’ and ‘hice’ you definitely don’t want to miss it.

 

Notes and sources

¹ PGmc is a common abbreviation for Proto-Germanic

² All the PIE roots can be found by a simple google search. These are taken from the Online Etymology Dictionary found here: https://www.etymonline.com/. Have fun!

³ Remember now that while the <k> in modern English ‘knee’ is silent today, it was pronounced in earlier stages of English.

*The little pic is from http://tentcampinghq.com/camping-articles/how-to-tell-scary-campfire-stories-2/

**For those who wants to know more about Grimm’s Law, most (if not all) introductory textbooks on linguistics deals with the subject at least a little bit. This particular illustration is from Millward, C.M. A Biography of the English Language.  Ft. Worth: Harcourt, 1996. Pg. 63 but a similar one can be found in pretty much any textbook. Particularly recommended is Lyle Campbell’s Historical Linguistics (3rd ed., 2012) which deals with most things historical linguisticky with great attention to detail and plenty of examples (so it’s recommended generally, not only for this particular sound change). 

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Is English a creole?

Hi all!

By now, I figure most of you have noticed that when a post shows up at the HLC about the development of the English language in particular, I show up. Today is no exception to the rule (though there will be some in the future)!

Anyway, it’s safe to say that England has been invaded a lot during the last couple of… well, centuries. All this invading and being invaded by non-native people had a tremendous effect on most things English, the English language among them.

This is, of course, nothing new. I’ve previously discussed the question of whether English is a Romance language, but today, we’re going to jump into something different, namely, the question of whether English is a creole.

In order to do that, I’ll first need to say a few words about what a creole actually is, and we’re going to do the basic definition here: a creole is a pidgin with native speakers.

That… didn’t clear things up, did it?

Right, so a pidgin is a form of language that develops between two groups of people who don’t speak the same language but still needed to understand each other for one reason or another.

Typically, in the formation of a pidgin, you have a substrate language and a superstrate language. The substrate is the ‘source’ language. This language is, usually for political reasons, abandoned for the more prestigious superstrate language.

But not completely. Instead, the pidgin becomes a sort of mix, taking characteristics of both the substrate and the superstrate to create a ‘new’ language. A rather distinct characteristic of this new language is that it is typically less grammatically complex than both the sub- and the superstrate language. Another distinct characteristic is that it has no native speakers since it’s in the process of being created by native speakers of two different languages.

But, it can get native speakers. When a new generation is born to pidgin-speaking parents, and the new generation acquires the pidgin as their native tongue, the pidgin ceases to be a pidgin and becomes a creole. So, a creole is a pidgin with native speakers. Typically, a creole becomes more grammatically complex, developing into a new language that is a mix of the two languages that created the pidgin.

But enough of that. Question is: is English a creole?

Well, there are reasons to assume so:

There is a distinct difference between Old English and Middle English, the primary one being a dramatic discrepancy in grammatical complexity, with Middle English being far simpler. As we now know, this is one of the primary features of a pidgin.

There were also politically stronger languages at play during the relevant time periods that just might have affected Old English so much that it was largely abandoned in favour of the other language.

First came the Vikings…

*1

One often thinks about murder and plunder when thinking about the Vikings, but a bunch of them settled in Britain around the 9th century (see Danelaw) and likely had almost daily contact with Old English speakers. This created the perfect environment for borrowing between the two languages.

But see, Old Norse, at least in the Danelaw area, was the politically stronger language. Some people claim that this is the cause of the extreme differences we see when Old English transitions into Middle English.

One of the main arguments for Old Norse as the superstrate is a particular borrowing that stands out. Though English borrowed plenty of words from Old Norse, for example common words like egg, knife, sky, sick, wrong, etc., it also borrowed the third person plural pronouns: they, them, their (compare Swedish de, dem, deras).

This is odd. Why, you ask? Well, pronouns are typically at what we might call the ‘core’ of a language. They are rarely borrowed because they are so ingrained in the language that there is no need to take them from another.

The borrowing of the pronouns from Old Norse implies a deep influence on the English language. Combined with all other things that English borrowed from Old Norse and the grammatical simplification of Middle English, this has led some linguists to claim that English is actually an Old Norse/Old English-based creole.  

We’ll discuss that a bit more in a sec.

After the Vikings, the Brits thought they could, you know, relax, take a deep breath, enjoy a lazy Sunday speaking English…

And then came the French…

*2

Now, here, there’s no doubt that French was the dominant language in Britain for quite some time. The enormous amounts of lexical items that were borrowed from French indicate a period of prolonged, intense contact between the two languages and, again, the grammatical simplification of Middle English in comparison to Old English might be reason enough to claim that Middle English is a creole of Old English and Old French.

And a good number of linguists2 have, indeed, said exactly that. This is known as the Middle English creole hypothesis and it remains a debated topic (though less so than it has been historically).

‘But, Sabina,’ you might ask, ‘I thought you were going to tell me if English is a creole?!’

Well, sorry, but the fact is that I can’t. This one is every linguist (or enthusiast) for themselves. I can’t say that English is not a creole, nor can I say that it is one. What I can say is that I, personally, don’t believe it to be a creole.

And now, I’ll try to tell you why.

It is true that Middle English, and subsequently modern English, is significantly less grammatically complex than Old English. That’s a well-evidenced fact. However, that simplification was already happening before French came into the picture, and even before Old Norse.

In fact, the simplification is often attributed to a reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa (good thing Rebekah covered all of this, isn’t it?) which led to the previously complex paradigms becoming less distinct from each other. Might not have anything to do with language contact at all. Or it might.

The borrowing of Old Norse pronouns is, indeed, unusual, but not unheard of, and studies have shown that the effect of Old Norse on English may not be as significant and widespread as it was believed.

When it comes to French, while an intriguing hypothesis which is well-worth pursuing for leisurely interests, extensive borrowing is not sufficient evidence to claim that a creole has been created. Extensive borrowing occurs all the time among languages in long, intense contact.

*3

Combined with the fact that we have evidence of grammatical simplification before both Old Norse and French came to play a significant role in English, and the trouble we stumble onto when considering the question of when English was ever a pidgin, I personally find both creolization hypotheses unlikely.

However, I encourage you to send us a message and tell us what you think: is English a creole?

Tune in next week when the marvellous Rebekah will dive into the Transatlantic accent!

Sources and references

1 Most famously Patricia Poussa’s work ‘The evolution of early Standard English: the creolization hypothesis’ (1982).

2 Most famously Charles-James N. Bailey and Karl Maroldt “The French lineage of English” (1977). The interested reader may also wish to take a look at Dalton-Puffer’s (1995) interesting discussion on the phenomenon in the chapter ‘Middle English is a creole and its opposite: On the value of plausible speculation’ of Fisiak’s (1995) book Linguistic Change Under Contact Conditions

Credits to the creators of the pictures herein used. They have been found on the following pages:

*1: https://quotesgram.com/img/funny-viking-quotes/1373665/

*2 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/6d/3d/f76d3dad4183d34f8d0669a433684df5.jpg

*3 Credits to James Nicoll, no URL offered since the domain has since expired.

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The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

 

“the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the theory that the language you speak determines how you think”

 

So says the fictive linguist Louise Banks (ably played by Amy Adams) in the sci-fi flick ‘Arrival’ (2016). The movie’s plot relies rather heavily on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as the principle of linguistic relativity, so heavily in fact that the entire plot would be undone without it.

But what is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, really? Before digging into why ‘Arrival’ may have gotten it a bit… well, off, a word of caution: If you haven’t seen the movie (and intend to do so), go ahead and do that before reading the rest of this post because there will be SPOILERS!!!


Now that you have been duly warned, let’s get going.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is, in a way, what Louise Banks describes: it is in part a hypothesis claiming that language determines the way you think. This idea is called linguistic determinism and is actually only one half of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Commonly known as the “strong” version of Sapir-Whorf, linguistic determinism holds that language limits and determines cognitive categories, thereby limiting our worldview to that which can be described in the words of whatever language we speak. Our worldview, and our way of thinking, is thus determined by our language.

That sounds pretty technical, so let’s use the example provided by ‘Arrival’:

The movie’s plot revolves around aliens coming to earth, speaking a language that is completely unknown to mankind. To try to figure out what they want, the movie linguist is called in. She manages to figure out their language pretty quickly (of course), realising that they think of time in a non-linear way.

This is quite a concept for a human to grasp since our idea of time is very linear. In western societies, we commonly think of time as a timeline going from left to right, as below.


 

Let’s say that we are currently at point C of our timeline. We can probably all agree that, as humans, we cannot go back in time to point A, right? However, in ‘Arrival’, we are given the impression that the reason we can’t do that is because our language doesn’t let us think about time in a non-linear way. That is, because our language doesn’t allow us, we can’t go back in time. Sounds a bit wonky, doesn’t it?

Well, you might be somewhat unsurprised to hear that this “strong” version has been discredited in linguistics for quite some time now and, for most modern-day linguists, it is a bit silly. Yet, we can’t claim that language doesn’t influence our way of thinking, can we?

Consider the many bi/multilinguals who has stated that they feel kinda like a different person when speaking their second language. If you’ve never met one, we bilinguals at the HLC agree that we could vouch for that fact.

Why would they feel that way, if language doesn’t affect our way of thinking? Well, of course, language does affect our way of thinking, it just doesn’t determine it. This is the ‘weak’ version of Sapir-Whorf, also known as linguistic relativism.

The weak version may be somewhat more palatable to you (and us): it holds that language influence our way of thinking but does not determine it. Think about it: if someone were to point out a rainbow to you and you had no word for the color red, you would still be able to perceive that that color was different from the others.

If someone were to discover a brand-new color (somewhat mind-boggling, I know, but just consider that), you would be able to explain that this is a color for which you have no word but you would still be able to see it just fine.

That might be the most clear distinction between linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism: the former would claim that you wouldn’t be able to perceive the color while the latter would say that you’ll see it just fine, you just don’t have a word for it.

So, while ‘Arrival’ was (at least in my opinion) a pleasant waste of time, when it comes to the linguistics of it, I’d just like to say:


(Oh, and on a side note, the name of the hypothesis (i.e. Sapir-Whorf), is actually quite misleading since Sapir and Whorf never did a collaborate effort to formalise the hypothesis)

Tune in for more linguistic stuff next week when the marvellous Rebekah will dive into the phonology of consonants (trust me, you have a treat coming)!

 

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Is English a Romance language? On language families and relationships

Today, I’m going to talk about language families! When I say this, I believe that most of you will have, on some level, an intuitive hunch about what I mean. If we were to compare a couple of common words found in, for example, Spanish and Italian, we would find that they are often very similar or, in some cases, even identical. Take a look:

Spanish Italian English translation
vivir vivere live
boca bocca mouth
tú tu you


Similarly, if we were to look at Swedish, Danish and Norwegian:

Swedish Danish Norwegian English translation
leva leve leve live
mun mund munn mouth
du du du you


You see the similarities? Now, why is that, you might wonder. Well, because they are related!

In the linguistic world, related languages are languages that have so much in common that we cannot claim that it is merely due to extensive contact and/or borrowing. These languages, we say, are so similar that there can be no other reasonable explanation than that they descend from a common source: a mother language, as it were. In the case of Spanish and Italian, the mother is Latin, while in the case of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, the language is Old Norse.

Now, it would be convenient if it stopped there, wouldn’t it? But, of course, it doesn’t. Like any family, the mother also has a mother and other relatives, like siblings and cousins. Old Norse, for example, has its own sisters: Old High German, Old Frisian, Old English, etc., which all share the same mother: Proto-Germanic. This is the Germanic language family.

Spanish and Italian also have sisters: French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc., and their common mother is Latin. This is the Romance language family, deriving from Vulgar Latin. But, of course, Latin has its own sisters, for example Umbrian and Oscan, and together with its sisters, Latin forms the Italic language family.

Does it feel a bit confusing? Well, that’s understandable and I’m going to kick it up a notch by adding that the Italic language family, with languages like Spanish and Italian, and the Germanic language family, with languages like Swedish and Danish, actually have the same mother: Proto-Indo-European (or just Indo-European).

The mother in this case is veeeery old, and we actually don’t have any kind of evidence of how it looked! Indo-European is a reconstructed language, more commonly known as a proto-language (as you may have noticed, we call the mother of the Germanic family Proto-Germanic, meaning that it is also a reconstructed language). It has never been heard, never been recorded and no one speaks it. Then how the heck do we know anything about it, right? Well, that has to do with something called the comparative method, which we’ll explain in another post.  

Like human families, language families can be represented in the form of a family tree:*

Clear? Well, hate to tell you this, but this is an extremely simplified version using only examples from these two subfamilies. The “real” Indo-European language family tree looks somewhat more like this:1

You’re kinda hating me right now, aren’t you?


As you can see by the tree above, some languages that you might never expect are actually related. Let’s take as an example Standardised Hindi and German. Here are some common words in both languages:

German Hindi English translation
Mädchen लड़की (ladakee) girl
Hallo नमस्ते (namaste) hello
Hunger भूख (bhookh) hunger


Looking at these words, it is unlikely that you would draw the conclusion that the two languages are related. Looking at the language tree, however, you can see that linguists have concluded they are. Now, you’re probably staring at your screen going “whaaaat?” but, indeed, they are both descendants of Indo-European and are therefore related.

While Indo-European is clearly a large group of languages, it is not the only one (or even the largest). Looking a bit closer at the Indo-European language family, you will notice that languages such as Mandarin and Finnish are not included. These belong to other families, in this case the Sino-Tibetan and Finno-Ugric (or Uralic, depending on your definition) language families respectively.

All in all, there are approximately 130 language families in the world today. Some are related, some are not, just like we are. The largest family is the Niger-Congo language family, having (as recorded in 2009) 1,532 languages belonging to it. (Indo-European comes in a poor 4th place with approximately 439 languages.)2

So, looking at languages is kinda like looking at your own family tree: every mother will have a mother (or father, if you want, but traditionally, linguists call them mothers and daughters). Some branches will have siblings, cousins, second cousins and so on. Some will look nothing like their relatives (or, well, little anyway) and some will be strikingly similar. That’s just the way families work, right?

So, now, we’ve reached a point where I can answer the question in the title: Is English a Romance language?

While this is a much-debated question (do a google search and see for yourself), the simple answer is: no, it’s not. At least, not to a linguist. Now, you might be sitting at home, getting more and more confused because a lot of English vocabulary can be traced back to Latin (the word ‘vocabulary’ being one of those words, actually).

But when linguists say that a language is a Romance language, we are referring to the relationship illustrated in the tree structure, i.e. the language has Latin as its mother. English, then, despite having borrowed a substantial part of its vocabulary from Latin (and later from the Latin language French), it is not in itself a daughter of Latin. English is a daughter of Proto-Germanic, thus, it is a Germanic language.

However, Latin and Proto-Germanic are both daughters of Indo-European. Latin and English are therefore clearly related, but the relationship is more like that of a beloved aunt rather than a mother (if, you know, the beloved aunt refused to recognise you as a person unless you imitated her).

At the end of the day, languages are like any other family: some relationships are strong, some are weak, some are close, some are not.

Tune in next week when Riccardo will delve into another branch of language families: constructed languages.

Notes and sources

*The structure employed here, showing languages as families in family trees, has long been criticized for simply not showing a lot of information like contact-situations, dialect continuums and when the languages were spoken. It has, however, been used to show the beginning student that some languages are related to each other and how they are related in a way that is easy and comprehensible. The Historical Linguist Channel does, however, recognise this criticism and would be happy to discuss it in a separate post or through personal communication.  

1Provided by Ancient History Encyclopedia (Published on 19th of January, 2013).  https://www.ancient.eu/image/1028/

2Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/16. (Family index is reached through http://www.ethnologue.com/16/family_index/).

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Written “language”?

Hi everyone, Sabina here! As the resident nerd of orthography and writing systems, I am here today to talk to you about language. Shocking, I know!

When I say “language”, you might be thinking of spoken language but also, perhaps, of written language. But is “written language” actually language?

Well, yes and no. Written “language”, while sharing a lot with spoken language, is a medium through which we might use language to express ideas, thoughts and emotions, but it is not the language.

The distinction between spoken language and the written medium may sound simple enough, but the two are easily confused simply because they are very closely related. Haven’t you ever heard someone saying, with a frustrated tone, that the English language is soooo weird on the basis of spelling? Well, that’s the orthography, i.e. the rules that govern spelling, punctuation and such things, not the language.

Or perhaps that Chinese is an ideographic1 language? Well, that describes the writing system of the language, not the language (also, Chinese is logographic, but it’s a common misconception according to our resident Chinese expert, Riccardo).

Now, a writing system is a form of communication represented in a visual way. This may be through a system like the Latin alphabet (like I’m using) or the Cyrillic alphabet (like that used in Russia, e.g. алфавит ‘alphabet’) where the symbols represent sounds, or through a logographic system (like that used in Chinese, in which a written character represents a word or a phrase, e.g. 这是一个示例 ‘this is an example’). Basically, it is any way we use letters, shapes, accents and so on to convey meaning on… well, any material really, as long as it is graphically represented.

You with me so far? Great, let’s move into the tricky stuff.

Now, the writing system and the orthography of a language are derivative mediums of spoken language, usually reflecting the spoken language fairly well. However, writing may also go entirely its own way (or at least, it might seem like it).

Consider the English spelling of the word “tough”. Pronounced (in British English) as as [tʌf], it is nevertheless spelt with -gh, not f. (I’ll leave the vowels for now. We’ll offer more insight on vowels later.). So, if a written language is merely a way to express the spoken language: what’s up with that??

Well, this is the Historical Linguist Channel, after all (thought you could sneak by the history, did ya?). Such discrepancies (of which English has plenty) are often possible to explain by studying the history of the language. You see, orthography (especially spelling) is slow to change (like, really slow) and the standardisation of English was done during late Middle English/Early Modern English. English has, of course, changed quite a bit since then, but the written form of English actually still corresponds quite well (we think, at least) to the pronunciation of earlier stages of the spoken language.

While it would be convenient to have an orthography that reproduces the spoken language as exactly as possible, it would be quite difficult to create such a system. For instance, most letters pull a double (or triple or quadruple and so on) act and their pronunciation in a particular word is very dependent on the reader.

Let’s use another Swedish example here: In Swedish, the word for shrimp is ‘räka’. Now, in Gothenburg, where I’m from, this is pronounced something like ‘rää-ka’ with an open vowel ([æ:]), a vowel that, in Swedish, is traditionally associated with the letter <ä> .

However, my husband, who is from Stockholm, would pronounce the same word as ‘ree-ka’ with a much more closed vowel, perhaps something like [e:]. Yet, using the letter <e> to denote the vowel [æ:] may become an issue because the pronunciation “ree-ka” might actually be nonsensical to a lot of Swedish speakers (there’s actually a really old joke about it, talking about  a person wanting shrimp and the other person doesn’t understand what the first is asking for).

Add to that that there already is a word spelt ‘reka’ in Swedish, a clipped form of ‘rekognosera’ meaning “to explore or investigate”, and you’ll see how spelling shrimp as ‘reka’ might be an issue (especially since the pronunciation is highly dialectal and does not correspond to the pronunciation of other dialects).

There are, of course, a bunch of words that could (and perhaps should) be updated to a more ‘modern’ spelling, but the point of all this is that, while spoken and written language are closely related, we cannot expect the written form to be an exact replica of the spoken language. That being said, it would be naive of us to claim that spoken and written language are completely separate. Of course they’re not. But, at the same time, when we talk about “written language”, we must be aware that that “language” is not actually a language at all, merely a really slow-to-change expression of the spoken language. This does not mean that the study of writing systems and/or orthography is not worthwhile. Quite the opposite, especially for historical linguists whose only resource is written texts.

We cannot, and should not, expect writing to be a trustworthy representative of spoken language, and that’s okay.

Notes

1Ideographs are symbols that manage to convey their meaning independent of any particular language, like a big red circle with a line through it to mean “no”.

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The myth of language decay: Do youths really not know how to speak?

Hi everyone!

My name is Sabina, I’m 28 years old, from rainy Gothenburg, Sweden (unlike Riccardo from sunny Bologna). Why am I here? Well, to talk about linguistics, obviously! Specifically, I’ll be talking about a persistent and prevalent language myth: the myth of language decay.

This is the idea that modern forms of language are somehow steadily getting “worse” in comparison to previous stages of the language. The thought that there was, somewhere, somehow, a “golden age” of the language, after which it became unstructured, uninformative or just plain “bad”. This idea is a form of prescriptivism, as described by Riccardo in last week’s post, and perhaps the most widespread one at that.

You might think that this is not as common a myth as I say, but consider: have you ever heard someone claim that “young people” don’t know how to write? How to talk “properly”? Maybe even how to read? These are, indeed, examples of this myth.

However, is it true? Do young people really not know how to write/speak/read their native tongue? Of course not, they just do it in a different way.

The myth of language decay is intimately connected to the phenomenon known as language change. Now, language change is often described by linguists as a necessary, vital and continuous part of the language’s development and survival. Just imagine if we spoke English the same way as in the Middle Ages, or even as in Shakespeare’s time! English today is certainly different from back then, but it is in no way worse. Think about it, would you really want everyone to speak like Shakespeare did? Or Chaucer? Or perhaps as in Beowulf?

It is interesting to note, however, that the idea of language decay rarely touches the history of the language. Chaucer and Shakespeare lived approximately 200 years apart yet no one really claiming that Chaucer’s English was “bad” in comparison to Shakespeare’s, do they? (As a matter of fact, Chaucer has earned himself the nickname “Father of English literature” so it really can’t be, can it?).

Let’s take a more recent example: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) to J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) to George R.R. Martin (1948-). Now, if you sit down and read through the works of these three authors, all of whom have been hailed for their writing skills, you will probably notice a rather distinct difference in not only style, but perhaps also in lexicon and grammar. Yet no one is arguing that Dickens and Tolkien didn’t know how to write, do they?

But guess what? Someone probably did when Tolkien started writing! Someone probably did when Martin started out. Someone probably even said it about Dickens, Austen, Woolf, Brontë, Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc, etc.

In fact, people have been complaining about language “decay” for a long, long time, specifically since the time of Sumerian, a language spoken in the region of Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia. Now, you might be thinking: “Sabina, surely you’re exaggerating things just a bit?”.

I am not.

Sumerian is the first language from which there is surviving written material1 and in 1976, a researcher named Lloyd-Jones2 published a piece of work detailing inscriptions made on clay tablets. Among other things, these contained an agonized complaint made by a senior scribe regarding the junior scribes’ sudden drop in writing ability.

Basically: “Young people can’t write properly!”.

Consider that for a second. People have been complaining about supposed language decay for, literally, as long as we have evidence of written language.

Given this, you can imagine that people tend to have a strong reaction to language “decay”. Consider the case of Jean Aitchison, an Emeritus Professor of language and communication at the University of Oxford. In 1996, Professor Aitchison participated in the BBC Reith Lectures, a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures of a particular field. Professor Aitchison lectured on the naturalness of language change, stating that there was nothing to worry about.

The result of this? Professor Aitchison received hostile letters to her home. Consider that for just a second: people took the trouble of sitting down, writing a threat, posting it, wait for the post to reach her, just to get their sense of accomplishment.3 That’s a pretty good indication of how strongly some people feel about this.

So, why are we reacting that way?

Well, we spend year upon year, in school, in newspapers, even in social media (with its “grammar Nazi” phenomenon), teaching people that there is a “correct” way of using language. We work hard to achieve this standard. Think of it as learning how to ride a bike. All your life, you’ve been told that you should sit on the bike in a certain way. It’s very uncomfortable, but you work and work and work to apply the right technique. When you’ve finally mastered the skill (and are feeling quite proud of yourself), someone comes along and tells you that you can sit on the bike anyway you want. Risk of you lashing out? Probably at least somewhat high.

But see, the thing is that, when it comes to language, there really is no “correct way”. Take the word “irregardless” for example. Many immediately get this kind of stone-faced expression and thunderously proclaim that there is no such word. But actually, there is. It’s a non-standard dialectal variant, used with a specific meaning and in specific contexts (in this particular case, irregardless is a way to shut a conversation down after already having said “regardless” in those varieties4, isn’t that interesting?).

But people think that there is somehow something “wrong” with this word, and those who use it (or other non-standard forms) will often be judged as speaking “bad English”, throwing more fuel on the fire for the myth of language decay. Especially since the older generations, for example, may retain their ideas about what is “correct” usage, while younger generations may have a different idea about what is “correct” and use the language in a different way.

So, what’s my point with all this? Well, my point is that the moment that a word from a non-standard dialect makes its way into the standard language, it’s going to raise some discussion about the “decay” of the language. This is really particularly true of the younger generations today who actually introduced a whole new form of language into their standard vocabulary: internet and/or texting slang!

This is fascinating! We’re introducing a new form of language! But… When young people start using, I don’t know, “brb”, “afk”, “lol”, etc. in their everyday speech, other people may condemn this as “lazy, uneducated, wrong”, etc., etc. and the myth of language decay rejuvenates.

But the thing is that languages change to match the times in which they exist. It may change due to political readjustments that have occurred or to reflect the different attitudes of the people. And sometimes, we can’t point to anything that made the language change – it simply did. Regardless, the language reflects its time, not a glorified past. And that is a good thing.

Unless, of course, you would perhaps prefer to remove most -ed past tense endings, especially on strong verbs, and go back to the good old days of ablaut (that is, vowel gradation carrying grammatical information, e.g. sing, sang, sung)? Or perhaps lower all your vowels again and skip the diphthongs? Or perhaps… yeah, you see where I’m going with this.

No? Didn’t think so. In that case, let’s celebrate the changes, both historical and current, without accusing them to somehow make the language worse.

Because, truly, the only difference between changes that made the language into the “glorious standard” of yesteryear and the changes that are happening now, is time.

Tune in to Rebekah’s post next week where she will explain the different periods of English and make it clear why Shakespeare did not write in Old English!

Bibliography

1 Check out the 5 oldest written languages recorded here.

2 Lloyd-Jones, Richard. 1976. “Is writing worse nowadays?”. University of Iowa Spectator. April 1976.
Quoted by Daniels, Harvey. 1983. Famous last words: The American language crisis revisited. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 33.

3Aitchison, Jean. 1997. The Language Web. Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.

4Check out Kory Stamper, a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster, explaining “irregardless” here.