Comments for The Historical Linguist Channel

Comment on The History of the English language – Old English morphology by Shaped by Conquest and Culture – the Evolution of the English Language – The Martin Pollins Blog

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 14:02:50 +0000

[…] Simplification The simplification of Old English morphology, such as the erosion of inflectional endings, has been partially attributed to the influence of […]

Comment on The myth of language decay: Do youths really not know how to speak? by noah johnson

noah johnson — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 21:55:29 +0000

i like to point out how language change is not decay by saying that the language of Cicero “decayed” for over a thousand years and became the language of Dante; similarly, the language of Beowulf “decayed” for over a thousand years and it came out of the process as the language of Shakespear

Comment on Do you do ‘do’, or don’t you? by Paola Tayvah

Paola Tayvah — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:32:07 +0000

Comment on Fun Etymology Tuesday – Concert by George

George — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 02:54:34 +0000

I’ve always liked the meaning of words, having taken Latin in high school.

Comment on American English – The language of Shakespeare? by 11 Surprising Facts About Living in the US No one Tells you

11 Surprising Facts About Living in the US No one Tells you — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 01:59:24 +0000

[…] Image from The Historical Linguist Channel […]

Comment on ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟ ᛞᛖᚫᚱ ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹᛖᚱᛋ! by Lilly

Lilly — Thu, 05 May 2022 14:47:50 +0000

Thank you so much I had the hardest time finding some of the letters.

Comment on Is English a Romance language? On language families and relationships by The Easiest Languages to Learn for English Speakers - Rosetta Stone

The Easiest Languages to Learn for English Speakers - Rosetta Stone — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 22:35:08 +0000

[…] and you’ll find words with Latin roots on every page. You can dive into the historical details here, but the important thing is that this isn’t just a cool coincidence—it’s an immensely useful […]

Comment on They, them and their(s) – the non-English pronouns by Mike

Mike — Tue, 04 May 2021 22:57:29 +0000

Not sure I fully agree here, all pronouns are difficult to change and most basic words of English such as egg, eye, husband etc would have been used in Old English replacing certain Old English words with Old Nose but not replacing others of equal value would he extremely strange and why only certain basic words? A more plausible explanation is Northern and Midland English used different pronouns and words and actually the North and Midlands did in their dialects with ‘Arun’ used as opposed to Southern English for ‘to be’ which became ‘are’ not used in the south. This is found also in Northern dialects before Vikings were there after all little in northern and Midland dialects were written down. So assuming these come from Old Norse may not be true and northern and midland English already had unique dialectual features from a proto Scandinavian form of English in north rather than to do with Vikings per se. In fact English identity is strongest where Angles were.

Comment on ᚺᛖᛚᛚᛟ ᛞᛖᚫᚱ ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹᛖᚱᛋ! by Kevin R

Kevin R — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:16:10 +0000

Thanks for sharing this lecture on the internet. Runes are BIG interest of mine. I learned a lot in this post and have printed a copy for my file.

Comment on “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” by MichelleKGross

MichelleKGross — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:23:41 +0000

Lisa–
Go back in time to ponder the significance of the language of the original quote. If Yiddish were a language and did have an army, then the army could protect its speakers from antisemitism. The folks in the room were all Jews who could laugh at the irony underlying the words. Remember that this was an utterance at a gathering, reported only in recollection, not having been written down. You could say that Yiddish is a dialect of archaic German or you could say that German is a modernized dialect of Yiddish, but only one of those two observations will help you predict who has the army and who does not.