This is our very first post of the year! Isn’t that wonderful – a new year of language fun!

Today, we’ll be visiting merry old England and “ye olde” – specifically, we’ll be looking at one little word there: “ye”.

You’ve probably seen it around, right? On pubs, restaurants, mills… The list can go on. But what if we told you, that this “ye” is based on a centuries-old confusion of two letters?

It’s true! The “ye” of “ye olde”, used to suggest a ‘merry, old time, showed up during the late 18th century and  hails from a scribal abbreviation used during Middle English and early Modern English.

However, let us be clear: the scribal abbreviation was not (as far as we know) pronounced “ye”. In fact, it was actually pronounced as…

“the”! Not as much fun as you expected? And now, you’re probably sitting there, wondering how the h*ck that happened, right? Well, during Middle English, and for a little while during early Modern English, English had a letter called thorn. Thorn was originally a rune, pronounced as either a voiceless or voiced dental fricative, that is [θ] or [ð]. Today, you find these sounds in words like “thing” (British English [θɪŋ]) and “the” (British English [ðə]). In writing, though, it looked like this: þ.

Now, for a rather long period of time, in cursive writing, it was common for scribes to write  “the” by using thorn with an <e> placed above it, like this:

Okay, so you know that this is actually a thorn with an <e> above it, so you know that this is a “the”. But see the very thin line at the top of the thorn below the <e>? This line is not always visible in the manuscripts: perhaps it was sometimes not written or perhaps time has taken it from us. Point is: occasionally, it may be exceedingly difficult to determine whether a letter is a thorn or a y. And someone kinda messed up and said that this, this little abbreviation, is spelled “ye” in modern English, and the mistake stuck!

So do like the HLC and smile a bit the next time you pass a “ye olde pub”, knowing that they have decided to print a huge spelling mistake on their wall.

Enjoy the knowledge and welcome back to the HLC!

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“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)!

The post The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis appeared first on The Historical Linguist Channel.

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

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

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:

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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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”.

The post Written “language”? appeared first on The Historical Linguist Channel.

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.

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