Four Minute Discussion of Nature and History of Our Language

To understand and appreciate English, one must first and foremost appreciate the fact that the English language is a polyglot p-o-l-y-g-l-o-t, a wonderful combination of many languages. The language we call English was originally a German dialect and is still Germanic in its structure. The words themselves, however, come from many sources.

As a result of exchanges with other cultures, ranging from war and conquest to trade and commerce to works of literature, we have borrowed widely. In fact, we have procured so many words from Latin, either directly or through French as an intermediary, that we would be far more accurate to describe English as Anglo-Latin, rather than Anglo-Saxon.

English also borrowed many words from Greek, especially in the fields of science and technology, as you will notice in the three Greek gifts entries.

A few modern English words are of Celtic or Celtic (pronounced Seltic) origin surviving from the language of the so-called barbaric people called kelts who inhabited Britain before the coming of the Romans in 2nd century AD. A few other words such as camp, street, and mile where left by the Romans themselves. When the Angles (Nordic group) and the Saxons (Germanic group) overran the land in the 5th century they incorporated into their own language certain Celtic and Latin words that survive today. Subsequent Scandinavian, that is Viking invasions, added many more words to the English tongue.

The most significant and permanent changes were yet to come however. When the Normans conquered England in 1066 AD English was principally Germanic with as we have noted a few Celtic words and some Latin words. The Normans brought with them their French tongue, which was actually only a Latin dialect. Neither language was able to absorb the other and for several hundred years the language of the ruling class was Norman, while the language of the working class was Anglo-Saxon. In time, however the two became joined into one. As a result the grammar was greatly simplified, believe it or not Old English had an even more bewildering grammar than does Modern English, and in many cases there came to be two different words with the same meaning. A plain Anglo-Saxon word such as pig or calf and a ritzy Norman word such as Pork or veal.

Through the ages English has been continually enriched by the addition of new words. The result is a complex language with depth and breadth. Our language can exhibit all the lilt and charm of the Romance languages all the precision and gusto of the Northern European group and all of the versatility and adaptability of Greek and Latin. The result of all this blending is a unique and potent language.

this is from Million Dollar Vocabulary by Dr. J. Michael Bennett