Thank you, Alyssa, in portraying how English came to be. I still see English as a Germanic language, but one that involves scratching one’s head a lot. The English dictionary placed next to dictionaries of other languages tends to be two to three times bigger.
The curious thing for me is not that English has incorporated so many words from other languages, or that it restructured its syntax, but that the vowels are so different. In most European languages ABC is pronounced more or less the same way, where in English the sound of the vowels is warped. The English “A” sounds very much like the “E” pronounced in the other European languages, and the English “E” is exactly the same in sound as the “I” in other European languages.
My explanation for this phenomenon is a linguistic wagging the dog.
On mainland Europe, the upper crust may have had a hot potato in their mouths while speaking, but this was not followed by anyone else. Contrast this with England where the English upper crust hot potato was followed by the other classes in all ways things are pronounced. At least, that’s the claim: the leaders in society caused English to have different vowel sounds.
Also, using ‘expensive’ words can be something that the rich and the upper crust like to do. Latin is of course a good source for using foreign words others may not understand immediately. But, again in England, the entire population followed suit and as a result many more Latin words made it into English than into the other European languages. The ‘English’ background of having switched languages several times in their history may have contributed to the easy pursuit of using new words.
On the mainland, the language is according to this explanation more anchored with all people, resisting change from the upper crust, while in England the sway of the top (or the middle-top) was all-encompassing and therefore followed. The linguistic anchor did not exist to the same extent it exists in other European languages. Compared to other European nations, the English culture is still heavily based on class, the distinctions are still being pursuit. Wagging the dog may particularly occur in Anglo nations.
I think the competitive nature, the limited geography, the linguistic history, and the desire by the rich to be somehow removed from the ‘boorish people’ who were nevertheless able to quickly follow that example, all played their roles in making English an exceptional language among the European languages.
More about the English language in this article Merry Crissmas.
