Posted by 79 at 7:54pm Nov 30 '12(title comes from an actual newspaper advert in the late 1700s/early 1800s where a man was offering classes in, you guessed it, english "writting and spilling".)
(post was in response to [private] over on the random board, but i got a little carried away and so put it here.)
half latin, half germanic, and another half blatantly stolen words from nearly every single other language.
and i'm not aware of any other language with so much regional variation. an englishman can tell where in england a given speaker is from - same for americans here. if you're good enough, you can tell which part of a city someone is from.
most americans don't notice my accent much at all, but both my sister and i have also been asked - by americans, while in the continental US - which country we're from. plus, there's are a whole book's worth of words which are region-specific. what i call "soda" is known here [midwest] as "pop". other places it's "cola" or "coke".
as far as i'm aware, a lot of the spelling and weird pronunciation is a result of english not really being a standard "written" language until a couple centuries ago. it wasn't until very recently that spelling was standardized - but the damage was already done. early writers of the english language used the latin alphabet and just made it up.
examples of the earliest english language literature:
Oure Hooste saugh wel that the brighte sonne
[Our Host saw well that the bright sun]
The ark of his artificial day hath ronne
[The arc of his twelve-hour day has run]
The ferthe part, and half an houre and moore,
[One fourth, and half an hour and more,]
And though he were not depe ystert in loore,
[And though he was not far advanced in learning,]
He wiste it was the eightetethe day
[He knew it was the eighteenth day]
Of Aprill, that is messager to May;
[Of April, that is messenger to May;]
And saugh wel that the shadwe of every tree
[And saw well that the [private] of every tree]
Was in lengthe the same quantitee
[Was in length the same quantity]
That was the body erect that caused it.
[As was the erect body that caused it.]
And therefore by the shadwe he took his wit
[And therefore by the [private] he judged]
That Phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte,
[That Phoebus, which shone so clear and bright,]
Degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte,
[Five and forty degrees had climbed on height,]
And for that day, as in that latitude,
[And for that day, in that latitude,]
It was ten of the clokke, he gan conclude,
[It was ten o'clock, he did conclude,]
And sodeynly he plighte his horse aboute.
[And suddenly he pulled his horse about.]
-Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, later 14th century
underlined:
though/though - thought that interesting
body erect/erect body - almost always, the adjectives in english come before the noun. but the archaic structure is still used, although sparingly - and never in technical writing.
degrees - also unchanged
"And....Latitude" - nearly spot-on. some of this stuff survived, but the bits that did are pretty rare, and accents through everything off
"of the clokke" - no one ever says this, and i've never seen it used even as a literary device. but o' clock is the straight abbreviation. we just tend not to think of it as a contraction, ever.
/physicist excited about his first lit class in a decade next term
(post was in response to [private] over on the random board, but i got a little carried away and so put it here.)
half latin, half germanic, and another half blatantly stolen words from nearly every single other language.
and i'm not aware of any other language with so much regional variation. an englishman can tell where in england a given speaker is from - same for americans here. if you're good enough, you can tell which part of a city someone is from.
most americans don't notice my accent much at all, but both my sister and i have also been asked - by americans, while in the continental US - which country we're from. plus, there's are a whole book's worth of words which are region-specific. what i call "soda" is known here [midwest] as "pop". other places it's "cola" or "coke".
as far as i'm aware, a lot of the spelling and weird pronunciation is a result of english not really being a standard "written" language until a couple centuries ago. it wasn't until very recently that spelling was standardized - but the damage was already done. early writers of the english language used the latin alphabet and just made it up.
examples of the earliest english language literature:
Oure Hooste saugh wel that the brighte sonne
[Our Host saw well that the bright sun]
The ark of his artificial day hath ronne
[The arc of his twelve-hour day has run]
The ferthe part, and half an houre and moore,
[One fourth, and half an hour and more,]
And though he were not depe ystert in loore,
[And though he was not far advanced in learning,]
He wiste it was the eightetethe day
[He knew it was the eighteenth day]
Of Aprill, that is messager to May;
[Of April, that is messenger to May;]
And saugh wel that the shadwe of every tree
[And saw well that the [private] of every tree]
Was in lengthe the same quantitee
[Was in length the same quantity]
That was the body erect that caused it.
[As was the erect body that caused it.]
And therefore by the shadwe he took his wit
[And therefore by the [private] he judged]
That Phebus, which that shoon so clere and brighte,
[That Phoebus, which shone so clear and bright,]
Degrees was fyve and fourty clombe on highte,
[Five and forty degrees had climbed on height,]
And for that day, as in that latitude,
[And for that day, in that latitude,]
It was ten of the clokke, he gan conclude,
[It was ten o'clock, he did conclude,]
And sodeynly he plighte his horse aboute.
[And suddenly he pulled his horse about.]
-Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, later 14th century
underlined:
though/though - thought that interesting
body erect/erect body - almost always, the adjectives in english come before the noun. but the archaic structure is still used, although sparingly - and never in technical writing.
degrees - also unchanged
"And....Latitude" - nearly spot-on. some of this stuff survived, but the bits that did are pretty rare, and accents through everything off
"of the clokke" - no one ever says this, and i've never seen it used even as a literary device. but o' clock is the straight abbreviation. we just tend not to think of it as a contraction, ever.
/physicist excited about his first lit class in a decade next term