The Untold Story of English, “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue”

The real story of English is about what happened when Old English was battered by Vikings and bastardized by Celts. The real story… shows us how English is genuinely weird — miscegenated, abbreviated. Interesting.

- John McWhorter, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

I also am a daughter of the colony.
I share their broken speech, their other-whereness.

No testament or craft of mine can hide
our presence
on the distaff side of history.

- Eavan Boland, “Daughters of Colony”

The real story of any language is determined by how it is most widely used, not how it is supposed to be used. It’s in common usage that the glorious drama of a language is played out. The history of language is thus in fact most shaped by the underclasses who speak and tweak it most, not those few who access it at the highest levels of class and culture. The story of English in particular has been “written” as much or more by those countless millions of illiterate and semi-literate common folk down the ages who left no written record than by those few who did.