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Lost in Pronunciation: Where Do English Words Come From?
A brief journey on the history of English: its transition from being the language of Germanic tribes to what it is today.
English as we know it today is the result of its evolution as a Germanic language as well as of the romantic influence given by the Roman Empire first and later on through, mainly, French. That is to say, it would have had much more in common with languages such as German or Dutch, hadn’t it been for certain historical events that made this language sound a lot more like other Romance languages, which resulted in English being a delightful blend between two language families that are not at all related.
I think it is also interesting to note that on the same geographical regions where English developed, there coexisted another group of languages, very much differentiated from it: the Celtic languages (Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Bretton, Manx and Cornish) which, even though exerted some influence over English, they were hardly assimilated and prevail to this day. Some Celtic remnants, for instance, are -ing inflection in progressive tenses or the Do-periphrasis in questions like “Do you want this?”
I hope that exploring the changes undergone by this fascinating language (and especially the reasons why…
