How Latin has influenced the English language
Key words and false rules
Contrary to common assumption, Latin does not underpin the structure of the English language or its grammar. Essentially a Germanic language, English is built on Anglo Saxon foundations. Its core character was established long before the Romans arrived.
Where Latin has played a crucial role is in the evolution of the lexicon or vocabulary. The sheer volume of words with Greco-Latin roots has also been a key element in establishing the flexibility of English and its accessibility to speakers of other languages.
This is particularly evident with regard to French. There are 1,700 cognates (words identical in the French & English). This has eased the way to the former replacing the latter as the world’s lingua franca.
The Roman occupation of Britain in 43 AD initially had a limited linguistic impact on what was to become Old English. The Roman soldiers and officials introduced Latin as the language of government and administration but this had little penetration into the lives of native inhabitants.
Over time, Latin words and grammar were absorbed, including place names like London, Bath & Chester. Hierarchal structures also described with new words influenced by Latin ones. Pater became the English word “father”, while rex evolved into “king”.
Latin words were also used to describe new concepts and technologies introduced by the Romans: portus (port), via (road), and piscina (pool).
Christianisation
The arrival of Christian missionaries in the 6th and 7th centuries introduced significant numbers of Latin words into the lexicon. Latin was the shared language of the wider Christian world, though only a small minority had access to it.
All ceremonies, including the mass were conducted in Latin, a language that most English Catholics did not understand. Gradually, however, religious words like abbot, altar, apostle & candle came into common use.
But it was via theNorman invasion that Latin words entered English in large numbers. They did this through the Trojan horse of Norman French.
According to a computerised survey of about 80,000 English words see pie chart below, around 29% derive directly from Latin. About the same percentage, come via French words with Latin roots.
Linguists call words linked by subject and/or meaning semantic fields. In some of these Latin itself borrows heavily from classical Greek. Medicine is one striking example — words containing y (literally graeca in Latin) being one identifying feature.
The ecclesiastical aspect of Latin has not always been not good for business in the Anglo-sphere, or English speaking world. This was especially true during the turbulent two centuries following the Reformation.
“association with the Roman Catholic Church and England’s continental adversaries tended to undermine its previously unquestioned status as the language of learning” (Millward )
Latin was too deeply embedded in English language and life to be completely purged. Much like the Catholic church it (mostly) kept a low profile and, though always treated with suspicion, survived periods of feverish. No Popery.
With the rise of scientific learning, English continued to build an ever larger Latin word bank. For example the use of suffixes, such as -ology and -osis in words like gynaecology and psychosis may seem odd to those without a knowledge of the classical languages, but to someone in England, France, Germany, or Italy with a rudimentary knowledge of Latin and Greek could quickly decipher even newly invented words. source
During the 18th century scholars across Europe began adopting a more pragmatic approach to Latin, particularly in the sciences. The classical form of the language was progressively replaced by a “scientific and scholarly Neo-Latin…which allowed the incorporation of new terminology and new nomenclature” source
In the Anglo-sphere this coincided with an attempt to ‘tidy up’ English.
The standardisation of spelling was just one aspect of a more general attempt to regulate the language, an attempt especially prominent in the second half of the eighteenth century when there was a growing feeling that English needed to be ‘ruled’ or ‘regulated’, as classical Greek and Latin were believed to have been (Barber, 2000: 203). Swift wanted to protect English . . . to ‘fix’ language so that it no longer varied (Graddol, Leith and Swann 1996:157). source
Using words with obvious Latin and Greek roots distinguished their users from the poorer and less educated. One element of this gentrification was the imposition of grammatical rules, largely derived from Latin and so ill suited to an Anglo-Saxon language.
What would eventually termed BBC English a key indicators of social class. The English language has never had an academy but policing of ‘mistakes’ was codified in early 20th Century in H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
Such pedantry has fallen out of scholarly fashion. Linguists note that while English speakers may split infinitives they will instinctively avoid structural mistakes, like placing an adjective after a noun, the car red.
Ignore the scoffers, Captain Picard. You are free to boldly go wherever you like with your syntax.
