why is english so different?
At first glance, English may not seem like a Germanic language (like German or Dutch) due to its heavy influence from French, Latin, Greek, and more: in fact, only 26% of English words are Germanic. In the modern age, this definitely makes learning Romance languages much easier, but how did this change come to be?
It all starts in 1066, when William the Conquerer of Normandy, France invaded England. Originally from Scandinavia, the Normans assimilated with the local French culture after settling off the coast in the 8th century, speaking their language and following their traditions. After the invasion of England, they brought this Norman French (NF) influence to English, where our story begins.
Before the Invasion
Before the Norman Invasion of 1066, Old English (OE) was the primary language spoken in England, with many dialects spread across the island. It was characteristically Germanic, with a complex system of grammar and properly Germanic vocabulary (for more info, see my blogpost on Old English).
Take the sample sentence below, meaning “I am a queen and we eat pork”:
Iċ eom cwēn and wē etaþ flǣsċ
This literally translates to “I am queen and we eat flesh,” as there was no word for “pork” at the time and Old English speakers generally used “flesh” to represent meat. Additionally, notice the lack of an indefinite article (a / an), another common feature of Old English.
Old English conjugation was also much different before the invasion. Unlike modern English, which lacks a wide variety of conjugation, Old English conjugated for individual persons. Additionaly, it had multiple classes of verbs, including strong and weak classes. See the following conjugation table for “etan” (to eat):
From this, it’s clear how “eat” becomes “ate” in the past tense in Modern English, but where did most of these conjugations go?
Enter the Normans.
After the Invasion
Immediately after the invasion, which came with a change in leadership as well, Norman French became the language of court and elite, while Old English was still spoken by the common people. This caused most of the terms in higher society to be changed to French-based words immediately. However, in typical linguistic fashion (as French was seen as a more prestigious language), the common people began adopting Norman French words and Norman scholars began changing the orthography of English.
This led to the shift into Middle English (ME), characterized by a large expansion of vocabulary and simplification of grammar. Words in the fields of government, art, law, literature, religion and food grew significantly, and the verb classes, suffixes, and free word order saw great change as well.
Take the same sentence from before, but in Middle English:
I am a quene and we eten pork
Immediately, it looks much more similar to what we see today, and could even be mistaken for a couple of typos.
From the Old English sentence, some main things have changed. There is now a word for “pork,” a word borrowed from NF “porc” (Latin “porcus”). Prior to the invasion, if “flǣsċ” wasn’t used, Old English speakers would typically say the name of the animal itself to describe the food (in this case, “pig”). However, as the elite ate “pork,” not “pig,” the loanword became more popular to refer to the food, whereas the native word came to mean the animal itself. This happened to other foods as well, such as “beef” (NF “boef”) and “poultry” (NF “pouleterie”).
Grammatically, there are some changes present as well. Visibly, there is now an indefinite pronoun before “quene.” However, another (in this case) invisible change occured as well. In Old English, there was a complex system of noun cases that changed according to grammatical gender, strength, and other factors. In the prior sentence, “flǣsċ” is a neuter noun that follows a general pattern of nominative and accusative having the same form, meaning it was technically in the accusative case in that example. In Middle English, however, most cases were lost or simplified to only a few endings: for this reason, ME “pork” is not in the accusative. Since there was now a lack of noun cases, free word order was much less possible, and the English word order became much more fixed into what we see today.
There was also a small orthographical change as well: the change from OE “cwen” to ME “quene.” This is a clear product of French influence, specifically the usage of “qu” to represent the “kw” sound.
Obviously, these are only a few of the changes that occurred with the Norman Invasion, and the change from Old to Middle English did not happen overnight. Understanding the influence that these Normans had on English is vital to understanding why English is the way it is today: centuries of linguistics influence are preserved, making it a gateway into the past. I just think it’s funny considering the beef (or cow as they said in OE) that the English have with the French today :)
