English Is The World’s Language
I’ve always been fascinated by words and their derivation.
I’ve been reading about the history of our language and how it’s developed through the dialects of invading tribes from Northern Europe*. The occupying Romans added to that as did the French after the Norman conquest when their language was spoken here for about three centuries**.
Throughout history we have borrowed and combined words with English from other languages and continue to do so right up to the present day.
I ‘borrowed’ the idea of the following and dedicate it to those people who proudly say, ‘I can’t speak any foreign languages.’
Derivations are shown in brackets (or parentheses, to use a Greek word).
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TIME FOR BREAKFAST (Compound of two English words)
You might start with grapefruit (Compound of two French words), or an orange (Arabic) or melon (French from Greek), or a cantaloupe (after an Italian town).
Next you move on to cereal (Latin after the Roman Goddess of agriculture) or porridge (from French pottage).
Your Full English Breakfast would have bacon (French) and eggs (Scandinavian), bread (Old English and Scandinavian) and butter (English from Latin), toast (French) and marmalade (Portuguese via French), served on a plate (French).
All this accompanied by tea (Chinese via Malayan Dutch), or coffee (Arabic), or cocoa (Spanish-Mexican) using a cup (English from Latin), and a saucer (French).
You’ve been sitting at a table (French) with a table-cloth (compound of French and English), using a napkin (French and English) or serviette (French), on a chair (French) eating with a knife (English), fork (English from Latin) and spoon (English).
After the meal (English) you leave the room to light a cigarette (Spanish) with a match (French), before catching a bus (Latin) to work.
In this most English of pastimes, you’ve ranged from Roman Mythology to Arabic, from the Romance languages of French, Spanish and Portuguese to the Teutonic, Scandinavian and Low German tongues, all overlaid on English or Anglo-Saxon.
In all senses English is the world’s language.
***
*For convenience, we group together the result as Old English.
**The blending of Old English with French became known as Middle English, developing over the next few hundred years into what was classified as Early Modern English.
What we speak today is known as Late Modern English or, as some people prefer, Gibberish or Rubbish. Not me!
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