Well, the book I have chosen is “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English” by John McWhorter. The introduction, I have to say is amazing; I think it is the first time that an author catches my attention so quickly. Well the book how you can assume is about the history of English, something that at first sight I thought was going to be kind of boring but let me tell you, I was totally wrong. This guy’s writing style is awesome, very interesting, understandable and funny. He makes you, the reader, feel extremely comfortable, as if you were just talking to a friend, and not a linguist. However, there are some exceptions, in where Mr. McWhorter just throws the weirdest words and makes you run for a dictionary, but anyways I am enjoying it and getting used to it.
So far I have only read the introduction and up to page number 20. But I have already learned so much from it, and not only about English, but about every language in general. I learned so far, that invasions were basically the founders of languages, since these very early empires started spreading their native languages to every place they would conquer. But most interesting, is the mutation that these imposed languages suffered with time in such places, since the conquered people would mix their old language with the one brought by the conquerors. Such was the case of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion to Britain, in where according to McWhorter their Old English got mixed with the native Celtic languages Welsh and Cornish, giving birth to some of the aspects of Modern English, such as the “meaningless do” and the “-ing thing” for present actions, which make English so different from its other relatives Germanic-Languages (which are the languages originated from Proto-Germanic, the original source or root of languages such as German, Dutch, Yiddish, Norwegian etc… ). These two properties (meaningless do and –ing ending) are very important, because they are the ones that make English’s grammar, structure and everything about it, one of the weirdest languages in our planet.
I thought the same thing when I was reading my research book! When I first started to read it I thought it would be very complex, though, like your book the authors talk to the reader like average people, not ones with a lot of linguistic knowledge. I thought it was very interesting that english did not just appear out of thin air, as I previously thought, but was actually the product of celtic, welsh and cornish. I thought celtic was just a dance irish people did to be honest. I'm excited to learn more about how your book describes the unique colorful history of english, so maybe i'll appreciate it a little more!
ReplyDeleteHi Jonathan, very interesting, now after reading your explanation i get to understand a little bit more about the history of language, something i was never really interesting in honestly, and all the craziness that went on in the past and how languages got mixed up and other languages were created. And yes i do agree that English is one of the weirdest languages!
ReplyDeleteHi Cosette, just like in your case, my book is also very specific and focuses in specific things which the author goes very deep in. obviously in my book the author does not talk about our minds and how they create language like in yours, but rather he focuses in the features of “do” and “-ing” which make English so different from any other Germanic language. It is very interesting that u said “English did not just appear out of thin air, as I previously thought, but was actually the product of celtic, welsh and cornish.” Because believe it or not there are many other Linguists that actually believe that these languages that you just mentioned did not have any impact or influence on English at all. So McWhorter goes on and shows us some of the theories that have led such Linguists to think in this way, however, strongly stating that they are all wrong. For example, the first according to him “wrong assumption” is “The Celts All Just Died” this theory is based on a believe that in the 4th century, when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes arrived in England they just exterminated every single Celt from the area, or if not every single one, just enough to at least make their cultural features go extinct. Therefore, they just think that the huge similarity between our Modern English, Celtic, Welsh and Cornish are just coincidence. Obviously this is a theory that McWhorter totally disregards, since there are many ways in which we can prove that the Celts were not all killed, in fact there is enough proof to show that they were vast in numbers and, that they were socially active… I’m looking forward to read more of the book and to keep sharing it with you guys.
ReplyDeleteHi Carolina,i am glad that my summary helped you in understanding the history of language, which just like you, I also think is very interesting.
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