I’m currently reading the book, “Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way,” by Bll Bryson.
Pretty much confirms what you said.
In fact, at one time, French was the official language of England.
King George I, spoke German and French, but little English.
Jim
I would be interested in reading that book. Might clear some things up for me. One other thing I read, and which I found interesting, is that English has three “modes” of speaking. One is more heavily latinate, which people tend to use when they are talking about scientific or technical things. Another is heavily Frenchified, which is prevalent in business. The third is heavily Teutonic, which tends to be the language of hearth, home and very casual conversation.
Three times I have asked extremely good Spanish translators, whose first language was not English, how much of a “mixed” conversation they really understand. (e.g., the conversation at a break in a business meeting, which jumps from business to sports to kids, women, or whatever) and their answer is always “about 2/3 to 3/4”. The “Anglo-Saxon” part is the part with which they are least familiar. And it isn’t just the words. It’s also the fact that there are many ways of saying almost everything, each with a slightly different nuance of meaning. In some places, particularly in the South and in border areas, people might jump from a “city” way of informal speaking to a very different “country” way of speaking, and back again, just depending on the context and the nature of the hearers. To add to it, where I live at least, there are several “country” ways of speaking.
There are, evidently, also certain “literary forms” in English that are different. I read a statement by a man who writes very popular novels in Spanish. A native of Argentina, his grandmother was English and he attended Oxford, so he is very good at both languages. He cited Kipling’s “Harp Song of the Dane Women” as an example of an English poem that couldn’t be translated into Spanish without simply turning it into a bumpy descriptive essay. The reason was that, in addition to the use of a lot of Anglo-Saxon words, it is written in a sort of “Scandinavian mode” that is intelligible to English speakers but not to Spanish speakers. Kipling, of course, wanted the poem to have a recognizably Scandinavian “ring” to it. You can do that in English (likely in any Teutonic language) and it makes perfect sense, but evidently you just can’t do the same thing in Spanish.
That’s not to say no other language has literary forms to it, but when one approaches any language with different “modes” of speaking, they don’t necessarily translate well into any other language. I think the irregular nature of English makes it a tough language to learn really well if you aren’t born into it.
Interesting.
), kids went after their school day to “Greek school” and “Hebrew school”. There they were taught the languages in which their parents wanted them to be proficient. It was not considered that the public schools should be teaching these languages, along with their culture.
Had it not been for “the land of the free”, you would probably be speaking German or Russian right now…exclusively.
Many of us may be of European origin and still have an affection for Europe, but we have our own sacred cows just as you do and “land of the free” is one of them.