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Conservapedia:History of the English Language
This is a point by point essay describing and correcting the errors riddling Andrew Schlafly's history lecture on the origins of the English language. Much of this is culled together from a discussion here, and represents the thoughts of several users. As with many things associated with Andrew Schlafly, it must be taken with several billion grains of salt as he has been known to have his own problems with the English language.
Conservapedia's Text | RationalWiki's Response |
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The development of the English language is divided into three periods": Old English (also called "Anglo-Saxon"), Middle English, and Modern English (which we speak today). Germanic tribes settled in England as long ago as about the time when the Roman empire fell, around A.D. 450. Old English developed and was used until shortly after the Norman conquest of 1066, when Latin began to cause improvements in Old English and it upgraded to medieval Middle English. Modern English is considered to have begun shortly after the end of the Middle Ages in 1500.. |
The history of the English language goes back much further to the time of Proto-Indo European and the development of the Germanic branch of the language family. Schlafly describes Latin as "improving" Old English and "upgrading" it to Middle English. The Normans did fundamentally alter the nature of English, but it is disingenuous to say that Latin caused English to change. Languages are not actors. They are passive. The bilingual French nobility and, perhaps more importantly, those serving the nobility yet still working in the "real world", were the ones who changed English. English did not "desire" to conform, it did what all languages do: became a mixture of the Latinate/Germanic interactions. Language does not "upgrade" like software. It takes generations to "upgrade" in the context he implies.Schlafly completely oversimplifies the influence of Latin on English, and either ignores or is unaware of the influence of Old French, the language of William the Conquerer and the Normans. He also presents the concept as if there were no Latin influence on English before 1066. The Norman conquest did have the greatest influx of Latinates into English, but this is hardly where it began. Latin's earliest influence on English would have been long before the Anglo-Saxon period. Roman trade and contact with Germanic tribes introduced several words, such "to cook" and probably the word "wine." Ecclesiastical Latin was the lingua franca of the Catholic Church, whose clergy were a large majority of the educated class in England long before the Normans arrived. Additionally, direct imports from Latin and Greek resumed as a result of the scientific revolution to lend an air of dignity to new scientific and technological discoveries. Other languages had important influences on English, long before Norman French. The first would have been Celtic Britain's indigenous Celtic languages. Columbia University linguist John McWhorter argues that English's unique use of the verb "do" as an a supporting verb |
A good dictionary will provide a date of origin of a word, and old dates are "13c" or A.D. 1200. For example, the date of first use of the word "chase", meaning "the hunting of wild animals," is listed by Merriam-Webster dictionary as "13c". More modern words, such as "homeschool", have more recent dates of first use, such as 1980 the case of "homeschool".One can spend hours enjoyable learning about the history of human thought simply by looking at when words were first created for important concepts. For example, by looking up the word "tyranny" in the dictionary we see that it was developed in the 14th century (1300s), which was about the time that feudalism was being replaced by nation-states in England and France. There would have been no concept of "tyranny" under feudalism before that time. One can piece together much of English history simply by reading a dictionary! |
At best this section is questionable; at worst, naïve. Schlafly does not mention--and perhaps does not even understand--that Merriam-Webster is referring to the first recorded use of a word. Even then, dating a word is significantly more complicated. In order to date the modern form of a word entering a language, linguists look at the pattern of change the word has gone through over time. Any given word will have had myriad of intermediary forms and dialectical variations as it moved through a language, or from one to another. "Chase", for example: "1297, from [Old French] chacier "to catch, seize," from [Vulgar Latin] *captiare..."[1]Schlafly also fails to mention that the phonology of English is significantly different today than it was in the Middle Ages. The Great Vowel Shift In Schlafly's view, a concept does not exist unless one can put a word to it. Before we deconstruct this concept, it should be noted that Schlafly is completely wrong about the concept of tyranny not existing prior to the adoption of the word "tyranny": the Old English word for this was nýdgeweald.[2] Schlafly does not understand that there could be an older, different term for a word, replaced by a "modern" one. Even if he were correct that there was no specific word for "tyranny" before the rise of the nation states, he does not provide any evidence that "There would have been no concept of 'tyranny' under feudalism." For example, the aforementioned verb "to cook" comes from Latin's coquere[3]and was introduced into the Germanic languages around the time that they were beginning to separate from each other. By Andy's logic this would mean that the Germanic tribes lacked an idea of cooking their food until they met the Romans. |
The oldest dates or origin are for numbers. The number "six", for example, is listed as having an origin of "bef. 12c," which means before A.D. 1100. That places the date of first use of simple numbers as before Middle English, and originating with Old English. |
If we are charitable--that is, assume that Schlafly means that the current words for simple numbers have the oldest origination date, and therefore have remained unchanged the longest---then it is unclear what Schlafly's point here even is. Why is this significant at all? It may well be, but he has not justified its inclusion in the least. In fact, Schlafly really has no idea about the chronology of language -- in fact, there are a few words in English that are even more recognizable than the cardinal numbers; in reconstructed form, "apple" (PIE *h2ebeli-) has had only minor sound changes in perhaps as long as ten thousand years. Cardinal numbers are much older than the thirteenth century and are relatively conservative across the IE languages. "Six" comes from the PIE *s(w)eks, which thanks to various sound change laws, became *seks in proto-Germanic, sas in Sanskrit, hex in Greek, sex in Latin (Spanish seis, Italian sei), Old Church Slavonic sesti (Russian шесть "shest"), amongst others.[4] However, if we take the meaning of this passage at face value, and recall the above comments on the word "tyranny", then we are left to assume that Schlafly believes the early Anglo-Saxons had no concept of simple numbers until they had words for them (note wording of the phrase "first use of simple numbers"), and that these words were simply developed in the aether of their imaginations. This is demonstrably false. The English words for numbers are derived from Proto-Germanic (compare English "one, two, three, four" with German "ein, zwei, drei, vier"), and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European. They came to their present forms in the same way the Romance Languages came from Latin. |
More generally, the study of the origin of a word is known as "etymology". Some even specialize in the field of "linguistics", which includes all aspects of languages. Beware, however, distortions in the field by those who insist that all languages are equal. They also claim that all religions are equal in truth or value, and that is no more true for religion than it is for languages. Every language has advantages or disadvantages, and the path of world history is in some ways the triumph of superior languages over inferior ones. |
While Schlafly's comment that all languages have advantages or disadvantages might be accepted without comment by linguists, what he implies is that those differences make languages better than others, rather than just different. He neither defines so-called "superior" and "inferior" languages, nor does he explain why his linguistic social Darwinism is relevant to a discussion on the history of English. He also does not provide any examples of how English functions differently from other languages, nor where and how history could possibly be related to this linguistic superiority. Linguists would suggest, for example, that English is "better" at absorbing new words into the lexicon, and that it has for this reason become more precise as codification and relies less on context (making it a "better" language for scientific descriptions, perhaps). Japanese, on the other hand, codifies significantly less and relies far more on context, making word play easier, and giving poetry and written art a dimension English cannot have. Despite this, Shakespeare "managed" with the "limitations" of English, and Japan has no lack of technical minded engineers. Ultimately, all languages must, in some way, be able to convey the needs of the speakers, or the language will change to adapt to those needs. |
Old and Middle English: We cannot even understand Old English today, and it was somewhat primitive even when it was spoken. Here is an example that concerns an early attempt by Pope Gregory to convert the Norman-Saxons to Christianity:
Some simple pronouns like "he" are recognizable, as are the Old English equivalents of verbs like "were". Here is what that passage means, according to Merriam-Webster:
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Schlafly seems to assert that Anglo-Saxon was "primitive" because it did not have enough Latin words. It is true that with the importation of words from Latin, English gained more precision--but this does not mean that Latin had that precision. It did not. Nor does this imply an improvement. It does not. When a generic Latinate word is imported into a language that already has a word with the same meaning, the Latinate often becomes a specialized word. For example, chaise is simply "chair" in French, but in English a chaise is a very specific kind of chair. Also, imported legalistic, religious, and scientific terms from Latin, French, Italian, and Greek are "recodified" to mean particular terms within the English language. The source languages were not "better" for having a word like "octa" (eight) and "pous" (foot), and the "eight foot creature" is hardly a "technical, 2 dollar, non-primitive term" in the source language.While some Old English words have been almost completely displaced by their Romance counterparts most English's vocabulary is Germanic. The Swadesh list |
[Past this point Schlafly goes on a tangent about the English theologian, John Wycliffe. The following section is a few paragraphs further along.]Shakespeare, the greatest playwright in world history, wrote in English around 1600. He used modern English, but the language has changed much in 400 years since then. His language was easily understood then, but some parts are difficult to understand today. The term "copyright" did not exist yet, and Shakespeare never published any of his plays in writing because he had no legal protection against someone copying his work; all his works were written and preserved after he died. Here is the beginning of Mark Antony's famous speech in Shakespeare's famous play, Julius Caesar: [Schlafly proceeds to quote, in full, Marc Anthony's speech from the top of Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.] By the end of this famous speech Marc Antony had turned the crowd in favor of Caesar and against his murderer, Brutus. |
Schlafly is partially correct. Many linguists categorize Shakespeare as a speaker and author of what's known as Early Modern English![]() |
See also[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chase
- ↑ New to Old English
- ↑ https://www.etymonline.com/word/cook#etymonline_v_19040
- ↑ https://www.etymonline.com/word/six#etymonline_v_23585
- ↑ Publishing Shakespeare, Folger Shakespeare Library
- ↑ Shakespeare's First Folio, British Library
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Copyright.