History
Book Club
The
History of Languages
Wednesday,
June 27, 2018
Wednesday,
June 27, 2018: The History of Languages. Can you understand the
English spoken by Chaucer? [WHAN that
Aprille with his shoures soote; The droghte
of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour,]
Choose any language and learn how it grew from its ancient roots, how it
absorbed other languages, how it spread, and its variations in use in the world
today. Did you know that only one in 40 Italians spoke Italian in 1861? What language is most widely spoken in the
world today? How are languages changing in modern times? *[Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Bryson, Bill, The Mother
Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc. 2001.
Bill Bryson was born
in Des Moines, IA in 1951. He attended Drake University but dropped out after
two years and went backpacking in Europe. He got a job at a psychiatric
hospital in England, where he met a nurse there. They married and returned to
Des Moines, where he completed his bachelor’s degree at Drake. Then the couple
returned to England where they have lived since. He has written several books, worked as a
journalist and educator.
Bryson starts his
story of the English language with the Cro-Magnons and their cave drawings,
then came the Basques and their language Euskara, which pre-dates the Neolithic
languages spoken in Stone Age Europe.
Those were the days
of the Indo-Europeans, but Bryson suggests that there may never have been such
a language. At any rate, it branched into Celtic, Germanic, Greek,
Indo-Iranian, Slavonic and Thraco-Illyrian, which further branched to Latin,
Faroese, Parthian, Armenian, Hindi, Lithuanian, Sanskrit and Portuguese.
From the Germanic
branch came English, Frisian, Flemish, and Dutch. He devotes a chapter to the First Thousand Years, which I think is
the heart of the story of the English language.
Today in Schleswig-Holstein,
where Germany connects to Denmark, even today you can hear people talking in
what sounds like a lost dialect of English. “Veather ist cold” and “What ist de
clock?” According to a professor of German at nearby Kiel University, this is
very close to the way people spoke in Britain 1000 years ago. This area of
Germany, called Angeln, was once the
home of the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who crossed the North Sea to
displace the native Celts.
Nearby, in marshy
northern Holland and western Germany live a group whose dialect is even more
closely related to English. These are the Frisians. In about 450 A.D., following the withdrawal
of Roman troops from Britain, these Angles and Frisians, as well as Saxons and
Jutes, began an exodus to England. They dominated most of the British Isles, except
for Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, which remained Celtic strongholds.
Although the new
nation was dominated by the Saxons, it became known as England, after the
Angles. These early tribes were functionally illiterate, so there is no written
account of this period.
It must have been a
blow to the Celts, overrun by primitive, unlettered warriors, because they were
far more literate, sophisticated people.
For the next several
centuries, what was to become the English language grew, swallowing up Celtic,
Angle, Saxon languages, and then adding Norman, and French… then discarding
loads of words, but steadily adding Latin, French and Scandinavian words.
Shakespeare came along and single-handedly added thousands of words, like: barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental,
castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, and many
more. Other bright lights of England,
like Ben Jonson, Thomas More and Isaac Newton, added more.
At this point Bryson
notes how many languages have similar words, like bruder in German, biradar
in Farsi, bhrata in Sanskrit, bhrathair in Gaelic, all meaning brother in English.
Over 300 million
people speak English in some fashion, and it seems as if all the rest of the
world wish they spoke English. English
has invaded other languages mercilessly.
For years the French resisted introduction of English words into their
language, but no more. There are more students
of English in China than there are people in the United States.
English is richer in
vocabulary –the Oxford English Dictionary lists 650,000 words. English speakers
have 200,000 words in common use; German, 184,000 and French 100,000.
English is more
flexible than other popular languages.
It is not so rigid in word ordering.
And, English is
comparatively simple to spell. There are
fewer consonantal clusters, singsong tonal variations and it is generally free
of gender.
Germans talk about ein image problem or das Cash Flow,
Austrians eat Big Mäcs, Japanese
spread a blanket and have a pikunikku,
drink kohi (coffee) or miruku (milk), speak through a maiku (microphone), shop in a depaato (department store), and put on meeku (make-up). Poles watch telewizja and French shop at le drugstore.
Some Americans today bemoan the fact that English is
becoming extinct, in danger of being crowded out by millions who speak Spanish,
or Chinese. They have sought to enact legislation declaring English the
official language of the U.S.A.
Bryson warns that
the danger of another language crowding out English is not the real problem. More and more Americans show that they are
unable to grow a useful vocabulary, use educated grammar and spelling, or
express themselves intelligently. If you use Facebook or other such social
media, note when a popular topic comes up for wide discussion and many chime in the comment: How many
comments reflect a low level of fluency in what must be the native language of people?
Author Bryson ends
his book with his greatest worry about the future of English…not that the
various strands will drift apart, but that they will grow indistinguishable. What a sad loss that would be.
Old World Language Family Tree
* MORE
HINTS: The
languages of Africa are divided into six major language families: Afroasiatic
languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa
and parts of the Sahel. Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar.
North
American languages include those spoken in Canada and the United States while
those of Mexico belong to Meso-America. When the Europeans came to North
America there were perhaps 300 to 400 languages spoken by
several million native people.
-END-
HISTORY
BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2018
Wednesday,
July 25, 2018: Immigration to America. How
did we all get here? Read about the
history of immigration, at any stage – from first settlers to the great
immigration waves of the 19th and early 20th centuries;
victims of the Irish Potato famine, Jews fleeing persecution in Europe,
Europeans suffering poverty in their countries, Africans brought here as
slaves, Chinese brought here to build railroads; Fugitives of war everywhere;
Mexicans and Central Americans coming to pick crops. Read about immigration
policies and national drives to keep out or encourage immigration. [Suggested by Walt Frederick.]
Joe McCarthy
Wednesday, August 29, 2018. Fighting the U.S. Constitution. Times and events when the
Americans and even Presidents went against the freedoms in our Constitution. E,
g, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Indian Removal Act under Jackson, Mexican
American War, suspension of Habeas Corpus under Lincoln, Red Scare in 1920,
McCarthyism in 1950’s, and Patriot Act 2001. [Suggested by William Tobin]
Wednesday, September
26: Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Puritan
Exceptionalism, justification of Slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement,
treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of
Imperialism’s Christianization mission. [Suggested
by William Tobin]
Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment (Afro-American) at
Fort Wagner, SC
Wednesday, October
24, 2018. (vice Oct. 31): African American Warriors and their place
in American History. From the American Revolution, during the Civil War to
Korean War. E.g.: Contraband to Massachusetts 54th, Buffalo Soldiers and Native
American Wars, Spanish American War and Truth about Battle of San Juan Hill,
World War I and use of African American soldiers with French combat
troops, World War II and Segregated all African American combat units:
Armor, Transport, Tuskegee Airmen, Desegregation and Korean War. [Suggested
by William Tobin]
Wednesday, November 28,
2018: Guns
in American History. E.g. American Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West
with new technology: six guns, repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic
weapons after World War I, : pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s
Massacres of 1929 and 2018. Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun
laws, mass shootings in America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons,
Guns laws in 21st century America. [Suggested by William Tobin]
December
2018: No meeting.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019: Horses in History. The
clattering of hooves pierced the dark stillness of the Austrian night. It is
the fall of 1855. The gilded Ambruster Dress Carriage, a beautiful
vehicle trimmed in glimmering black paint and shiny gold leaf showed that
Emperor Franz Joseph was arriving. Read
any book about horses, from Caligula to Triple Crown, from Richard III to Pony
Express, from mythology (Pegasus) to literature (Arabian Nights) or music (Von
Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture), from
battle tactics (Genghis Kahn, Templars, conquistadors, light cavalry of
Napoleon) to transportation and military logistics, from money making business
of breeding to prestige and rivalry of kings and sheikhs, from fundamental
needs in agriculture to the vanity of Derby fashion. [Suggested by Janos Posfai]
