The Greek & Latin Roots of English (4 page)

By the fifth century CE, the Roman Empire had begun to disintegrate, as a series of invaders, mostly Germanic, began to carve out sections of the empire as their own. In 410 CE, the Roman army withdrew from Britain, leaving the island to its Celtic inhabitants and those Latin-speaking missionaries who had come to convert them to Christianity. But less than forty years later, beginning in 449 CE, southern Britain was overrun by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, all Germanic tribes from the mainland of Europe.

Anglo-Saxon Culture and Old English

The culture and language of these Germanic peoples are called Anglo-Saxon; and within a relatively short period of time, they had become the dominant political and linguistic power in Britain, as the Celts fled west into Ireland and Wales. Although Latin had all but disappeared as a spoken language, its influence could be seen in place names:
-chester
, as in Dorchester, and –
caster
, as in Lancaster, which derive from the Latin
castra
, a military camp. And when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in 597 CE, Latin was reintroduced, as the language of the Church.

The greatest work of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, literature is the epic poem
Beowulf
, whose opening lines show how much English has changed in 1,500 years:

Hwœt, we gardena in geardagum
peodcyninga prym gefrunon
hu ða œpelingas ellenfremedon
!
⁵

The Norman Conquest and Middle English

The language spoken in England would have remained basically Germanic in its vocabulary, grammar, and structure, had it not been for an accident of politics and genealogy. In 1066 CE, Edward, king of England, died without an heir; and the Anglo-Saxon nobles elected Harold, who was not related to Edward, as their king. But perhaps out of family loyalty, perhaps out of a desire for more power, William, ruler of Normandy, whose wife was related to Edward, challenged Harold's right to the throne. William and his army invaded Britain, and at the battle of Hastings, Harold was defeated and killed. On Christmas Day, 1066 CE, William, now called the Conqueror, was crowned King of England and Normandy.

William brought with him a new ruling class, made up of French-speaking Normans,
⁶
who imposed their politics, customs, and language on the Anglo-Saxons. And just as those who had wanted to do business with the Romans had had to learn Latin, so those who wanted to be accepted by the Norman power structure had to learn French. For nearly 150 years, French was the language of government, law, and religion. In the thirteenth century, however, as relations deteriorated between England and France, the use of English increasingly became an expression of nationalism; and English began once more to reassert itself. Nevertheless, in part because of the influence of French, in part because all languages change over time, it was radically different from the Anglo-Saxon of
Beowulf
. Thousands of new vocabulary words had been added to English either from French, a Latin-based language, or directly from Latin, with the result that today English contains twice as many words derived from French and Latin as from German. This newly evolved form is called Middle English, and although it is difficult for a speaker of modern English to read easily, it contains many recognizable forms and words, as the opening lines of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
demonstrates:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
.
⁷

Modern English

Like Old and Middle English, Modern English has been shaped by a number of historical, political, and social events: the European Renaissance and the rebirth of interest in ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture, the development of modern science and technology, British colonialism, and the founding of the United States. But perhaps the greatest single influence on the formation of Modern English was the printing press, whose invention is generally credited to the German Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468), and which was introduced into England by William Caxton in 1476. This invention led not only to the standardization of spelling
⁸
, usage, and pronunciation, but was instrumental in the growth of literacy, and in the increase in the number of schools. It is not surprising, then, that speech became an indication of social class.

Although Latin and Greek continued to be held in high esteem because of the renewed interest in the heritage of the classical tradition, the Renaissance and the rise of the modern nation-state saw the growth of vernacular
⁹
literatures throughout Europe. Increasingly, it was maintained by many that the English language could be employed as effectively as Latin or Greek to express serious thought. After all, as a sixteenth-century English scholar pointed out, the ancient Greeks wrote in Greek, the Romans composed in Latin, and thus it was only natural that the English should employ their own native tongue. At the same time, however, there was the recognition on the part of at least some writers and scholars of a need for a greatly enriched English vocabulary. The coinage of new vocabulary by authors in this period added more than 10,000 new words to the language; ironically, the vast majority derived from Latin and Greek roots. Not all of these newly minted words, however, entered into popular usage, and some did not survive.

Not all of the new words were adapted from Latin or Greek. The argument among sixteenth-century scholars about the “purity” of English vocabulary grew more heated as diplomacy and trade broadened the possibility of linguistic interchange. Although as a matter of national pride vehement objections were raised about the introduction of Italian, French, and Spanish words into English vocabulary, many words, such as
vogue, essay, bizarre, piazza, mustache,gazette
, and
bravado
, found a permanent place.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the development of modern science, which also added thousands of new vocabulary words to English, was grounded, at least in part, in the view that all activity, including language, could be explained logically and rationally. The focus on standardization of language and usage also produced an increased interest in etymology, or the history of individual words, as a way of determining the precise meaning of words and their correct usage. In 1755, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) published
A Dictionary of the English Language
, which contained 40,000 words and their definitions, pronunciations, and varied usages. Its intent, he said, was “to reserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom.” Dr. Johnson's
Dictionary
was a landmark in the history of English lexicography, and marked the first methodical attempt to establish a standard English vocabulary. During the eighteenth century, there was also the attempt to regularize English grammar and syntax. Although the scientist Joseph Priestley argued that “the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard for any language,” most grammarians subscribed to Dr. Johnson's insistence that “every language must be formed after the model of one of the ancient.” And as a result, they transposed the rules of Latin grammar onto English, despite the fact that at least a few scholars recognized that Latin grammar was not particularly well suited as a model for English.

With the growth of the British Empire, beginning in the seventeenth century, politics once again played a role in the history of the English language. Not only did the native languages of North America, Africa, and Asia contribute large numbers of words to English (such as
moccasin,jungle, hurricane
, and
tobacco)
, but also colonialism led to the spread of the use of English around the world. By the mid-nineteenth century, the recognition that both the addition of “new” words to English vocabulary and the intricate history of the English language demanded a new kind of dictionary gave impetus to the monumental project that is known as the
Oxford English Dictionary
.
¹⁰
Begun in 1879, under the editorship of James Murray, the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
was not completed until 1928. Consisting of twelve volumes, it not only gave the various definitions and usages, but detailed the history of each of the over 400,000 entries. Successive teams of lexicographers have produced several supplements, and the
OED
now extends to twenty volumes and contains over 500,000 items.

The differences between a dialect and a language are a matter of great debate among linguists, since there is no accepted criterion for making any distinction between the two. The simplest definition is that it is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. But who gets to determine what is “standard” and what is a “variety” is often a matter of politics, history, and social structure. As an old joke goes, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

American English

England and America are two countries separated by the same language
.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (early twentieth-century playwright and critic)

Like the general history of English, the history of American English can be divided into periods. The earliest, and most influential, began with the first permanent English-speaking settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and ended with the establishment of the United States as an independent country after the American Revolution. During this period, the majority of European settlers were from Britain, and they brought with them the speech patterns, vocabulary, and grammar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.

The American Revolution was grounded in the struggle for political independence, and at least for some, that meant linguistic independence as well. In 1774, an American patriot declared, “The English language has been greatly improved in Britain within a century, but its highest perfection, with every other branch of human knowledge, is perhaps reserved for this land of light and freedom.” Perhaps the most noteworthy individual in the formation of American English is Noah Webster (1758-1843), who compiled three books: a speller, a grammar, and a reader. The speller was an extraordinary success, and over the next century it would sell more than 80 million copies. His most lasting and influential work, however, was
An American Dictionary of the English Language
, which he wrote as a contribution “into the common treasure of patriotic exertions.” Webster believed that a national language was an instrument of unity:

It is not only important, but, in a degree necessary, that the people of this country should have an American Dictionary of the English language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist. Language is an expression of ideas; and if the people of our country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language. (Preface to
An American Dictionary
, 1828)

Hand from a monumental statue of the Roman Emperor Constantine (313–337 CE) (Museo Capitolino, Rome)

American English is, of course, the product of both normal linguistic change and the “melting pot” of American society. Each wave of immigration to the United States—from Northern, Southern, and Eastern Europe, from Asia, from Africa, and from South America—has made its own contributions to the development of a distinctly American English, not only in terms of vocabulary but also in patterns of speech and usage.Yet, despite some regional variations, what marks American English is its uniformity. In the last century, the advent of radio, the movies, and television accelerated the process of homogenization of American speech and vocabulary.

According to the 2011 U.S. census, over 60 million Americans speak a language other than English at home. The largest numbers belong to the Indo-European family, but among the top ten are Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.

How Do You Spell That?

Noah Webster's eagerness to create an “American” English led to the Americanization of the orthography of many English words that had entered the language through French. Thus,
honour
became
honor
, and
centre
became
center
. Of course, spelling reform can also create confusion. Although Benjamin Franklin urged that the silent letters in words be eliminated, that would mean that we work hard to put
bred
on the table. And what about the pronunciation of
through, although, tough
, and
thought
?