A lesson on philosophy due to a lesson on English and German language

[Borachio]

Dunno.

Originally, a lot of it is to do with a Celtic language meeting and accommodating a Germanic one, I'd guess.

But who knows?

The climate maybe?

Randomness?

 

[Hrothbern]

Eh, I don't really make that association, although I tend to read equites as equites and what books I read on Roman history call them equites so *shrug*.

That said, I've been reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms recently and it's a tidge jarring to see characters being appointed titles like "Marquis" and the hullaballoo many of the characters make over, say, Cao Cao assuming the title of Duke is intriguing. Obviously the British hierarchical system of Baron-Viscount-Earl-Marquess-Duke-Prince-King-[Emperor] didn't exist in either 3rd/4th c. China nor under the Mings, so it'd be interesting to me to learn what the actual titles were and what they actually meant in a larger socio-political context.

On Marquess:
Base comes from proto-germanic marko, from proto-indo-european mereg, meaning border. In several languages later: mark
Under Charlemagne three level of earls were established: the lesser earl (burghgraf), the earl (graaf, graf) and the higher earl(graf) in charge of a frontier area, a mark: a markgraf

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Not to come off like a Little Englander, but the geographic fact that the language evolved on an island probably had a lot to do with it. Even before the arrival of the Norse and the first great morphing influence on the Saxon language, there was already evidence that A-S was beginning to diverge from continental Germanic. With Old Norse & Norman able to dump vocab & syntax onto the language and then let it simmer in a semi-isolated location, this led to what some linguistic historians describe as a creolization.

Look at what happened to French (Norman) when it arrived on the island. Within a hundred years of 1066, there was already a divergence between Anglo-Norman and continental French, to the point where French men from the continent (for example, Simon de Montfort) were viewed by the Anglo-Normans as being "other" and the English nobility whom had international careers had to relearn French when in Europe.

In a parallel case, Icelandic is the North Germanic language that is "closest" to Old Norse, due to its isolation from the morphing influences of more dominate languages.

 

[MilesGregarius]

Dunno.

Originally, a lot of it is to do with a Celtic language meeting and accommodating a Germanic one, I'd guess.

But who knows?

The climate maybe?

Randomness?

I read some time back that English has almost no Celtic base, that the Anglo-Saxons adopted very, very few Celtic words, that place names in England are almost entirely Saxon or Scandinavian. Any Celtic words in modern English are later borrowings from Irish or Scots Gaelic.

 

[sophie]

I read some time back that English has almost no Celtic base, that the Anglo-Saxons adopted very, very few Celtic words, that place names in England are almost entirely Saxon or Scandinavian. Any Celtic words in modern English are later borrowings from Irish or Scots Gaelic.

There are some Welsh borrowings as well. e.g. dad and gull.

 

[Borachio]

I read some time back that English has almost no Celtic base, that the Anglo-Saxons adopted very, very few Celtic words, that place names in England are almost entirely Saxon or Scandinavian. Any Celtic words in modern English are later borrowings from Irish or Scots Gaelic.

Yes. I guess you're right.

I was thinking of something I heard recently which was that the structure of English was very much influenced by Celtic. English relies more on word order than inflection (compared with German say) to convey which are the subject and object of a verb. Whether this is true or not, I couldn't say.

 

[Lexicus]

I saw this meme and thought this would be a fun place to post it

@Owen Glyndwr @Traitorfish

 

[Borachio]

Pretentiously shoe-horning latin words and phrases into English since...

English was discovered.

As a blend of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman French. And Latin. (Bit of Celtic in there, somewhere.)

Yeah. I blame the monks for starting this trend.

Specifically the Irish monks.

OMG it's a conspiracy!