I’ve just started reading Alister McGrath’s In The Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible: and how it changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture.
The introduction starts thus
The two great influences on the shaping of the English language are the works of Shakespeare and the English translation of the Bible that appeared in 1611.
The book goes into fascinating detail about the origin of the Authorized Version, the 1611 Bible. However, this opening claim about the greatest influences on English being Shakespeare and that Bible remain unqualified. That’s just how it is, no debate needed.
The long-running BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs asks well-known people to imagine that they are castaways on a desert island. They talk about their lives, choose a number of records to take with them, a luxuary and a book. They are always given the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible - they seem to be a cultural given.
The question, and there is one, is this: what are the two most important influences on the shaping of the English language.
I disagree with McGrath. However great I feel his choices are, I would say that the settlement of Britain by Anglo-Saxons (c.449) and the establishment of the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the Americas (1607) are the two most significant events.
I think that you are a grammarian’s nightmare. What throw out King James and the works of Sheik as-Sabair?
You are so very right, language is, and always will be, in the mouths of the living, and there is the history, and the puzzle thereof.
Books are good for quotes and pointing to, but English could very well have taken a completely different turn, and we would still look back at those books.
Garzo:
I would say that the settlement of Britain by Anglo-Saxons (c.449)
No Angles, no English, like my dad used to say!
But, rather than the establishment of the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the Americas (1607), I really feel that English would be much more Teutonic without the Norman Conquest, the sissification of those Vikings brought some pleasant niceties to the English tongue (and the castles were so drafty without those tapestries).
I look at the American Colonies as just an added bonus!
Look, Garzo, you are amazing. I don’t know hwat you do for a living, but you are just the sort of fellow who should attempt to write a cohesive grammar of English. This spot work must drive you mad. If you write it I promise that I will do my darnedest to critize it with no prejudice, no envy nor anything else, save, the slightest cringe of jealousy, not of you, of course, but of the intimacy with which you command my Lady English.
My vote is for
1. Norman Conquest, which contributed to attenuate inflectional nature of Old English, and
2. Renaissance homines universales who ushered in inkhorn (Latinite) terminologies. Of the whole English vocabulary 53% is of Latin origin, incorporated into English either from the original source or by way of Romance languguages.
Have you ever heard of The Story of English from Penguin Books? It’s a great compendium of the history of English language, written in journalistic cheerful diction.
I found this passage for Garzo’s other question.
The King James Bible was published in the year Shakespeare began work on his last play, The Tempest. Both the play and the Bible are masterpieces of English, but there is one crucial difference between them. Whereas Shakspeare ransacked the lexicon, the King James Bible employs a bare 8,000 word’s—-God’s teaching in homely English for everyman. From that day to this, the Shakespearian cornucopia and the biblical iron rations represent, as it were, the North and South Poles of the language, reference points for writers and speakers throughout the world, from the Shakespearian splendor of a Joyce or a Dickens to the biblical rigor of a Bunyan or a Hemingway.
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I don’t think that the publication of a series of books might have changed so much a language… I stick to the belief that books only represent the way people speak -or could speak if they would- with slight variations of style. Those works are merely the result of what the English language already was… They might have unified, but not changed…
Therefore, I’d look for major historic events, such as Britain’s last invasion (1066) and the subsequent Norman influence -which I consider as the main "Latin" influence in English, far more important than other minor contributions- and the establishment, not only of the colonies in North America, but worldwide.
The first one is plain and others have already given reasons why.
The second is that when a language becomes "Imperial", so to speak, it acquires a source of changing. This is not the colonizators, for, after all, they’re the same sort of fellows as those who remained; but rather the new peoples who come in contact with this new speech, learn it and use it to communicate among themselves -whether because of threaten or need I don’t argue.
The British Empire included a great amount of very different people from every corner of the globe trying to adequate a sole language to their needs. There you have a shaping factor!!
Equating Shakespeare and the King James Bible with the North and South Poles seems like a pretty good analogy to me: hugely significant, but not especially influential. Not much human life happens around the Poles - it takes place mainly in temperate latitudes.
Of the two works, I would imagine that the Bible has had a greater influence on the development of English. For the first 300 years or more after its publication, the people of the English-speaking world were much more regular churchgoers than nowadays. Like the majority of the British public my church attendance is limited to hatches, matches and dispatches, whereas formerly the vast majority would go to church - and therefore hear readings from the KJB - at least once a week.
For me, the Norman Conquest would definitely be one of the most significant influences on the development of English - more so than the invasion of Britain by the Angles. "No Angles, no English" is of course true, but the primary consequence of their invasion was to move the language from one side of the North Sea to the other. Admittedly, once in Britain the language became exposed to different influences - there are words of Celtic origin in English, provided by the people the Angles found when they arrived, and plenty more provided by other groups of invaders (Saxons, Jutes and Vikings). However, it was the arrival of French-speakers that gave our language its richness - because most words would have an equivalent in the other language, it became possible to develop the huge variety of nuances and shades of meaning that we see today.
The influence of American English speakers on the language is also clearly enormous, so probably gets my second vote. However, I don’t agree with Garzo that it was the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the Americas that was the decisive factor. In my opinion, it was the developments of the 19th and 20th centuries that had the influence, as a result of the rise to economic dominance of the USA, and the cultural dominance of Hollywood and the music industry - but also as a result of the huge variety of linguistic backgrounds of US citizens. This tends to make American English more innovative, which of course encourages a language to develop. (Whether you like or dislike the innovations is another matter!)
BTW: It’s just occurred to me that a couple of non-events have also had a great influence on English - the failure of the invasion attempts by the Spanish Armada and Nazi Germany. The latter would no doubt only have influenced British English, but if the Armada had landed, there would presumably have been much more Spanish vocabulary in English, and no King James Bible.
¡Ze Armada Spanish influensing Inglish!
¿Wot wud hav happend tu ze languach?
These words of Edman are just so worth quoting again - how nicely turned are his phrases. [quote author=edman link=board=omni;num=1086106465;start=0#7 date=06/02/04 at 10:33:33]Equating Shakespeare and the King James Bible with the North and South Poles seems like a pretty good analogy to me: hugely significant, but not especially influential. Not much human life happens around the Poles - it takes place mainly in temperate latitudes.
I suppose that the Bible is performed more often than Shakespeare, and there is the rub for some.
Quite a few votes are coming in for 1066 and all that. Were the Anglo-Saxons really barbarous lager louts beforehand?
Were the Anglo-Saxons really barbarous lager louts beforehand?
I don’t think it’s a question of lager-loutishness. After all, their mainland descendants managed to produce some pretty high-quality stuff, such as my favourite piece of Goethe:
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
[Roughly: Over all the mountain-tops
There is peace,
In all the treetops
You feel
Scarcely a breath of wind.
Just wait, soon
You too will be at rest.]
In my view, the great thing about the French contribution to the English language is that it works in tandem with the Germanic basis to provide the versatility and flexibility we love.
However, did the Normans speak French? ???
If I remember my history correctly, being "Normans" meant they were the descendants of the northmen or Vikings. If you have ever been to Normandy and heard the locals speak normand, then you would be in for a surprise. When I was a wee slip of a lass, I was fortunate enough to travel to Normandy and as is one’s wont as a stranger in a strange land, took to eavesdropping on conversations. I was in a bar in Neufchatel waiting for a train when I overheard two local gentlemen having a conversation in what sounded English in accent and intonation, but was completely unintelligible to me. At the time I was completely fluent in French, German and English (the if you don’t use it, you lose it thing has taken over in the more than 30 years since then) and it was none of these. I was told later by one of my hosts that they were speaking normand. Would this not have been the language the Normans brought over? - or - Was it due to the fact that William and his motley crew were noblemen that they spoke the French of the day?
The influence of Norman French on English is fascinating. The Channel Islanders are trying to preserve spoken Norman French, Channel Island French, le normand insulaire, Jèrriais éi Dgernesiais (Jersey and Guernsey). Standard French has long been the legal and ecclesiastical language of the bailiwicks, and it and English combine to threaten Norman French.
Norman French is just one of the dialects of Langues d’Oïl. Many of the hard plosives, especially velars, have been retained in Norman French where they have changed in Standard French (Francien). Normand was heavily influenced by Old Norse, but this influence might be comparable to that on Old English by the settlement of Danelaw (very significant, but the language was still essentially English). There may have been some degree of compounding of Norse terms through agreement of Old English borrowings with Norman French borrowings.
In 1154, with the coronation of Henry II, Francien became the official language of the English court, supplanting Norman.
I’m way too late for this thread, however I like the Norman Invasion, Shakespeare ( whoever they were ) -for the introduction of so many new words, English as a global language through movies and popular music ( mainly from the USA), and the rise of the Irish writers ( just threw them in for good measure ). What about an Axis of Armageddon of the English Language such as political/managerial business/military English?
[quote author=Maximillian link=board=omni;num=1086106465;start=0#12 date=06/20/04 at 23:39:50]. . . . and the rise of the Irish writers ( just threw them in for good measure ).
Some of them were so clairvoyant as to predict the English styles of 3400 CE, like Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.
[quote author=Maximillian link=board=omni;num=1086106465;start=0#12 date=06/20/04 at 23:39:50]What about an Axis of Armageddon of the English Language such as political/managerial business/military English?
I think that these forms of English are often quite poetic. A few years ago I worked for a director who had swallowed transatlantic business jargon whole. I used to wind him up by flagging up that I wanted to run with something. British military English was the major source of many borrowings from Indian languages. Military borrowings can be functional or gallant. Political language seems to be one of the most theatrical forms of English. As an outsider, I find it difficult to tell the difference between US political jargon and circus announcements… ;D
