Wilcume!
Please enjoy the site.
We hope you find it both interesting & informative.
We hope you find it both interesting & informative.
Britain was a province of Rome for almost 400 years but when the Western Empire collapsed Germanic invaders brought to these islands a language that eventually became English. Latin made a comeback, however.
The British Isles converted to Christianityduring the Dark Ages and Latin was the language of the Church. English, though, remained a mainly Germanic language until 1066 when the Norman invaders intermingled with the native Anglo-Saxons and many Latinate words became part of English.
This combination of Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words is a defining feature of English, and speakers often have options when they speak. For example, they can ‘stay’ somewhere or they can ‘remain’; they can ‘stop’ or they can ‘desist’. As a rule, words that derive from Latin (such as remain and desist) are more formal than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts
The British Isles converted to Christianityduring the Dark Ages and Latin was the language of the Church. English, though, remained a mainly Germanic language until 1066 when the Norman invaders intermingled with the native Anglo-Saxons and many Latinate words became part of English.
This combination of Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words is a defining feature of English, and speakers often have options when they speak. For example, they can ‘stay’ somewhere or they can ‘remain’; they can ‘stop’ or they can ‘desist’. As a rule, words that derive from Latin (such as remain and desist) are more formal than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts
A little about Language
A word about Anglo-Saxon Old English, or Anglo-Saxon as it is also known, is the oldest form of English. The original speakers of ‘English’ came from the part of Europe that is now Germany and Denmark in the form of three tribes called the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The three tribes had their own dialects but we now collectively refer to all the dialects as either Old English or Anglo-Saxon. This language was spoken in parts of England and Scotland between the 5th and 12th centuries.
|
A word about Latin Until fairly recently Latin was the language of scholars and many of the words borrowed by scientists, doctors, and lawyers filtered into everyday English. Although Latin is no longer the language used in universities, academics in every discipline continue to plunder the ancient Roman tongue to describe the latest innovations and to name species in the natural world.
Latin has exerted a greater influence on English than any other language. Nearly 30% of words in English come directly from Latin, and a further 30% come from French which developed out of Latin. Latin is also the source of many phrases in English, often as a result of their use in legal and church terminology. Educated speakers were so familiar with Latin that they never bothered to translate such terms into English, thus we speak of non sequiturs and quid pro quos, of doing something ad nauseam or being in situ. Latin phrases have also been the source of many common abbreviations but how many of us realize that when we use AD (anno Domini), e.g. (exempli gratia), i.e. (id est), or PS (post scriptum), that we are using the language of the ancient Romans? Click to set custom HTML
|