Seriously?

[Alice_Rosaleen]

As Kojak01 says, English is officially a Germanic language, but it picked up a lot of Latin vocabulary after the Norman invasion in the 11th century.

There's an interesting list here of cases where both Germanic and Latinate words have stayed in the language - for instance "brotherly" is Germanic but "fraternal" is Latinate.

As a generalisation, the Latinate words have posher/more formal connotations than Germanic, presumably because they came from the ruling class. So a doctor or government official might say "infant" where a working-class speaker would more likely say "baby".

I suppose we can thank the Renaissance (thanks, Renaissance) for a large influx of Latin words into English vocabulary. Modern English is the language of conquerors, borrowing words from other countries and bending them to our will. German is more conservative, making compound words to expand on concepts in a more linear fashion. I never really understood why they don't tend to speak in the simple past, just write in it, but then again, there are a lot of things I don't understand
I stopped learning German when I started taking a course about Phonology (auf Deutsch) and the parts of our mouth that create different sounds etc. That's too much about any language for me to learn.
But the usual ordering of adjectives in English seems intuitive, though I'm not sure why.

 

[Handley_Page]

I suppose we can thank the Renaissance (thanks, Renaissance) for a large influx of Latin words into English vocabulary. Modern English is the language of conquerors, borrowing words from other countries and bending them to our will. German is more conservative, making compound words to expand on concepts in a more linear fashion. I never really understood why they don't tend to speak in the simple past, just write in it, but then again, there are a lot of things I don't understand
.
But the usual ordering of adjectives in English seems intuitive, though I'm not sure why.

I do not agree. The Latin in our language was inserted before the 3rd century, whereas the Renaissance started a thousand years later. Other tongues into English would include Danish, Norsk, and of course French, (from 1066 on).

And we've not included Welsh, Cornish, Mercian etc..

 

[ElectricBlue]

I do not agree. The Latin in our language was inserted before the 3rd century, whereas the Renaissance started a thousand years later. Other tongues into English would include Danish, Norsk, and of course French, (from 1066 on).

And we've not included Welsh, Cornish, Mercian etc..

Handley is spot on. Alice, you seem to have forgotten that Britain was under Roman rule for four centuries. Latin would have been the prime language of the ruling elite, the administrators and the military. As Handley points out, the pre-Roman languages would have been pushed to the periphery of the British Isles, where they managed to cling on.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

I do not agree. The Latin in our language was inserted before the 3rd century, whereas the Renaissance started a thousand years later. Other tongues into English would include Danish, Norsk, and of course French, (from 1066 on).

And we've not included Welsh, Cornish, Mercian etc..

I just mean that during the Renaissance, a good deal of words that had not been Latin in origin in the English language, were altered. Iland, for instance, from the German (edit- Germanic, via Middle English), was changed to 'island'. Doubter from the French to debtor from the Latin, etc. They were obsessed with Latinate revival, and language spelling and pronunciation evolved as a result. And I was referring to modern English specifically, in comparison with German- not to say that Latin wasn't a prime influence.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Handley is spot on. Alice, you seem to have forgotten that Britain was under Roman rule for four centuries. Latin would have been the prime language of the ruling elite, the administrators and the military. As Handley points out, the pre-Roman languages would have been pushed to the periphery of the British Isles, where they managed to cling on.

I'm not sure how much the Roman occupation changed the local language, but it's pretty much moot, because a couple of centuries later the Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to stay. English (Anglish) is more heavily influenced by them than by what was spoken previously.

AFAIK, most of the Latinate words in modern English arrived with the Normans, although it's certainly not the only source.

 

[Hypoxia]

Anglish is a linguistic vacuum cleaner, Hoovering-up words from near and far. Romany, Carib, Hindi, Yoruba, Chumash, Arabic, Malay -- I can think of words assimilated from each. And each has its own embedded orthography and pronunciation. Hello, confusion!

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not sure how much the Roman occupation changed the local language, but it's pretty much moot, because a couple of centuries later the Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to stay.

update: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Latin discusses this issue: "While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite, especially in the more Romanized south and east of the island. However, it never substantially replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons,[citation needed] especially in the less Romanized north and west... With the end of Roman rule, Latin was displaced as a spoken language by Old English in most of what became England during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the fifth and sixth centuries. It survived in the remaining Celtic regions of western Britain until about 700, when it was replaced by the local Brittonic languages."

 

[Captainnumnuts]

Handley is spot on. ....... .

In my short time on the AH, I've noticed that.

 

[SimonDoom]

Alice Rosaleen is right. The Norman Conquest resulted in what amounted to another infusion of Latin into English after 1066--indirectly, through French, which evolved from Latin. It's why English has a great number of pairings of Latinate and Germanic words for the same thing, as Alice points out. That's the result of the Normans ruling England for 200 years and French being the language of the upper classes during that period. Thousands of French-derived words (most with origins in Latin) entered the English language during this time. As a result, the modern English of Hamlet is more "Latin" than the old English of Beowulf.

 

[SimonDoom]

Keep in mind, too, that the English language didn't exist in any form when the Romans ruled Britain. It evolved from the languages brought over after the Roman occupation ended, by the Angles and the Saxons, who brought a Germanic language with them. The Celts were the principal occupants of Britain when the Romans ruled. The language the Angles and Saxons brought had some Latin influence, but it wasn't a result of Roman rule over Britain; it was a result of their contacts with the Romans in Germany. To the extent Roman rule influenced native languages in Britain, it would have influenced Celtic languages, and Celtic languages have relatively little influence on English other than place names.

So the three big waves of influence of Latin on English, directly or indirectly through another language, were 1) contact between the Romans and the early Germanic people, 2) Norman rule over Britain for 200 years after 1066, and 3) the English Renaissance, which saw another big influx of Latin words into the English vocabulary when modern English was taking form.