Franconian Beer Message Board

Evolution of English and German
Posted by barry on 2013-10-30 04:39:06
This is also my understanding.  It's a complex story and what we know about the development of English is built upon a lot of hypothesis and conjecture, which is why I think that I found philology a really difficult part of my English degree.

It is estimated that only around 20 Celtic words made it into common usage in Old English and these mainly relate to topography ('tor' and 'pen' - 'hill' or 'hill-top' in Cumbria, a few place names and names of rivers: Thames, Don, Esk and Avon).  The Celts and the Germanic invaders hadly 'melded' in any sense, as the Celts were largely driven out, settling on the western fringes of the Pan-Celtic Islands (used rather than British Isles in respect to my hosts!).  We don't know that much about old Irish but modern Irish has quite a different structure to English. 

There was a later 'melding' (I dislike that word, which is a horrible 20th century combination of melt and weld) after the 'Viking' invasions.  This is thought to have resulted in a weakening in the use of inflected endings and the introduction of prepositions and, of course, there were changes as a result of the Norman invasions.

It seems to a general rule that invaders impose their languages on the colonised peoples, rather than to allow intermingling.  Thus, relatively few words have made it into English from the former colonies.
 
Followups:
                             Evolution of English and German by Uncle Jimbo on  2013-10-30 05:41:34
                               Evolution of English and German by Uncle Jimbo on  2013-10-30 05:50:12
                                 Evolution of English and German by Nick B. on  2013-10-30 05:58:08
                                   Evolution of English and German by Uncle Jimbo on  2013-10-30 20:03:42
                                     Evolution of English and German by Nick B. on  2013-10-31 01:14:22
                                       Non-standard German by Nick B. on  2013-10-31 01:18:38
                                       Evolution of English and German by FredW on  2013-10-31 05:01:57
                                       Evolution of English and German by Uncle Jimbo on  2013-10-31 06:11:15
                                         Evolution of English and German by Nick B. on  2013-10-31 06:04:43
                                           Evolution of English and German by TreinJan on  2013-10-31 09:07:35
                                             Evolution of English and German by Nick B. on  2013-10-31 12:48:41
                                         Evolution of English and German by barry on  2013-10-31 13:21:56
                                           Evolution of English and German by Uncle Jimbo on  2013-10-31 16:40:03