Why the English Language is Amazing, Part 3

Surely this will be the post that bores even the more hard-core fanatics among you...actually, if any of these etymologically related posts should fascinate you and drive your brain to think in a whole new dimension, it's going to be this one.

I left you last night with the Romance languages. But, for those of you who find love and romance dull, I'm going to head to the next group of languages to influence English. Before I mislead you with that statement, though, a bit of history. The Romance languages developed in the early medieval period, at their most primal forms. However, the languages of the North that I'm about to show you, though developed later, have roots that go back in English much farther in history than the Romance languages. These influences include Old Norse, Germanic, and Celtic. Just to start you out easy, though, I'm going take you to the original form of English, from medieval times, and begin right there.

"Whan that Aprille with its shoures soote,
  The droght of March hath perced to the roote..."
And so begins Chaucer's infamous Canterbury Tales. Chaucer was one of the original English poets, and though not all of his stories were exactly wholesome, it cannot be denied that they are worthy of their infamy. So what was this language like that Chaucer, and later Shakespeare, would so faithfully employ? Let me try my hand at making a sensible sentence from modern words that are originated from the Old English: Bookkeeping is not so dreary and forlorn as it may sound to my kith, who often deem it as a fickle workmanship. What defines, in terms of spelling, these words? The three most common elements are often still applied in new words to American English: 1) Double consonants follow short vowels, 2) long \a\ sounds at the end of words are spelled "ay," and 3) the long \e\ sound at the end of a word is usually spelled with a "y." Other definitive elements to recognize include the ow, stle, gh, oa pronounced as long \o\, and a soft \th\ ends with a silent e.

As we gradually produce in our Northern difficulty, we move to the Dutch language. I have no introduction but to go straight into the spelling rules: and that's the beauty. There are none. Dutch words are almost always spelled just as they sound, thanks to the adaptation skills of some English liguists. All your simple words are pretty much as they sound: scrabble, holster, brackish, crimp, floss...easy. The hard ones, are hard, however. For instance galijoen, bobbejaan, uitlander (pronounced "eight-lander"), and schipperke, are among words that have come from Dutch into our language. Just memorize them, and spell the rest as simply as peanut butter and jelly.

The last two are...last for a reason. Let's look at German and Slavic Languages. My favorite ever spelling word that I mastered has got to be Weissnichtwo. Awesome, amazing, purely incredible spelling. This is a good illustration of some important German spelling rules. First, whenever you hear a \v\ sound, it's almost certain that you are spelling a "w." The long \i\ sound is typically spelled ei. Double consonants, especially s, are frequent, but variable. Consonant blends such as schn, cht, and ngst are also common appearances in German. So guess how weissnichtwo is pronounced? The correct answer, and I hope you actually tried and didn't just peek ahead here...

is VICE-KNEESHT-VOE.

Hope you actually tried to figure that one out. ;) Now, note that I won't even try to explain to you words such as pfeffernuss and weimaraner. They can be explained, but it's a bit more complicated unless you've been following Germanic and Celtic for a while. =D

There are lots of other influences in English, such as Russian, Cherokee, Japanese, and Arabic. For your information, I got my main sources from the first place where I began to study etymology, http://www.myspellit.com/. If you are interested in this topic, I would encourage you to check out all these fantastic introductory resources:

http://www.myspellit.com/ If you want to spell based on etymology, go here.

http://spellingbee.com/ Fantastic for learning to spell in general.

http://www.m-w.com/ : type in any word and there's about a 95% chance there will be some great etymology resources about the word!

American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828 edition -- this contains scores of pages on etymology, before the already etymology-filled dictionary even begins!!

Britannica Macropaedia, 15th Edition, Volume 22, pp. 566-813. VERY in-depth, and goes deeper than English.

Anyways, have fun with words, and know that THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS AMAZING.

Meridian