Video of the day -- a short history of the English language
posted by Infidel753 at 4:06 PM
15 November 2013
About Me
- Name: Infidel753
- Location: Portland, Oregon, United States
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
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6 Comments:
That was fun! It's amazing how much English has evolved, and how many influences shaped it.
I think this video underestimates the impact of the Vikings. They didn't give us that many words, but they did give us the subject/verb/direct object/indirect object word order.
Old English was SOV like German ins today. French is SVO, but SOV like German when pronouns are involved and usually handles indirect objects with prepositions.
English works wonders with prepositions just like French, but often we just go SVOI just like the Vikings and modern Scandinavians
Ahab: It's a very mongrel language -- well suited to our country.
Bacopa: Inevitably such a short summary will leave out some things -- it also misses the little-known impact of Celtic languages on English syntax, for example.
The shift from SOV to SVO is found in many Indo-European languages -- even modern German is SVO in main clauses.
It's a living language, changing and morphing as more people speak it.
Wonderful video!
And now changing faster than ever, thanks to us internetters.....
I don't know what I was thinking. English is SVIO, just like the Scandinavian languages. Can't believe I messed that up.
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