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Re: Rant on partial understandings (was: Spoken French, coins)

From:Matthew Kehrt <matrix14@...>
Date:Friday, December 21, 2001, 23:02
I've heard that this is the reason that modern English has no cases: the
Anglo-Saxons and the Norse ivaders eventually settled on a lowest common
denominator language that became English as we know it.  So English is
essential a creole and was even before 1066.  I've heard.
-M

John Cowan wrote:
 Another fine example, from the days of King Canute,
> but devised by Tom Shippey (the Tolkien and Old English scholar) > > Consider what happens when somebody who speaks. . . Old English. . . > runs into somebody. . . who speaks good Old Norse. They can no doubt > communicate with each other, but complications in both languages are > going to get lost. So if the Anglo-Saxon from the South wants to say (in > good Old English) "I'll sell you the horse that pulls my cart," he says: > "Ic selle the that hors the drageth minne waegn." > > Now the old Norseman -- if he had to say this -- would say: "Ek mun > selja ther hrossit er dregr vagn mine." > > So, roughly speaking, they understand each other. One says "waegn" and > the other says "vagn". One says "hors" and "draegeth"; the other says > "hros" and "dregr", but broadly they are communicating. They understand > the main words. What they don't understand are the grammatical parts of > the sentence. For instance, the man speaking good Old English says for > one horse "that hors" but for two horses he says "tha hors". Now the Old > Norse speaker understands the word horse all right, but he's not sure if > it means one or two because in Old English you say "one horse", "two > horse". There is no difference between the two words for horse. The > difference is conveyed in the word "the" and the old Norseman might not > understand this because his word for "the" doesn't behave like that. So: > are you trying to sell me one horse or are you trying to sell me two > horses? If you get enough situations like that there is a strong drive > towards simplifying the language.

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John Cowan <cowan@...>