Re: Japanese learning, is anybody as frustrated as me?

jim_breen_at_hotmail.com
Date: 12/10/04 

Date: 10 Dec 2004 21:36:57 GMT

James Rose <ceo@fat24.com> dixit:
>in article 31sfiiF3ep2m7U1@individual.net, jim_breen@hotmail.com at
>jim_breen@hotmail.com wrote on 12/9/04 9:22 PM:
>> Travers Naran <tnaran@direct.ca> dixit:
>>> I've often said English is the finest version of French ever invented.
>>> From what I learned of English's history, French & English grammar
>>> began melding from the beginning of the Norman conquest and continued
>>> to do so for quite some time (up until at least the 1700s).
>>
>> Another view is that while there is quite a bit of French vocabulary
>> in English, the grammar is still largely the original fusion of
>> two Germanic languages. After all we don't go saying "I never of it to
>> him gave".

>Ahh, but the Normans came to France by way of Denmark...

Well, the Norman were originally Vikings who settled in Normandy...

>picking up the
>remnants of Roman culture which was just then disintegrating,

"just then"? The Roman bits had disintegrated quite a while before.

>and imparting
>their Viking/Roman to their less sophisticated Franco-Germanic conquerees...

Franco-Germanic conquerees? Who were they?

>who now claim credit for the those same words in English.

Er, no. By the time of 1066 the Normans had pretty much thrown off
their Viking roots and become throroughly Gallicized. The language
they spoke was pretty much the French then prevailing all over
northern France.

The French spoken by the Normans never really took hold in England.
After all, they made up an aristocratic elite while the the townspeople
and farmers went on speaking their northern/southern English. The
northen English of the Danelaw was pretty much Danish anyway. Eventually
the French usage just faded away. I am not aware of any "Viking" words
that came to English via the Normans. 

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Computer Science & Software Engineering,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
$B%8%`!&%V%j!<%s(B@$B%b%J%7%eBg3X(B

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