Question about the origins of English?

Question

As I understand it, English evolved from Latin as did Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. I hear similarities between Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and Latin...but not English. Also, English 500 years ago sounds nearly identical to todays, but a few hundred years before that Latin was used which sounds very little like English.

I guess my question is, how did English make such a dramatic departure from Latin so quickly?

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Lan...

I hope it helps.

Answer 2

it didn't, because English NEVER evolved from Latin. it evolved from Middle English, which evolved from Old English; which, about 1000-1500 years ago, was also pretty closely related to Old German and Old Norse.

there are connections between the old Germanic languages and the precursor to Latin, but those go much further back in the past by several thousand years, and are not fully understood.

Answer 3

English is a germanic language. It is not a romance language like Spanish, Italian, French etc.. Some centuries ago the Normans brought French words to England, therefore many modern english words have Latin roots.

Have a look at other germanic languages like Swedish, Dutch, German, ...

Old english looks even more similar to German than today's English does.

Of course germanic languages and latin share roots in indo-german languages.

I am no expert here, but I could not resist to answer.

Answer 4

don't forget french as a latin language!  french vocabulary is very similar to italian vocabulary and italian is a very latin language, so french is DEFINATELY a latin language also. same with romanian, catalan, occitan, romansch, sardinian.

english is MAINLY germanic.  it has similarities w/ german, dutch, icelandic, danish, norwegion, swedish, frision, scots, africaans.  most of english latanic words are via old french when the normans invaded england.

Answer 5

The answer is that they didn't.   The Latin influence in the language was SECOND HAND, as opposed to the mainland Europeans.  The Roman Empire Latin-speaking Britons were supplanted by waves of  barbaric tribes who landed from other parts of Northern Europe.  Their language was "pre-German".  The language in England became Anglo-Saxon.  If you read Beowolf in the original, and know German, there are some similarities.  We had an expert who showed us the Lord's Prayer in that language, and it starts "Unser Vater", which is nearly the German for "our Father.

The next dramatic change was the invasion of the Normans in 1066.  These folks also started with a base similar to the other Germanic tribes who migrated into Norway and Denmark, but they had settled into Normandy and their language mixed with the early French, which was a mixture of the language of the Franks and Latin.  It was that language which gave us the Latin component in our language.   By 1400, the English evolved to the language in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", which can be followed with some assistance with obscure words.  One major feature of that time was that the end vowels of words were still pronounced.   From that time, the language evolved into what it is today.   It was helped by the development of a dictionary, which resolved alternate spellings of words.   For example,  the 16th Century King was written "Kynge" in letters and documents of that time.  Another evolution was the simplificaion of the language.  If you look at the Declaration of Independence, there is a large-script "S" which is the "hissing-s" sound.  That has disappeared.

Answer 6

Well, English didn't really evolve from Latin as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French did.

What's the origin of the English language?

<< English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Northern Netherlands. >>

Please go to the source (below) to read more.