The history of English in ten minutes

[pendell]

An extremely clever little video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rexKqvgPVuA&feature=youtu.be). It seems to be quite accurate, too.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Whoracle]

This is great. That is all :)

[GenPol]

That was funny. I heard somebody say once that "English doesn't borrow from other languages--it follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

I dunno if that's from a TV show or I heard it from a friend, but I thought it was funny. :smalltongue:

[Knightofvictory]

This English major will be linking the video to his friends. Thank you for posting it!

[Brother Oni]

That was funny. I heard somebody say once that "English doesn't borrow from other languages--it follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

I dunno if that's from a TV show or I heard it from a friend, but I thought it was funny. :smalltongue:

I believe it was Terry Pratchett. :smallbiggrin:

The video missed out Hong Kong during the empire munching pacman bit (:smallfrown:), plus it missed out quite a few significant stolen loanwords from Chinese, such as ketchup.

In my experience, Singlish (Singaporean English) is just normal English spoken at about triple speed, while Manglish (Malaysian English) is only a mere double speed but adds 'lah' at the end of every other sentence. :smalltongue:

[Manga Shoggoth]

I believe it was Terry Pratchett. :smallbiggrin:


Not this time. I think you are thinking of his introduction to the Diskword Encyclopedia, where he was talking about our minds becoming so good at wandering that they started coming back with souveniers.

The "English doesn't borrow from other languages--it follows other languages" quote comes from someone else who was talking about defending the purity of the language. One of the Playgrounders had it in his sig at one point.

...One quick search later: The guy is supposedly James Nichol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nicoll), and the quote (slightly Playgrounded) is "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a [redacted]. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary"

[endoperez]

I'm pretty sure I've read that, or something very similar, in one of Terry Pratchett's books. When you're not familiar with a reference, it's easy to mistake it for something the referrer came up with him- or herself.

[GenPol]

It could also be that it's just one of those sayings that sort of floats around, with no real source. I dunno.

[McStabbington]

This tracks what I know of British history quite well, although had he had a bit more time, he could have gone more into how each of these stages impacted how the language works. For instance, the rule that you can't split an infinitive? That was a rule invented by lexicographers in the 19th century to make the rules of English more like the Latin, in which the infinitive form of a verb is just one word. But there's no natural reason why you can't split an infinitive: "To boldly go" and "To go boldly" convey exactly the same meaning in English, and the actual mechanics of verb conjugation in English derive from the Germanic languages of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, which is an entirely different family of languages from the Romance or Latinate family.

So it really wasn't our 3rd grade teacher's fault that her English lessons made no sense. She was teaching rules that quite literally were as arbitrary as if we had used Chinese as a foundation for pronouncing our Germanic letters.

[Gnoman]

More precisely, the "rule" was introduced by a publisher of cheap dictionaries, which was the brand of dictionaries that was bought in bulk for educational use. The prevalence of the idiotic concept is largely due to the work of a single man.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I've finally managed to watch the video. It's not often I am tempted to use the word "Awesome...".


Mind you, I agree with some of the posts that it lacks detail (like, for example, the Norman conquest and merge of French and Anglo Saxon actually simplyfying the languages (removing gender and declension). But as a 10 (or 11 and a half) minute summary it was excelent!

Thanks for sharing it.

[Ravens_cry]

I can give it to you in ten words: English is a bastard in both senses of the word.
Still, etymology and the history of the English language always interests me. I think I will watch later.

[Kato]

In fact very nice and entertaining. Though a bit more focus on the earlier history would have been nice.

I'ce been trying to find who made this but I failed. I think the voice sounds very familiar.

[Axolotl]

I'ce been trying to find who made this but I failed. I think the voice sounds very familiar.It's Clive Anderson.