Group items tagged

Truth is stranger than fiction. A tenth century Anglo-Saxon eye salve not only cures sties but eradicated 90% of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA. The recipe, translated from Anglo-Saxon, is from Bald's Leechbook, a leatherbound Old English manuscript kept in the British Library. The Leechbook is widely thought of as one of the earliest known medical textbooks and contains Anglo-Saxon medical advice and recipes for medicines, salves and treatments. Another reason why it pays to know obscure languages.

Words of Anglo-Saxon Origin

This illustrated video from Mental Floss explores word doubles in English: a phenomenon which springs from Germanic and Latin linguistic influences. The video also explores why Latinate words are often perceived as being more elegant and erudite than their Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) counterparts.

Prof. Suzanne Kemmer, of Rice University Course Information Course Schedule Owlspace login page Writing systems and alphabets in England English has an alphabetic writing system based on the Roman alphabet that was brought to Anglo-Saxon England by Christian missionaries and church officials in the 600s.

great progression of maps

The Académie française, established in 1635, is the official authority on the French language, establishing the standards for proper French. One of the aims of the Académie, whose 40 members include writers, linguists, historians and philosophers, is to protect French from foreign, notably "Anglo-Saxon" invasions. To that end, it comes up with French equivalents to pesky Anglicisms that slip into French, for example changing email into courriel.

Languages a world apart have a similar habit of borrowing elevated vocabulary from other languages. In 1066, because the ruling class spoke Old French, that set of vocabulary became synonymous with the elite. Everyone else used Old English. During this period, England's society was diglossic: one community, two language sets with distinct social spheres. Today, English-speakers pick and choose from the different word sets-Latinate (largely Old French borrowings) and Germanic (mostly Old English-derived words)-depending on the occasion. Although English is no longer in a diglossic relationship with another language, the Norman-era diglossia remains reflected in the way we choose and mix vocabulary. In informal chat, for example, we might go on to ask something, but in formal speech we'd proceed to inquire. There are hundreds of such pairs: match/correspond, mean/intend, see/perceive, speak/converse. Most of us choose one or the other without even thinking about the history behind the split. Germanic words are often described as earthier, simpler, and friendlier. Latinate vocabulary, on the other hand, is lofty and elite. It's amazing that nine hundred years later, the social and political structure of 12th-century England still affects how we think about and use English. The article also discusses a similar historical phenomenon in India, where much of southern India, just like Norman England, was diglossic between Sanskrit (an Indo-European language used ritually and formally by Hindu elites) and vernacular Dravidian languages. Today, that diglossia is gone, but Sanskrit-derived vocabulary still forms an upper crust, mostly pulled out for formal speech or writing.