What happens to 6000-year-old twins when they grow up?

Words, words, words. So many of them. Where did they all come from? How did they all get here? Well, in this post I’ll look at three examples of how words from the same root have wandered alone through the highways and byways of history and geography, only to end up together again in English. In modern English, we have a fair number of words which come from the same ancient root. I don’t mean they all came through Old English (OE), but they started out as siblings in the womb of the same ancient language and made their ways into modern English by different routes from their roots. I’ll look at three ways that sibling words have reached modern English: through maintaining their meanings as more or less the same throughout their histories; through changing their meanings out of all recognition; and through taking different routes based on two distinct possibilities suggested by the nature of the ancient root. This post does have some linguistic terminology and examples, but only what’s necessary, and I think they’re easy enough to understand.

First of all, I’d like to give a bit of background information. English is part of the Indo-European (IE) language group, the origins of which stretch back over 6000 years. Although we can never know exactly how words were pronounced in IE, we can postulate their likely forms and pronunciations based on the words that have come down from it into ancient written languages, like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hittite and Avestan, and also modern IE languages, which range over most of Europe and through Iran into the Indian sub-continent. Based on the recorded forms in all these languages, the likely ancient forms can be postulated, albeit with some variation and uncertainty. Postulated forms are always written with an asterisk. IE also gave rise to the Germanic language group by way of Proto-Germanic (PG) some 3000 years ago. This group is made up of West Germanic (Dutch, English, German and Frisian) and North Germanic (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese). There was also East Germanic, the most well-known of which was Gothic, the oldest written Germanic language, but the last remnants of that group finally died out over three hundred years ago.

Now for the good part. Firstly, let’s look at two words in modern English which are probably the closest we can find to identical twins, growing up and going their own ways, but keeping pretty well the same meanings over all that time despite being sundered for so long, and then meeting up and saying: “Gosh, you look different, well, actually, not really”. IE had a form which is rendered as *peḱu, probably pronounced something like “peck-you”. This root had a variety of derivations, but only two interest us here: Latin pecus and PG *feHu. We can see here that the original p was preserved in Latin, but was changed to f in PG, and the original ḱ sound became c in Latin, but H (pronounced like ch in “loch”) in PG. The meaning of both these forms was “cattle, livestock” and by extension “property, money”. These associations are fairly unsurprising given that livestock has always been a basis of wealth in many societies, and the people who spoke the original IE language were almost certainly nomadic herders. The Latin pecus produced pecū, “cattle”, then pecūnia, “money, property”, and then pecūniārius, “pertaining to money”, from which we derive pecuniary. In the meantime, Proto-Germanic produced OE feoh, “money, property, cattle”. So far so good.

However, feoh did not come down to us in modern English. Instead, we inherited a similar form, from another Germanic language, Frankish, which had the form *fehu, from which *fehu-od was formed, meaning “payment-estate”. The Franks, of course, settled in the Roman province of Gaul in the 3rd century and gave the country its new name – yes, the French are actually Germans, in a sense, and around 10% of French words come from Frankish. This word was also borrowed into Medieval Latin in the form of feudum, which gives us feudal. After the Norman conquest, thousands of OE words were replaced by French words, one of which was the Anglo-French fee, which came into Middle English with the meaning of “an estate belonging to a feudal lord”. It soon came to mean “payment for services provided”, hence our modern fee. Not content with borrowing it once as fee, English later borrowed it again from French as fief. It’s fascinating to think that the French word, borrowed from a Germanic language, replaced the lost OE word and kept not only the same basic meaning of the original, but also the meaning of its Latin-derived twin, pecuniary, after being separated for thousands of years. Just a word of warning: if you want to pay your university fees, I don’t think they accept cows any more -  it's not the dung thing.

Now I’d like to turn to the second set of words passing through Latin and OE into modern English, but with such different meanings that it’s surprising that they once had any connection at all. These are the unruly siblings that refuse to acknowledge the resemblance they once had. When they all met up again in modern English, they all asked: “Do I know you from somewhere?” The IE root probably had three forms, *leis-/lois-/lis-, and the meaning was something like “trace, track”. Now, the idea of tracing or tracking could lead to a number of developments, in this case three. Firstly, and most basically, tracking is something done on foot, so the idea of a path or walkway, or even tracks left in the ground, is a likely development. This also stretched to the modes of tracking, namely, the feet themselves. Secondly, tracing and tracking can lead to finding out about something, gaining knowledge. Thirdly, tracking may lead to persistence in following. Let’s look at the second development first, as it’s the most important one. The IE root gave rise to the PG verb *liznōjanan (PG j is pronounced like y), “follow along a track”, which eventually developed into OE leornian, which gives us learn. Another form, *laizijanan, developed into the modern German lehren, “teach”, but the related word in OE didn’t reach modern English. However, a third form, *laizō, became OE lār, “learning, knowledge, doctrine”, giving us modern English lore. Clearly, in the minds of the early Germanic peoples, tracking and tracing were good ways of gaining knowledge. I hope you’re keeping track.

Another derivation from the IE root which came down to us via PG involves tracking and following of a different kind, not with the mind but with persistence, the third development given above. PG *laistjanan developed the meaning of “follow, perform, carry out” and OE inherited it as lǣstan, “accomplish, carry out”, with the meaning developing into “continue, endure”, which is the meaning of the modern verb last. The final Germanic derivation from the same IE root in modern English, albeit a highly specialised and little used one, retains the use of the foot as opposed to the track itself, as outlined in the first development given above. PG also inherited the root word *laistaz from IE and this became lāst in OE, meaning “track, footprint”. This found its way into modern English as last, which is a foot-shaped block used by shoemakers to model their wares. Incidentally, the most common word with this spelling, the adjective last, is actually a contraction of latest, and has nothing to do with this root. If you’ve lasted to this point, I hope you can keep on the right track.

Now we come to the final (last?) derivation in modern English from this IE root, though this came to us courtesy of Latin, and in a rather strange way. The IE root turned up in Latin as līra, denoting a rather specialised type of track, namely “furrow”, as in the long, straight line produced by a plough. If a Roman ploughman couldn’t stay on a straight line, he would literally veer “off the furrow”, or dē līrā. This produced a verb dēlīrāre, “go off the furrow”, with the extended meaning of “go mad, rave”, and a noun dēlīrium, which modern English then borrowed as delirium, subsequently creating the adjective delirious and the medical term delirium tremens, which describes the effects of losing a dependency on alcohol. This also begs the question of whether Roman ploughmen were frequently drunk. I hope you can last out, though, without going delirious.

The concluding set of examples shows how a root can separate into different strands which can still remain true to the original meaning in their own ways, while showing clear divergence and different interpretations of that original meaning, sort of identical twins going their own ways but staying true to mum in some way. IE had a root *al-, with the basic meaning of “grow, nourish”. This produced a variety of derivations in Latin, including these: almus/alma, “nourishing”, as in the expression alma mater, literally “nourishing mother”, the institution where a graduate studied; adolēscere (with the prefix ad- and the change from a to o), “grow up”, which gives us adolescent and adult; alimentum, “nourishment”, from which we get alimentary and alimentation; and alimōnia, “nourishment, sustenance”, from which we get alimony. The IE *al- root was also extended in another way, *al-d-/ *al-dh-, which produced two types of growing, one in Latin altus and a different one in PG *alđáz. The Latin form focused on the aspect of growing in height, while the PG form did the same for age. Hence, altus produced altitude and altimeter, while *alđáz produced OE ald and eald, which give us old, elder and alderman, among other words. French has also bequeathed us more derivations from Latin after altus became haut, namely haute cuisine, oboe (originally haut bois, “high wood”, via Italian), and haughty, with the spelling mistakenly changed. For good measure, we also got alto from Italian. I can just imagine the reactions of quarrelling teenagers 6000 years ago when their parents shouted: “I wish you lot would just grow up!” – “which way?”

So, there we have it – three ways to get two or more words from the same root, but with widely varying results. There are a lot more of these out there as well – you just have to look for them. Or maybe I’ll bring them to you. Let me summarise this discussion in this way: for pecuniary reasons, you need to pay your fees when you learn in your alma mater, especially when you’re old enough, but don’t get haughty or you may find yourself suffering from delirium. Have fun word-hunting.

950 years ago today - the battle that changed our language forever

So here we are, exactly 950 years since the English language started to undergo probably its most radical change in history – the loss of its status as a national language and its transformation from an almost exclusively Germanic language into a Latinised Germanic mongrel. Vast swathes of its original vocabulary were supplanted by words from Old North French and standard Old French, with the result that some 60% of the vocabulary of our language comes either from French or from Latin, often via French. However, it's not just the vocabulary that has left a mark on our mother tongue; there have been other influences, and in commemoration of the momentous events of 950 years ago in the Battle of Hastings, I have outlined the main ones in this post. I hope you enjoy and appreciate them.

Basic vocabulary

First, let's look at some basic vocabulary changes. Among the myriad words that have arrived from French, many have ensconced themselves firmly within everyday English. Here is a selection just to give you a taste:

Old English didn't have a special word for what follows first, instead using other, so it borrowed second from Old French. It comes ultimately from Latin secundus and literally means “following”. Related words include sequence, suit and suite.

By Chaucer's time, Middle English had adopted because, which is a combination of English by and French cause, which in turn comes from Latin causa, “reason, matter”.

In modern English slang, a guv'nor, or guv, from governor, means “boss, sir, mate”. It comes ultimately from Greek kybernein, “steer”, via Latin gubernare, which produced gubernator, “ruler, director”, which French handed over as governor.

Every day we use good old English terms like “I hope so, I think so, I guess so”. To that we added “I suppose so”, or, as it's generally pronounced “s'pose so”. The Middle English supposen, “have an opinion, assume”, comes from Old French supposer and ultimately from Latin.

Old English used the word sore as an intensifier, much as Modern German uses sehr. Sore continues in its original meaning of “painful”, while sorely is old-fashioned but clearly an intensifier. However, Middle English went to Old French to borrow verai, from Latin verax, “truthful”, and turned it into very.

There are hundreds more everyday words like these which owe their existence to the Norman Conquest, including these, which you might like to follow up yourselves: chief, defeat, dress, eagle, fashion, grief, injury, judge, leisure, prison, push, quiet, reason, rest, royal, search, tax, trouble and uncle.

Names

It is well-known that Old English names were largely unpronounceable (at least to us). Who can forget the names from the spoof school history book, 1066 And All That: Ethelbreth, Athelthrall and Thruthelthrolth? OK, so the writers were going slightly over the top, but we still have Alfred, Audrey, Cedric, Earl, Edith, Edmund, Ethel, Harold, Oswald, Wilfred and Winifred, to name but a few. However, the Normans brought over a huge swathe of new names for us to choose from, including Alice, Charles, Clement, Felicity, Gerald, Geoffrey, Henry, Janine, Lucy, Marjorie, Matilda, Nancy, Richard, Robert and, of course, William. What's particularly interesting is that many of these names originally come from German, since the Germanic Franks, who gave their name to France when they settled there, supplied many of them. Just look at modern German Heinrich (Henry) and Wilhelm (William).

The Normans were also past masters at supplying us with surnames, most notably those connected with professions. Hence we have the person who makes bows, Archer, the person who chops up your meat, Butcher, the person who makes arrows, Fletcher, as well as the person who cuts the cloth for your clothes, Taylor and Turner, the person who, well, turns. One very interesting aspect of Norman names comes from their occupation of Ireland. All over the world people traditionally take their name from their parents. In English we have a large number of names ending in -son: Johnson, Williamson, Peterson, Harrison to name but a few. The same was true of the Norman French in Ireland. The French word for "son", fils, was prefixed to the father's name and was eventually rendered as fitz, hence: Fitzgerald, Fitzmorris, Fitzpatrick, Fitzsimmons and Fitzwilliam.

When we look at place names, we can see some that the Normans changed from previous names and a few new ones. They are usually names which mix the original English name with the name of the Norman Lord who took over the town or the area. Hence we have Ashby de-laZouch, Stoke Mandeville, Theydon Bois, Beauchamp, Beaulieu and Richmond.

Food

I've written about this already (see 21/4/16), but a few short words won't go amiss here. When the Normans took over and invited more of their countrymen into the conquered land, they only numbered about 10% of the population, but the top 10%. For anyone old enough to remember bottled milk being delivered to your door every morning, you could compare the social structure of England to the contents of a milk bottle – the Norman French cream on top of the Old English milk, accurately reflecting the provenance of these two words.

The same ran through society, most clearly exemplified by words for animals on the English farm and in the forest, and the meat served up on the Norman table: English pig/swine and French pork; English bull and French beef; English cow and French veal; English sheep and French mutton; English deer and French venison. This last one is especially interesting, as venison actually comes from the Latin venari, meaning “hunt”, while deer originally had the meaning of “animal”. Only the king and his nobles were allowed to hunt deer (transgressors did so under pain of death), so venison, literally “hunted meat” was highly prized. There are many other examples of French food from my previous blog post.

Doublets

Although many Old English words were lost in the face of new vocabulary from Old French, many words which came in with the conquerors happily settled into English and still exist alongside their older neighbours to this day. The differences in meaning and use are often subtle, and you can see for yourself how each doublet plays out. The situation is, in fact, further complicated by borrowings directly from Latin (often through Old French), with the result that we often have triplets! These examples will serve to illustrate the point:

English folk and French people; English stool and French chair (see how the stool is a diminished type of chair); English brotherhood and French fraternity; English kind and French gentle; English some and French several; English smell and French odour; English loss and French defeat;

English kingly, French royal and Latin regal; English twofold, French double and Latin duplicate; English guts, French bravery and Latin valour; English end, French finish and Latin terminate; English tell (cf bank teller), French count and Latin compute.

Throughout its history, French has rendered its Latin roots almost unrecognisable in some cases. Even those words which still bear a resemblance to Latin have undergone some major changes. Another development from the introduction of French into English has been a greater receptiveness to borrowing directly from Latin, or from Latin via Old French. As a result, we have numerous doublets from the two languages, essentially the same word in two forms: French sure and Latin secure; French poignant and Latin pungent; French chieftain and Latin captain; French count and Latin compute; French search and Latin circulate; French grief and Latin gravity; French frail and Latin fragile.

French has even given English doublets from different dialects of French. The Normans spoke a form called Old North French, which became Anglo-French after they settled down. However, many other Old French speakers arrived from other parts of France, mostly speaking standard Old French. Typically, Old North French had initial c- and w- where standard Old French had ch- and gu-, hence: carry and charge, both from Latin carricare, “transport, load”; catch and chase, from Latin captiare, “take, seize”, hence “hunt, try to take”; cattle and chattel, from Latin capitale, “property”; warranty and guarantee, from Frankish warand, “authorisation”; warden and guardian, from Frankish wardon, “watch”.

Meaning change

One of the things we have to remember about the words we've inherited from French is that we've changed the meanings quite a lot. Here are a few differences we shouldn’t forget when we venture to the other side of the Channel. In France, it's perfectly normal to demand things, as it simply means “ask” in French. If someone tells you they're désolé, they're simply sorry, not desolate. And never ask a man if he's embarrassé – men can't get pregnant, at least not yet. Also don't worry if your hotel maid deranges you. She'll just say sorry for disturbing you and come back later. It may not be sensible to fall in love in England, but it certainly is in France as being sensible involves the heart, not the head.

Pronunciation

Perhaps one of the most radical effects of French on English has been pronunciation. It's long been a running joke about how the French and the English can't pronounce each other's language properly, and there's some truth to that. English loves to weaken and chop syllables in speech even more than French does. Also, English is a stress-timed language, which means you only hear the stressed syllables clearly, with unstressed syllables swallowed up in between, while French is syllable-timed, which means that no one syllable is heavily stressed, thereby reducing the force of others. What’s more, English likes to stress the first syllable as far as possible, while French prefers the last.

Suffice it to say that there have been numerous changes in the way words of French origin in English are pronounced. Have a look at these borrowings from French, and find out how the related words are pronounced in French, Spanish and Italian: Asia, azure, leisure, pleasure, pressure, temperature, furniture, comfortable, suit, suite, precious, fusion.

Spelling

Last but not least, we come to spelling. By the time the Normans arrived, Old English was a fully-fledged literary language, with its own spelling rules. The Normans had to write texts in English for the general population to read, but the scribes preferred to use French as the basis, thereby introducing letters such as q and rewriting exclusively English letters and combinations of letters in their own way. Here are a few choice examples: cwic became quick; scip became ship; bricg became bridge; ðæt became that; hwæt became what; heofon became heaven; cese became cheese.

Epilogue

So, I hope you've enjoyed my short account of the changes that the Normans brought to our language. We can still see many of them in action today, 950 years since they began. I would imagine they will continue for many years hence. If you're still around in fifty years' time, then I hope you can dig this out again, wherever it may be, celebrate the full thousand years, and remember that relatively small events in one place at one time can have massive consequences, not least the wholesale restructuring of so much of a language.

Double trouble

Now. I'm going to warn you. This may be a bit boring and esoteric for some of you, so if you don't like in-depth, heavy-duty linguistic analyses, then sign off now. Only kidding! Well, OK, this post is a bit more technical, I admit, but bear with me. It's still bloody interesting (well, at least I think so).

If any of you readers are from a part of your country where the dialect of English that you normally speak is not considered “standard”, this is mainly for you. As you may well know, in the UK, we have something known as “received pronunciation”, or “the Queen's English”, which is basically a way of being very snobby. Time was all BBC presenters spoke as if they had just had a suppository shoved up a place where it hurts – and it was still hurting. This dichotomy between the “official” version of a language and the “inferior” dialects is not confined to English. Indeed, around two hundred years ago in France local dialects were flourishing all over the country, until the central government gradually imposed the supremacy of its chosen form of French over the rest.

Indeed, we can see the effects of different Old French dialects in modern English. Yes, after almost a thousand years, we still have that split with us. The Normans spoke a dialect of Old North French, while the standard Old French was spoken further over in the Paris area. The Normans brought over their dialect when they conquered England, but they and their successors also had possessions in other parts of France and brought over settlers and workers from these regions. As a result, different varieties of Old French were spoken in England, and in some cases essentially the same word would enter English at different times, with different pronunciations and different meanings.

Two differences stick out in particular. Firstly, where standard Old French had the “ch” sound, Old North French retained the “c” sound – essentially Standard Old French palatalised many words from Latin with “c”, such as chien from canis, “dog”, and chef from caput, “head”. Secondly, mainly with words borrowed from Frankish, standard French changed the “w” into “g(u)”, while Old North French kept the “w”, hence standard French guerre from Frankish werra, “war”. So, here are some of the most common words which display these differences and still remain part of our language.

In Medieval Latin, capitale was used to denote property and stock. In Old North French capitale became cattle and ended up referring to property with four hooves, two horns and loud moo sounds, while in Old French it became chattel, which came to denote moveable but inanimate property and is now rather dated.

The Latin verb capere, “take”, produced many words which we have taken into modern English. From the Vulgar Latin form captiare came the Old North French cachier, “chase, capture”, which became our catch. What's strange about this verb is that in Middle English it was treated like an Old English verb and developed the irregular past tense caught rather than catched. The same Vulgar Latin verb, captiare, produce chacier, “hunt”, in Old French, which then entered English as chase. So now we have two words, originally with the same meaning, indicating two aspects of the same process: first you chase and then you catch.

Here are two more verbs which have similar histories. Latin borrowed carrus, “chariot”, from a Celtic language, and then provided a variety of modern words from the root, including car, carriage and chariot. Late Latin created carricare, “transport by vehicle”, which became carier in Old North French and Anglo-French, ending up as carry. Meanwhile, from another meaning of carricare, “load a vehicle”, came Old French charger, which came to us as charge. So, although technically taxis charge you to carry you, they could equally do it the other way round, which would be rather interesting.

What's the difference between a castle and a château? Well, essentially they're the same, both coming from Latin castellum, “fortress”, with castle coming into Middle English from Old North French with the Normans, and château coming into modern English directly from modern standard French via posh English holidaymakers (presumably). However, that's not the whole story. Old English had already borrowed castle from Latin with the meaning of “village”, and when the Normans came, castle changed from being a village to being a stronghold, much as we understand it now. In fact, when the Anglo-Saxons first settled in England, they took the Latin castrum, “fort”, and made ceaster, applying it to a variety of places, giving us such place names as Chester, Manchester, Winchester, Lancaster, Leicester, Worcester and Exeter, to name but a few. So a wine called Château Chester would essentially be repeating itself.

Vulgar Latin triccare, “evade, cheat”, became trikier in Old North French, which gave us trick and trickery, which, of course, can range from rather innocuous to rather sinister in meaning. However, its Old French cousin from the same root, trechier, is far more serious, because treachery can see you end up in the Tower of London waiting for your head to be parted from your body.

The Frankish were a German-speaking people who settled in France during the first three centuries CE and gave the country their name while losing their own language. However, they endowed French with many of their own words, with the result that French vocabulary has a sizeable Frankish contingent, much of which is related to Old English. One Frankish word, warand, “authorisation”, took two forms when it entered French: warant in Old North French and garant in Old French. The Old North French gave us warrant, and also produced warantie, which came into Anglo-French and later to us as warranty. Much later, in the 17th century, guarantee joined us from French, thereby giving us two words which have been an endless source of headaches ever since – do you have a warranty or a guarantee, and what the hell is the difference? No answers on a postcard, please!

One last pair shows this “duality” in a way which is really a “triality”. The modern “ward” comes down directly from the Old English weard, “watchman, sentry”, though other meanings have developed over time. Frankish, being a cousin of Old English, gave Old North French the form wardein, which comes down to us via Anglo-French as warden. Of course, Old French changed the Frankish form to garde, which gives us guard. So we have three words essentially from the same root, which still refer more or less to the same thing, but which came to us via three different routes. Some other words from Frankish via Old French are: guise and guide, which are both related to the English wise and wit, ultimately from a root meaning “know” and “see”, and guile, which is related to wile.

So there we are. There's no knowing the path a word will take away from its origins before returning to the fold. Let's be happy that they came back and enriched our language even more.

950 years, and all that.

So it's 2016, quite a big year, especially if your name is Shakespeare. Don't get me wrong. The Bard truly deserves to be celebrated for the 400 years since he died. It seems like his birth/death day anniversary is the biggest thing we are going to remember this year. I mean, last year, there was the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2, the 100th anniversary of a variety of WW1 battles and the 200th anniversary of Waterloo (no, not ABBA winning the Eurovision Song contest, though, I admit, it does seem like 200 years ago), not to mention the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt (Shakespeare again – O for a Muse of fire that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention…) and the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. All of them are worthy of great attention.

Yet, the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, mighty though it is, can be superseded by the anniversary of another event, one which is (or at least used to be) imprinted in the mind of every schoolchild in Britain. It's not really a sexy anniversary because the real sexy anniversary arrives in another fifty years, but as I don't think that I, and most probably you, will be around then, it seems prudent to remember it this year, especially as its effects are so pervasive in our culture.

As a way of measuring the significance of this event, let me look back at the first two paragraphs of this text and list these words: quite, especially, Shakespeare, deserves, celebrated, anniversary, remember, variety, battles, Eurovision, contest, admit, mention, ascend, invention, signing, attention, superseded, event, imprinted, school, sexy, real, arrives, probably, around, prudent, effects, pervasive, culture.

If it were not for this event, it is highly unlikely that many, if any, of the words listed would exist in our language. And the reason is this: 950 years ago, on 14th October 1066, a gentleman by the name of Duke William II of Normandy engaged in battle and defeated another gentleman by the name of King Harold Godwinson on a hill situated around seven miles from the town of Hastings on the Sussex coast in England. William was descended from a group of Vikings who had settled in Normandy some 150 years earlier. They soon discarded their native Norse language, adopting the French language and expanding their influence in the area. Harold had been crowned king of England on the death of Edward the Confessor, but both King Harald of Norway and Duke William claimed the throne, and both prepared to invade England to realise their claims. King Harold defeated King Harald in the north of England before hurrying back south to face William, as a result of which his army was not at their operational best. Harold famously died on the battlefield and is reputedly the figure depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry with the arrow in his eye.

Up to that time, Old English had been a thriving language of government, education, literature, culture and everyday use, although Latin was also used for liturgical and educational purposes. If we look at Modern German, we can see to an extent the grammar, structure and vocabulary that once characterised Old English. However, fate struck a mortal blow to Old English on that day. That one day is the reason why the words listed in italics above exist in our language. Soon after William consolidated his control of the whole country, Old English ceased to be the language of all the people and all the classes. It became submerged, downgraded, relegated and ignored. In short, it became a third-class language. Latin remained the language of the church and of education, Anglo-French became the language of law, culture, literature and the elite, and Old English belonged to the downtrodden hordes.

The Norman invaders, comprising maybe no more than 10% of the entire population, ruled over the English masses. You could say it was like the bottles of milk of yesteryear that the milkman used to leave on our doorsteps: the rich 10% at the top was cream, a French word, and the 90% under that was milk, an English word. To make it in the Norman world, you had to learn French. No king of England ever spoke English for some 200 years after the conquest. Forget Richard the Lionheart talking posh English to Robin Hood in Hollywood films – he spoke only French. For some 200 years after the Norman conquest, the English royalty controlled large parts of French territory and many people from all parts of France came and settled in England, bringing Norman French and standard French, which we can still see in our language today.

It would take until the 13th century for the nobility to start speaking English and the 14th century for Middle English to emerge as a language of culture and literature, as so wonderfully and entertainingly shown by the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. By that time, huge changes had taken place, and French words had replaced vast numbers of Old English words, transforming the face of our language forever. The vocabulary of Modern English retains only 20-30% of the original Old English vocabulary, albeit the most common words in use, but over 60% of our vocabulary comes ultimately from Latin, most of that courtesy of the French introduced by the Normans.

And that is what this blog will celebrate in the lead up to the 950th anniversary of that famous, fateful day. It will look at some of the strange phenomena, unusual journeys, fascinating coincidences and bizarre histories of some of these words and word families, and answer these and many other questions:

How did one word that originally meant “light” give rise to the word “journey”, and another word that originally meant “three stakes” give rise to “travel”?

Why are animals English when they're alive, but French when they're cooked?

Why is our spelling so confusing, and our pronunciation so ridiculous? Try explaining the pronunciation of “temperature” and “comfortable” to a Spanish or Italian native speaker.

Why is a noble “count” a completely different word from an election “count”?

Why do we have so many words for the same thing? Why do we have warranties and guarantees? Why can monarchs be kingly, royal and regal?

Over the next few months leading up to the great day. I hope you will be my companion (literally, the one who shares my bread) for the whole journey. I'll try to make it as fascinating and entertaining as I can, but I don't really have to – it does the job by itself. So, welcome to 950 years: What have the Normans ever done for us? And in answer, I think you will find – a hell of a lot!

Things you never knew about your body, Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my little wander through the weirder side of names for parts of the body. In this part we'll start off with measurements. Probably the most obvious part of the body used as a measurement is the foot. The main problem with using a foot to measure things is the fact that feet are generally not the same length from person to person, so until a foot was defined as twelve inches, it was rather inaccurate, as all measurements based on body parts must have been.

The other four measurements in this discussion are all based on the upper limbs. The most obvious is the “hand”, though this is only used nowadays as a measurement in association with horses, despite the use of hands for measurement going back to the ancient Egyptians. Three other measurements take up more than the hand, stretching some way up the arm. The first is the “ell”, a word of Germanic origin related to Latin ulna. The ell was a measurement from the tip of the middle finger to, naturally, the elbow, which, of course, takes its name from the ell. The second is the “cubit”, which denotes exactly the same length as the ell. In fact, cubit comes from Latin cubitum, “elbow”, which is actually related to Greek kybos, “space above a cow's hip”, and also to English “hip” itself. So there we have it: the ell is the same as the cubit in length, the elbow is the same as the cubitum as a joint, and the ell is related to the ulna, the bone leading from the elbow to the hand, while “cubit” is from the same root as “hip”. So in a real sense, you're elbow's connected to your hip bone.

The third is actually something which could be alternately the same measurement as a cubit, alternately a weapon, and which ends up as being not so much a measurement as an indicator of size. The Greek pygme, related to Latin pugnus, meant “fist”, which, of course, usually only exists at times of anger and conflict. A pygme also represented the same length as a cubit, and this meaning was applied to a mythical race of people known in Greek as pygmaioi, reputed to be only the height of a cubit, thereby giving us modern “pygmy”.

Another interesting aspect of body terminology is the way we can use parts of the body to make things happen. Here are some which may never have occurred to you. First up, what do you say when someone sneezes? Why, "bless you", of course. However, if you knew the original meaning of “bless”, you might not be so willing to say it. We think of a blessing as being a priest making the sign of the cross, but 1500 odd years ago it was something quite different. The pagan Germanic tribes which came to Britain at the fall of the Roman empire engaged in animal sacrifice, and blessing involved sprinkling blood on the object to be sanctified. The ancestor of “bless”, Old English bloedsian, meant “sanctify with blood”. When Christianity arrived, the practice changed but the term remained. What's more, the French blesser, “wound”, is from a Frankish root similar to Old English bloedsian. Both roots referred to the letting of blood - in war in French, in religion in English. You could say that Stephen King's Carrie was blessed in an English way with pig's blood, and returned the favour by treating her teachers and schoolmates to quintessentially French blessures.

On the subject of religion, have you ever thought about the way many children are taught to adhere to religious dogma? One way to ensure they learn and never forget the teaching is to inculcate it into them. Now, you might think that violence is not the best way to teach, but “inculcate” tells another story, whether literal or metaphorical. The Latin calx meant “heel”, and inculcare meant literally “stamp in”, the idea being that once stamped in, knowledge would remain. However, if a child did not want to be inculcated, he or she might do a little stamping of their own by being recalcitrant. Calx also produced the verbs calcitrare, “kick”, and recalcitrare, “kick back”, rather like a horse or a donkey. “Recalcitrant” was borrowed from Latin in the 19^th C with the meaning of “obstinately disobedient”, rather like a kicking donkey. Stamping and kicking - who would have thought that the education process could be so violent?

If all that stamping and kicking has taken it out of you, have a rest. And what better way to have a rest than to doss for a while? And while you're dossing, looking up at the stars or the ceiling, you can think of the best way to doss and why it's called dossing at all – because you're on your back, which, of course, is dos in French, from Latin dorsum. So there you have it – if you lie on your front, you can't be termed a dosser. Another thing you can do with your back is to write on it, or rather, let someone else write on it, especially if you want to be a bank cheque. “Endorse” comes from the Old French endosser, “put on the back (of)” (with the spelling changed later). So if you're a politician running for office, you can always get important supporters to endorse you, perhaps with a giant stamp on your back saying “The Next President”.

Of course, if you do run for office, you'll have to persuade enough people to give you their vote to make sure you win. So you'll spend days consulting the polls, until the day when the real poll comes – the only one that matters. That's when everyone lines up and officials count their heads, usually one per person. OK, that would be rather time-consuming and impractical in a modern democracy, but that's how polls started out – head counts. “Poll” in Middle English originally referred to the head, or just the hair of the head, before it came to mean “head count”, and later “election”. The old meaning can still be seen in that much-reviled term “poll-tax”, literally a tax per head of population. Now, let's move from the head to the other end of the body, at least for quadrupeds - the tail. Latin coda, “tail” has produced three words in modern English. The tail-end of a musical piece is termed the “coda”; the tail that you wait in is a “queue”, which comes via French; and the tail that you use to hit balls on a table is a “cue”, an alternative spelling of “queue”.

One other part of the body can prove useful in amusing the public, as long as you know how to use it for speaking - your belly, venter in Latin. That's precisely what a ventriloquist does – speak from the belly, though in a sense, we all speak from the belly from time to time, with sounds that say “I can't eat another morsel”.

Part 3 coming up soon.

Things you never knew about your body: Part 1

We all know the names of the parts of the body, where the parts are and what they do. What we might not know are the strange origins of some of those names, as well as some of the bizarre uses that parts of the body have been put to, literally and figuratively speaking. Over the next few posts, I'll be expounding on some weird and wonderful linguistic facts regarding certain parts of our bodies.

Let's start with the origins of some of these terms. Your shoulder is quite a large, flattish bone. If you took it out of your body, you might be able to use it in the garden (or maybe you wouldn't be able to, as one of your arms would be inoperative), because it probably comes from an ancient root meaning “dig”. Of course, if you do anything vigorous like digging, you'll need plenty of muscles – all those little mice running around your body. For indeed, that's what muscle means, coming from Latin musculus, literally “little mouse”, so named because in ancient times muscles flexing were thought to resemble mice moving around. Just think of that next time you're down at the gym watching those bodybuilders pumping iron. Of Mice and Men.

Still on the subject of animals, the most prominent features of carnivores are their fangs, those big, sharp pointy teeth. What are they used for? Seizing and gripping, of course, which is precisely what fangs do, as evidenced by these exact meanings in Old English. By the time Dracula came along, he no longer needed to seize or grip his victims with his fangs; he just needed to plunge them in the neck. One group of animals, to which we indeed belong, are the mammals, so named because they have mammaries to supply milk to their young. This term came about because baby Romans used to cry out mamma! to their mothers, who responded by offering them their mammaries. Of course, the big question is, do baby vampires say "fangs for the mammaries"?

Other body parts with interesting origins include the skeleton. While we think of the skeleton as all the bones in the body connected together, that's a relatively modern usage of the word, as originally a skeleton denoted mummification, from the Greek skeleton soma, literally “dried up body”, from the verb skellein, “dry up”. So, with Halloween coming up, it would be more appropriate to wear a mummy costume than a skeleton one.

The extremities of the skeleton consist of fingers and toes, ten of each. However, technically speaking you should have twenty toes and no fingers, or at least, the toes should be on your hands. One of the most common and obvious things we do with our fingers is point. In fact, that's why we call them digits. Latin dicitus came from an ancient root meaning “point out, show”, related to English “teach”. Dicitus changed in time to digitus and referred to the things we point with, namely fingers. The idea of digits being pointers was clearly the case in the Germanic languages, because the Old English ta, which gives us the modern “toe”, comes from the same root as dicitus. Essentially, "toes teach", at least according to their ancient meanings. In time, “finger” took over the meaning of the digits on the hand, while toes remained on the foot, having long lost their association with pointing. Unless, of course, you wear shoes with pointy toecaps.

One last part of the skeleton has come to mean something you might pop into your mouth and crunch away on. No, this is nothing to do with cannibalism. It involves the Latin bracchius, which meant “arm”, and which produced brachitellum, “little arm”. This was borrowed by Old High German as brezitella and used to denote a biscuit made in the form of folded arms, the modern “pretzel”. So, logically speaking, that's something to think about next time you're at a cocktail party.

Look out for some more tasty morsels in the next post on body parts.

What's in a national name?

It's axiomatic that one of the most important aspects of an identity for both an individual and an ethnic group is the name of the group, whether that be a clan, a tribe or a nationality. It may come as quite a surprise to find out that the commonly used name of such a group is often not that name which the group gives itself. However, this is more often the case than you might think. Here are a few well-known, and a few less well-known examples.


The Scots


What comes to mind when you think of the Scots? Kilts, whisky, Rangers, Celtic, lochs, Rabbie Burns, och aye the noo, etc., etc. However, the original use of the term Scot was by the Romans, who referred to the Scotti, raiders from Ireland who settled Scotland and brought their language, Gaelic, with them. So perhaps the Scots should really be drinking whiskey, chasing leprechauns and kissing the Blarney Stone.


The Welsh


This is a classic example of a people bearing a name which was given to them by a hostile people and which is essentially dismissive of them. When the Romans abandoned the British to their fate in the face of the invading Germanic tribes which came to be known as the Anglo-Saxons, the British tribes took on the name Combrogi, Fellow Countrymen, which eventually became the Welsh name of their country, Cymru (pronounced come-re). The term Welsh came from the invading Germanic tribes and meant foreign. So essentially, the Welsh were called foreigners by the English in their own land – a habit which the English have cherished right up to now with regard to other nations. A further twist comes from the fact that the term Welsh originally came from the Volcae, a Celtic tribe encountered by the Romans whose name they applied to all Celts. This term was picked up by the Germanic tribes and adopted as the term for foreign, which is still true in modern German Welsch, which denotes peoples that speak languages descended from Latin.


The French


We talk of Gallic humour, Gallic shrugs and Gallic wit, but that should really only apply to those of Celtic descent, who can trace their ancestry back to the time of Gaul before Caesar conquered it and brought it into the Roman empire. The French are technically not Gauls – they're German. The Franks were a group of German tribes, some of which started to settle in ancient Gaul during the time of the Roman empire, but who eventually took over the country after the collapse of Roman rule. In fact, Frankish vocabulary accounts for about 10% of modern French vocabulary, with the bulk coming from Latin and the rest mainly from Gaulish. So the French shouldn't really be the French, as so little of what the French are is genuinely French.


The Dutch


Now, the Dutch are used to being called Dutch, but they never call themselves Dutch, and they don't really like the term, calling themselves Nederlands, people from the Low Country. This is mainly because the real Dutch are the Germans, who call themselves Deutsch. I know, it gets confusing. The origin of Dutch and Deutsh is the Germanic version of the ancient Indo-European form *teuta, people, which produced Proto-Germanic *theudiskaz, of the people, producing Old High German diutisc. So basically, the Germans call themselves the People, but the Dutch, who English speakers call the People, don't like being called the People. Other languages use a word from the same root to name the Germans: Italian Tedesco, Scandinavian Tysk, and even the languages of Eastern Asia. Funnily enough, the Slavonic languages all refer to the Germans as Nemtsi, literally the Dumb Ones, as the Germanic tribes were unable to speak the language of the Slavs, who regarded themselves literally as speakers, or people of the Word, slovo.


The Greeks


Let's get one thing straight. The Greeks have never been the Greeks. They have been many things, but never Greeks. What I mean by this is that the Greeks have never called themselves Greek, and are the victims of name-calling by foreigners, in this case the Romans, who designated them according to a subset of the wider people, which is actually quite a common occurrence (see below). Interestingly, the Greek government once ran a campaign to get foreigners to effectively abolish the term Greek and use Hellene, with little success.


The people known as the Greeks have actually called themselves many things. Homer, writing around 750 BCE, mostly used Achaeans, Argives and Danaans, terms which are associated with different areas in Greece, to describe the peoples who went to war against the Trojans. After Homer's time, the name Hellene gained currency throughout Greece and has remained the name that the Greeks use for themselves to this day, along with the name of the country Hellas (modern Elladha), though that's not the whole story.


As the Romans expanded their rule through Italy, mainly to the south, they started to come across various peoples living in cities which were colonies settled by people from mainland Greece. The practice of the colonies was to identify themselves strongly with their mother-city, metropolis, in Greece, rather than with the Greeks as a whole, who were all Hellenes (though they constantly fought amongst themselves). The first of these people who the Romans came into contact with called themselves Graikoi in acknowledgement of the region they originated from in Greece, so the Romans cheerfully called the whole of southern Italy Magna Graecia, Great Greece. The name stuck and the rest is history.


It doesn't end there. The Greeks also founded colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, the best known of which referred to themselves as Ionian, giving their name to that region. The coast of Asia Minor fell under the dominion of Persia, which took the name Ionian to refer to all Greeks. From this we get variations of the term Ionian in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew to refer to the Greeks. All this chimes with other instances of one tribe or group being used to denote the wider group, such as the Chechens being named by the Russians after a village in their country, and the Germanic Allemani tribe giving their name to French, Spanish and Portuguese to describe all Germans.


One final thing here; the Greeks don't even call themselves Hellenes, really. Hellene is largely a revival of the ancient term to denote the modern country. Before modern Greece was founded, any self-respecting Greek would call himself Romios, Roman, and many still do. By the time the Roman empire split into eastern and western, Athens had long been reduced to a village and the centre of the Hellenic world was Byzantium, or Constantinople, known just as i Polis, the City, by the Greeks. In fact, if one Greek asked another where he was going, he would reply “to the City”, “is tin bolin”, which gives the modern Istanbul. As Constantinople was the capital of the surviving Roman empire, the people living there called themselves Romios, Roman, even though they spoke Greek. So, essentially the Greeks reject the name of one of their own tribes, which was applied to them by the Romans, but are happy to call themselves by the name of the people who actually gave them the name from their own language that they reject. That's history for you.


The Russians, the Hungarians and the Romanians


The Russians are not really the Russians. They're actually Swedes. Well, at least their name is Swedish. Back in medieval times, before the Slavic tribes settled down in the countries we are familiar with now, groups of Swedes known as Varangians, essentially eastern Vikings, started rowing their ships from the Baltic up the rivers of what is now modern Russia. These people were known for their rowing skills, from which they got the name Rus, the first name of the kingdom which became Russia. The name also sticks in the Finnish name of Sweden, Ruotsi.


The Hungarians are not really the Hungarians. They're the Magyars. However, they were stuck with the name Hungarian, which comes from the Turkic Onogur, meaning either Ten Tribes or Ten Arrows. Medieval Latin added the initial H.


Finally we get to the Romanians. Romania, formerly known as Dacia, was settled by the Romans in the 2^nd century. Although the Romans pulled out around 150 years later, it was enough for Latin to be established as the main language. Apparently, from that time the Romanians have always regarded themselves as the true Romans, which, in a sense they are, even though it's debatable how many of them are actually descended from the original Romans. Still, at least they have the name they want to call themselves, even thought the real Rome is hundreds of miles away in Italy.


There's a world of weird and wonderful ethnic names just waiting to be discovered. Feel free to find some more and bring them back here.