The Story of English episode 2 - The Mother Tongue - Part 4 / 7

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• eng2
• 4

[cvh1755]

Love the part about how English adopted the "s" for plurals.

[FenceThis]

Orm Gammelsen - what a cool name !

[NikeBlack7]

Reminds me once again why I love this crazy lunatic language...

[ANARCHYGOD2012]

@retread01 besides the newer french language latin and most all old world european languages have masculine and feminine like italian spanish portugues romansch romanian and all european dialects from latin origin catalan galego asturiano aragones sardinian etc spanish is still easiest language from latin family to learn for english speakers

[TDOTEMPIRE]

omg Yorkshire language sounds like the stereotypical Canadian accent that Americans think we have, more so the one out in West Canada with words like "out" and "about" as if we say "oot" or "aboot" instead -__-

[MillionthUsername]

It makes perfect sense that the new English dropped the endings when two related languages (Old English and Old Norse) came back into contact through the various conquests and settlements of England. They would have many words in common but the grammar would frustrate their communication as they mixed, so they ended up dropping many of the complications.

Adding a simple "s" for plural nouns was a stroke of genius. Thank you, you ancient horse traders! ; )

[offspringy]

Bloody hell, im from South Yorkshire and i had trouble catching most of that lol

[FenceThis]

fun listening to the norse sentence " ek mun selje thær hrossit sem dregir vagnen min " ( or how it would be properly spelled out ) being a modern descendant of the ancient naturalborn norse-speakers I have no problem understanding that fluently.Sounds like some far related cousin from the countryside, which basically it is ! ;-)

[retread01]

@frantic1971 Yes, and English makes the whole gender system seem ludicrous and pointless (in my opinion!). My table and chair are not masculine or feminine! I'd imagine lots of French people would rather do without the arbitrary genders but the French government jealously guards the language against unpleasantries like innovation.

[Hexachloraphine]

I suspect the next evolution will be into mandaringlish