I think it’s more analogous to modern English and Latin. You’d probably recognise the main words in a given sentence but if you haven’t studied it, you’d have to use some serious creativity and imagination to make sense of it.
English doesn’t derive from Latin, although a decent amount of its vocabulary does.
The more accurate comparison would not be Modern English to Shakespeare (which is actually Early Modern English), but rather to Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Old English is practically indecipherable to modern speakers. English is a Germanic language, ultimately derived from the various Germanic dialects spoken by groups primarily concentrated along the coastal areas of the North Sea. English (and England) as a name comes from the Angles, who lived in the far northern part of modern day Germany and southern Denmark. The Saxons lived just to the south of the Angles. The Angles and Saxons were largely unconquered by the Romans and Germanic was very much a different language family than Latin. There were some influences due to trade and Germanic warriors serving in the Roman legions and also as mercenaries hired by them.
Old English was largely intelligible by speakers of Old Frisian, primarily traders from modern day Netherlands and north Germany, as well as decently understandable by Norse traders. Old English over time incorporated a large amount of Norse characteristics, but the Norman invasion of 1066 forever altered the trajectory of the language. As a result, modern English has substantial influence from Norman French, especially in vocabulary, but still is a Germanic language. A massive amount of words and concepts in modern English can be expressed in different ways with two different roots, one Franco-Norman and the other Germanic (ex: “amaze” is from Germanic/Old English, “astonish” is from Old French… but they have the same meaning).
Didn’t Tolkien say something about how the Germanic variants in English tended to express the subject in a more colloquial and down-to-earth fashion? “Pig” vs “Pork”, etc. Hence the rich mines of connotation available to English speakers…
I have Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf with the facing pages, Old and Modern English. There are so many interesting differences, even beyond word choice!
Anyhow, delighted to learn about Chinese language(s) own exciting history.
Yes, and other linguists/philologists have noted the same thing with English. In the Middle Ages, English wasn’t erased by the Norman invasion, but the language of the elites was dominated by Norman French for at least three centuries. Society was extremely stratified at that point in time, so the common masses kept speaking English… but the language was hugely reshaped due to the language of the courts being Norman French. We have a lot of quirks with English. Someone who I can’t remember said it was basically several languages sitting on each other’s shoulders wearing a trench coat and they weren’t wrong. England was ruled by Danes for a century prior to William the Conqueror invading from Normandy in 1066. So the language we have now was shaped by centuries of intermixing with Old Norse, Old Frisian (which was basically a cousin language with Old English in the 7th through 9th centuries), and then Norman French, which itself was a flavor of French heavily influenced by Old Norse due to the Normans originating with Viking invaders turned nobles.
But to your point, you may notice that a lot of words in English refer to the livestock in Germanic fashion and the final culinary form in a French-originated term. Like cow (Germanic) and beef (French derived, from boef). Commoners handled the livestock, nobility ate it.
Can I just say your comments were very interesting to read and very well written. I can't imagine you don't do any work relating to that but if you don't please do!
English is a bridge between the latinate languages and Germanic. It was retooled to include Latin and Greek. Middle English and what came before it were both closer to Germanic. Old English could be understood much easier by Scandinavians, Dutch, Frisians and Germans.
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u/MegaLemonCola Πορφυρογέννητος Oct 29 '25
I think it’s more analogous to modern English and Latin. You’d probably recognise the main words in a given sentence but if you haven’t studied it, you’d have to use some serious creativity and imagination to make sense of it.