"How do Languages Change & Evolve" Questionnaire

How Languages Evolve

The Anglo-Saxon Migration or how English started

By my work [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Here's how the English language got started. After Roman troops withdrew from Britain in the early 5th century, three Germanic peoples — the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — moved in and established kingdoms. They brought with them the Anglo-Saxon language, which combined with some Celtic and Latin words to create Old English. Old English was first spoken in the 5th century, and it looks incomprehensible to today's English-speakers. To give you an idea of just how different it was, the language the Angles brought with them had three genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral). Still, though the gender of nouns has fallen away in English, 4,500 Anglo-Saxon words survive today. They make up only about 1 percent of the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, but nearly all of the most commonly used words that are the backbone of English. They include nouns like "day" and "year," body parts such as "chest," arm," and "heart," and some of the most basic verbs: "eat," "kiss," "love," "think," "become." FDR's sentence "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" uses only words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Where English comes from

Credits: Stand Still. Stay Silent. Blog

English, like more than 400 other languages, is part of the Indo-European language family, sharing common roots not just with German and French but with Russian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian. This beautiful chart by Minna Sundberg, a Finnish-Swedish comic artist, shows some of English's closest cousins, like French and German, but also its more distant relationships with languages originally spoken far from the British Isles such as Farsi and Greek.

Where do the calendar months get their names?

Lexical Distance among Languages in Europe

This diagram shows the lexical distance among the languages spoken in Europe. As I speak languages of Romance and Germanic root, I find Greek, right there in the middle, particularly tempting... What about you?

Diagram credits: Lingholic

The World Map for THANK YOU

I really don't know if I agree with the "cheers" as thank you for British English... But let's assume the other suggestions are accurate. The Portuguese "OBRIGADO/OBRIGADA" should also be shown for Portugal! Do leave your remarks for your language as well! Obrigada. :)

Map credits: Lingholic

The European (and around) Map for TEA

Map credits: Lingholic