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Have you ever wondered why we have so many words for the same thing in English? It's because we used to speak Anglo-Saxon until the French king William the Conqueror invaded us and brought the French language with him. French never became the language of the peasants and ordinary people; it was only spoken in the court of the king and among the powerful. For this reason, French words in English are more formal than their Anglo-Saxon synonyms. In this lesson, we will look at some English history, and I will give you examples of formal and informal words and where they came from. I am fascinated by the evolution of the English language -- how it has developed, changed, and adapted over time. Perhaps English is the world’s number one language for international communication because it always adapts, incorporating new words from different cultures and bringing these into the English language itself.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What we're talking about today is a little bit of a history lesson of the English language. We're going to talk about why English has so many synonyms, why we don't just have one word to things, sometimes there's more than one word for it. I'm also going to talk about informal language and formal language, why there's always so much of a choice in English. And the reason is because we always have this split in English between words that come from an Anglo Saxon origin and words that come from a French origin, and it's said that about 30... 30% of words actually have a... Can't speak today. Have a French origin and we still use those words today. And generally, the ones that come from French, they have a more formal quality to them, and the ones that come from Anglo Saxon are more neutral and they're the ones that native speakers use all time when they're speaking just among each other.
But first I'm going to recite a little bit of a poem for you because this poem comes from Middle English, and the English that you'll hear is really different to the English that I'm speaking now. It will be like I'm speaking a different language, but what you will hear is the blend between Anglo Saxon words and French words. Okay? So let's see if I remember it.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour.
And I could continue, but I won't. And that comes from a really famous poem in English taken from The Canterbury Tales, and it's the first part of The Canterbury Tales called the general prologue. And it's in Middle English, the time when the peasants spoke Anglo Saxon English-peasants are the poor people-and all the rulers spoke French. And the reason that happened is because in 1066 there was a big battle when a French king of a part of France called Normandy came and defeated the English king at that time, and then he became king of England. So when he became king of England, he brought all his people over and the language of power in England at that time became French. So everybody who was in a position of power spoke French. So in the course the... Every decision-maker in England spoke French. Meanwhile, all the peasants just carried on speaking Anglo Saxon like they did before, and the words that they used and the language they spoke came from Germany and Norway. They were different tribes and before they came over to England. So there were two different languages going on. Plus it was only much later that the two... The two languages blended to become one language that we speak now that we have both, have both Anglo Saxon words and French words in our language.
What else is important to say about it? I know there's something I've missed. Hopefully I'll remember what I missed. Oh yes. And because the kings and the ruling people spoke in French and the peasants spoke in Anglo Saxon, I feel like that distinction is still there. So when we're not trying to be formal or official or anything, we use words of Anglo Saxon origin. Only when we're trying to express ourselves in a very elegant way or an official way do we use the French origin words. So even though our language has become one thing, we're still keeping this idea in our language that the French words are sort of higher.
And this is also important for you because when you learn English, especially if you already speak a European language, a Latin European language, it's often so easy for you to learn a lot of the verbs because they just sound the same, and so you don't bother with phrasal verbs because you've already got a verb you can use that's almost the same in your own language. But the problem is this gives your speech a really formal quality so you're not speaking like a native speaker at all. And this is also to do with Anglo Saxon because we get all our phrasal verbs from the Anglo Saxon origin. So that's something that we'll talk about in the next part of the lesson, but first before we get there I also want to give you some examples to do with meat and animals.
Maybe in your country you just have the same word for the animal and for the meat. It's the same thing, right? Well, in English we have different words. Here are the words for the animal, and these are Anglo Saxon words. So the Anglo Saxons were the peasants and they were working on the farm with the animals, and these are the words they had for the animals: "sheep", "deer", "cow", "hen". One-syllable words. Typical. Typical-sounding, short, Anglo Saxon words. Meanwhile, the kings and the rulers-that's supposed to be like a big piece of chicken or something-they ate lots of meat and they had different words. They didn't touch the animals on the farm, they just ate the animals.
They had the word: "mutton". "Mutton" is an old sheep. We don't actually really eat mutton now in England. We eat lamb, which is a young... A younger sheep. Deer is "venison", the meat for that is called "venison". The meat for cow is "beef", and the meat for hen is "poultry." This is a more general word for... This is a more general word for chicken and other birds that you can eat. We can also thank the French people who came and conquered us in for the words that they brought into the language to do with the food. I don't know what the peasants of that time ate, but French brought us lots of words, like: "cuisine", "soup", "spice", "mayonnaise". So, we... We have... We still always take a lot of cooking words from French. Plus, as I said to you, the French were in positions of power.
That's the reasons why so many of our words to do with finance and government come from French. "Mortgage", "parliament", "interest". When we come back we're going to look at some more specific comparisons of Anglo Saxon and French words. Okay, let's compare some of those Anglo Saxon words and the French words. On the... Here we've got the... Oh, that's silly of me. Here the Anglo Saxon words, here are the French words. And I mentioned to you that phrasal verbs come from Anglo Saxon origin. The ones that come from French, these are the more formal verbs.
So if you use these in speech people will know what you're talking about, but compared to a native speaker your speech will have more formal quality. Also, that means that these are things that you actually need to learn if your language is one of the European Latin languages because these words are not related to the... To the word that you use. So we've got: "ask for", ask for something means "enquire". "Keep on" doing something means "continue". "Blow up" something means "explode". "Run away" means "escape". "Put out", for example, a fire, means "extinguish". "Go up" means "increase". And "go down" means "decrease". Another thing I'll mention about this is our newspapers here in England, we have lots of different kinds of newspapers.
We have ones called tabloids. Tabloids are... Like, you could call them the popular press. They're much more likely to write in phrasal verbs, whereas the broadsheet newspaper is the more respectable press, write in the French origin verbs. But like I said, people don't necessarily speak like this. Writing is a bit different. Then let's compare some just vocabularies and general vocabulary. We've got the French words here and the Anglo Saxon words-because I did it wrong-on this side. So I'm wearing a "shirt", that's a regular shirt, not a fancy word, but the French origin word: "blouse". Sounds a little bit fancy in English English. "Answer", to answer something means the same as "reply" in the French origin word. Anglo Saxon word is "weird", but the French origin word is "strange".
We talk about "behaviour" in Anglo Saxon, but in French it's "manner". "Belongings" become "property". And "folk" become "people". "Folk" is one of my favourite words. It's so simple and it's just one syllable as well. It's a really good example of just Anglo Saxon clarity in sound, and also being... It just makes sense, so you kind of just sharp words, "folk". And "people" is, you know, is a bit longer. So yeah, here is a little introduction I would say to Anglo Saxon and French, and how it all comes together over the years to make up the English that we speak today. So, what you can do now is go to the engVid website to do the quiz, check how good you are with this vocabulary. And if you did like this video, please do subscribe here to my engVid channel, also my personal channel because I've got two YouTube channels because one isn't enough for me. Thank you so much for watching. And come and join me again soon for more videos. Okay. Bye.
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