The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains entries for 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 obsolete words and 9,500 derivative words included as sub-entries. That’s at least a quarter of a million distinct English words. But the complexity and richness of our Mother Tongue doesn't end there.
The simple word ‘set’ has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb and 10 as an adjective. It takes the Oxford English Dictionary 60,000 words to explain it. So do we count ‘set’ as one word or 194?
Throw in a few tenses and things really get complex. A fly flies but flies fly. Or maybe they flew or are flying. And then there's the fact that any 'rules' that exist are not really rules. If we used to give, we gave. But if we used to dive, we didn't 'dave', we dived. Although, if you're American you probably 'dove'. Because that's another complication - there are many different international variants of English, all of them valid.
It's no wonder friends of mine who learned English as a second language tell me that it's a fairly easy language to learn to speak but it's a really difficult language to earn to write.
Despite the richness and diversity of our mother tongue, you may be surprised to hear that there are hundreds of English words - words not imported from anywhere else - that aren't in the dictionary.
Before 1066 and the Norman conquest, English didn't exist as we know it today. The Scots, Welsh, Manx and Cornish all spoke Celtic languages completely unrelated to English, as did pockets in Northumberland and other border areas. Interestingly, very few of these words have made it into English - in fact we use more Hawaiian words than we do native Celtic words. It's probably because the Celts had no written language. Meanwhile,the rest of the United Kingdom wasn't united at all. There was no 'England' - there were dozens of individual kingdoms and most had their own local words, many of which have survived as dialect.
The most commonly spoken tongue was Old English or Anglo-Saxon and much of our modern language has descended from that. However, with the arrival of William the Bastard, everything changed. For centuries thereafter, French became the language of royalty and power and Latin was used for church and scientific matters. English became the language of the peasantry. You can see the influence of French on our language in words that relate to the upper echelons (a French word) of society (another French word) e.g. parliament, government, aristocracy, minister etc. (try saying them with a French accent). We still say court martial even though it's a martial court.
But what if the Normans hadn't successfully invaded? What if Harold had got his act together and beaten them off? How different would modern English be without all of that French and Latin influence?
Picture created using Historic Tale Construction Kit.
David Cowley, a languages scholar and teacher, wrote a nifty little book a few years ago with the not so nifty title of How we'd talk if the English had won in 1066. It's an interesting thought experiment.
Many Anglo-Saxon words have mutated into words we still use today. Therefore, it's been relatively easy for Cowley to extrapolate how other Old English words would be spelled and pronounced if we still used them today instead of their French or Latin alternatives. For instance, the old word unabrecendlic would, these days, be 'unbreakingly' (inextricably). And asyndrung would become 'asundering' (separation, division). That second word is interesting because, even though many Anglo-Saxon words didn't make it into our everyday modern lexicon, ghosts of them did. We may not say asundering any more but we do use the cliche of 'rent asunder'. We also no longer use the Old English ingang for 'entrance' but its meaning survives in words like gangway and gangplank. And while we may not ascruten (investigate) any more, we do have such things as being under scrutiny or being inscrutable.
Here are some examples of words we might have been using:
Afterfollowingness - succession
Againcome - return
Awaydrive - dismiss
Birther - foetus, embryo
Bonebreach - fracture
Comer - visitor
Dearworth - precious
Drenchness - immersion
Earthkin - human race
Eatgiver - host at a meal
Enoughsome - plentiful
Farness - distance
Firefood - fuel
Fleshbesmittenness - carnal attraction
Folkfree - uninhabited
Gripness - Seizure
Hatethinkle - with hostile intentions
Headbold - confident
Hotheartness - zeal, rage
Idlebliss - vain joy
Kneebowing - genuflection
Laughtersmith - comedian, jester
Learningchild - pupil
Longsomeness - tedium
Manyhuely - colourful
Misholdsomeness - incompetence
Mindworthy - worth remembering
Mouthroof - palate
Needness - necessary
Onbeshowing - inspection
Overdrinker - alcoholic
Ownslayer - suicidee
Plightly - dangerous
Readthoughter - literary commentator
Samedworking - cooperating
Seaupwarp - things washed up on beach
Shamefast - modest
Shipfight - battle at sea
Smearsalve - unguent, lotion
Stoneberg - hill
Thoughter - advisor
Towarpedness - perversion
Truelessness - deceit
Undeadly - safe
Underbear - support
Unglad - sad
Unhaveleness - destitute
Unholdsomeness - incontinence
Unlaughterworthy - serious
Unrightcrafting - poor quality
Upness - elevation
Withchoose - reject
Woemoodness - depression
Wonderwork - impressive achievement
Yearmind - annual commemoration
Aren't they great? And wonderfully logical for the most part.
Young children, while learning English, will make what they see as logical jumps and will come up with words like eated (ate) or biteful (snappy) or seed (saw). So wouldn't kids find Old English easier to learn? For example, simply by knowing that a large mass of ice is called an iceberg, it would be fairly easy to work out that a hill is a stoneberg, a mountain is a highberg, and a cliff is a seaberg.
There'll be bluebirds over the white seabergs of Dover.
That's what we might have been saying had the Normans lost.
Fascinating isn't it? A little part of me wishes that English still worked this way.
It's a very nice little book and well worth buying. Click here - it's only a tenner.
And it's self-published too so every little helps the author.
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