Andrade 1

Gabriela Andrade
ENG 100 NRC 1656
Scott Gibson
9th September, 2016
A typical language you need to be
English takes the right spot for what is known to be a complex language. It is
believed that English acts as a normal language for very short instances but it has received
so many influences that turned it into a diverse tongue to which no other language can be
compared with. Whats more unconventional is that even by making a clear distinction
between the writing and the speaking forms, this tongue still remains otherworldly. The
following summary will look forward to explain how uncommon was the version given to
English by German, French, Scandinavian and Latin influences in order to create an
outlandish idiom.
Pointing out the fact that English, as we know it today, started as a form of German
by the influence of the Celtics as Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Later on, more Germans
arrived. As McWhorter suggests, learning a new language meant listening hard and trying
your best. Scandinavian Vikings spoke bad Old English but it wasnt all so terrible
because they made language achievable, not easier. Words were the beginning: they did not
include genders but added the third person usage with the s to which McWhorter argues
that its function is to be there, hanging on like a dead bug on a windshield.

Andrade 2
Mc. Whorter also mentions that English got hit by a firehose spray of words from
yet more languages. The French gave, at least, 10,000 new words to English to which,
people, the educated ones, use to write; with a little help from Latin. This reinforced the
idea of sophistication and knowledge among English speakers and writers. Words as
fundamental or conclusion arrived from their influence; they sound normal to us. To the
people at that time, it had to be considerate an obnoxious, if not wasteful, use of
communicative resources.
Furthermore, McWhorter also mentions that language tends not to do what we
want it to do so there was a healthy survival competition of words thing going on. One
of the survivors was that some words were left to be used with degrees of formality: very
sophisticated people. This notion of sophistication comes to surface because French and
Latin words appear to be longer that the Old English known words, hence this conclusion.
English shows itself as puzzling, peculiar and uncanny. It went through the many
influx of a variety of languages that fought to remain down the road to change a rigid origin
that was difficult to understand. This did not make it any easier but it did give it a way to
establish new connections between, as McWhorter says, the slings and arrows of
outrageous history.