So, for my rendering I’ve decided to pick up
on the “Language peculiarities” topic, since history of languages, their
origins and transformations have always interested me. And, oh boy, what a
wonderful piece of info I’ve stumbled upon while searching for the right
material in the internet.
The article was written by John McWhorter, professor of linguistics and American studies at Columbia University. Published on aeon.co on 13 November, 2015.
It’s called “English is not normal”, and is humongous, consisting of 3.400 words. But bear with me, the article is more than worthwhile.
It is really hard to retell the whole thing in just few words, but I’ll try my best.
Author tells us of how the language was developing throughout centuries:
First of all, English language started out as a kind of German;
Second of all, when it was just at its embryonic period, it had no written form whatsoever;
Third and the main thing is that the language itself has been influenced by Norse, French, Latin and many more. That, basically, explains such strange things as presence of a special endings only in the third‑person singular and absence of gender assignments to nouns all at once.
I was purely astonished by the whole composition of the article. All the props to author, who did the great job on making such a long but mesmerizing story lesson, diluted with examples of actual English language peculiarities. Even though some parts were quite hard to understand due to specialized terms, I still got a ton of fun discovering the topic deeply.
As the final word I would really advice you to check the article yourself. I’m 100% sure it’s something you wouldn’t regret doing.
So, what do you find odd in Enlish language, if anything at all?
“English is not normal” by John McWhorter - https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages
The article was written by John McWhorter, professor of linguistics and American studies at Columbia University. Published on aeon.co on 13 November, 2015.
It’s called “English is not normal”, and is humongous, consisting of 3.400 words. But bear with me, the article is more than worthwhile.
It is really hard to retell the whole thing in just few words, but I’ll try my best.
Author tells us of how the language was developing throughout centuries:
First of all, English language started out as a kind of German;
Second of all, when it was just at its embryonic period, it had no written form whatsoever;
Third and the main thing is that the language itself has been influenced by Norse, French, Latin and many more. That, basically, explains such strange things as presence of a special endings only in the third‑person singular and absence of gender assignments to nouns all at once.
I was purely astonished by the whole composition of the article. All the props to author, who did the great job on making such a long but mesmerizing story lesson, diluted with examples of actual English language peculiarities. Even though some parts were quite hard to understand due to specialized terms, I still got a ton of fun discovering the topic deeply.
As the final word I would really advice you to check the article yourself. I’m 100% sure it’s something you wouldn’t regret doing.
So, what do you find odd in Enlish language, if anything at all?
“English is not normal” by John McWhorter - https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages
Thank you for your review. The article you chose is absolutely the same thing that I wanted to read. I am really interested in this topic. Answering your question I should say that I don't find anything odd in English language and I even consider this language as rather logical.
ОтветитьУдалитьOh boy! I like the way you wrote this review - such a serious topic but so easy to read. I haven't known about all steps of developing English language, so it was quite interesting for me, so thank you for this info. Conserning odd things in English, sometimes at school I was surprised because of pronunciation of some words, as all we know now there're more exceptions than rules.
ОтветитьУдалитьЭтот комментарий был удален автором.
ОтветитьУдалить