aeon.co (13/11/2015) • Why is English so weird… (d3)

▤  •  M c W h o r t e r  (2 0 1 5)  •  W h y  i s  E n g l i s h  s o  w e i r d l y  d i f f e r e n t …  •

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It was thanks to this influx from French and Latin (it’s often hard to tell which was the original source of a given word) that English acquired the likes of ‹crucified›, ‹fundamental›, ‹definition› and ‹conclusion›. These words feel sufficiently English to us today, but when they were new, many persons of letters in the 1500s (and beyond) considered them irritatingly pretentious and intrusive, as indeed they would have found the phrase ‘irritatingly pretentious and intrusive’. (Think of how French pedants today turn up their noses at the flood of English words into their language.) There were even writerly sorts who proposed native English replacements for those lofty Latinates, and it’s hard not to yearn for some of these: in place of ‹crucified›, ‹fundamental›, ‹definition› and ‹conclusion›, how about ‹crossed›, ‹groundwrought›, ‹saywhat›, and ‹endsay›?

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