aeon.co (13/11/2015) • Why is English so weird… (d4-5)

▤  •  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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But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. ‹Help› is English, ‹aid› is French, ‹assist› is Latin. Or, ‹kingly› is English, ‹royal› is French, ‹regal› is Latin – note how one imagines posture improving with each level: ‹kingly› sounds almost mocking, ‹regal› is straight-backed like a throne, ‹royal› is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs ‹begin› and ‹commence›, or ‹want› and ‹desire›. Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: we kill a ‹cow› or a ‹pig› (English) to yield ‹beef› or ‹pork› (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking labourers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

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