Great article! It's a good reminder that languages are never really static but constantly changing in at least some ways. I think it's fascinating how sound changes over time can force other changes in a language (much like Latin changed into modern Romance languages over time and lost much of its declension system for nouns).
When I was in school and took Latin, the declensions broke my tiny little mind, as a monolingual who didn't know a thing about them. I have had a mild irrational dislike of the dative since then.
But it increased my English knowledge too. I remember coming across one of those analogy questions on the SAT and there was a word I hadn't seen -- but I knew the Latin root of it and boom.
And yet here I am nerding out about cases and tenses with this excellent blog.
This is great. I don't have anything to carve, though, so others will have to pass on the knowledge of the Pope formerly known as Bob.
You are going to write a book about this, right? Not only do you need to, I don't think you would have any competition. It is an uncharted territory at least for us hoi poloi.
I don't often comment on here and sent my reply before I completed my comment. In short, I was asking if the settling of Vikings on Britain's east coast (farmings or trading, generations after the raiding) added to the transition of English to an analytic language. My understanding is that the need for communication between the native population and the newcomers caused the word endings to be dropped over time. Thank you for this informative article. I look forward to more.
This kind of explains why everything takes the dative in Old English. It seems to me that when I took freshman Russian, everything took the dative except with/by, which took the instrumental. With Russian you just get used to the sound; probably the same with Old English.
Right! And to top it off, the Old English dative is the result of a merger between the dative and the instrumental in an earlier version of the language.
Makes perfect sense, actually. Then again, there is a PREPOSITIONAL case in Russian. For all the prepositions that don't take the dative? Many of them are in the group that take the dative in Old English.
I took Russian in college in 1959. Scary experience! (Same year as Organic Chemistry.) Here is the short explanation of the Russian cases. Still scary!
Interestingly, the Dutch word for spring still is lente.
Beautiful!
Great article! It's a good reminder that languages are never really static but constantly changing in at least some ways. I think it's fascinating how sound changes over time can force other changes in a language (much like Latin changed into modern Romance languages over time and lost much of its declension system for nouns).
Right — if you can no longer distinguish between, say, -um and -o, the whole Latin declension system breaks down.
When I was in school and took Latin, the declensions broke my tiny little mind, as a monolingual who didn't know a thing about them. I have had a mild irrational dislike of the dative since then.
But it increased my English knowledge too. I remember coming across one of those analogy questions on the SAT and there was a word I hadn't seen -- but I knew the Latin root of it and boom.
And yet here I am nerding out about cases and tenses with this excellent blog.
This is great. I don't have anything to carve, though, so others will have to pass on the knowledge of the Pope formerly known as Bob.
Thanks Colin!
Thanks, Sally! Dative-phobia is a real thing, you're far from the only one :)
That makes me feel better LOL.
You are going to write a book about this, right? Not only do you need to, I don't think you would have any competition. It is an uncharted territory at least for us hoi poloi.
Thank you.
That would be great fun! Adrian's papacy was very action-packed. I think it would make for a great book indeed 🤔
I don't often comment on here and sent my reply before I completed my comment. In short, I was asking if the settling of Vikings on Britain's east coast (farmings or trading, generations after the raiding) added to the transition of English to an analytic language. My understanding is that the need for communication between the native population and the newcomers caused the word endings to be dropped over time. Thank you for this informative article. I look forward to more.
Thank you! You're absolutely right — that's one of the main theories about how English became analytics. I touched on this very topic in an article I wrote early last month, which you might find interesting: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/why-you-kinda-speak-like-a-viking
This kind of explains why everything takes the dative in Old English. It seems to me that when I took freshman Russian, everything took the dative except with/by, which took the instrumental. With Russian you just get used to the sound; probably the same with Old English.
Right! And to top it off, the Old English dative is the result of a merger between the dative and the instrumental in an earlier version of the language.
Makes perfect sense, actually. Then again, there is a PREPOSITIONAL case in Russian. For all the prepositions that don't take the dative? Many of them are in the group that take the dative in Old English.
I took Russian in college in 1959. Scary experience! (Same year as Organic Chemistry.) Here is the short explanation of the Russian cases. Still scary!
https://russianenthusiast.com/russian-grammar/russian-cases/
It didn't seem odd to them, just like Russians don't spend their time thinking "oh, that needs a dative". But I have beef with the dative myself.
(There's a new sentence for me)