The earliest form of English is known either as Old English or as Anglo-Saxon. It was a Germanic language, brought to England by the various peoples from northwestern Europe, particularly from present-day Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark, who invaded the country after the fall of the Roman Empire. Because English in its earliest form was a Germanic language, the English word man is very similar to the modern German Mann, but altogether different from the Latin word homo or its modern French and Spanish derivatives, homme and hombre. Similarly, the English word God is recognizably akin to the German Gott, but not to the Latin deus, French Dieu, or Spanish Dios.In 1066 England was invaded, conquered, and settled again, this time by Normans from northern France. They came not so much to settle the country as to rule over it. Their language, Norman-French, became the language of the ruling and the educated classes. Anyone of Anglo-Saxon origin who wished to rise in society had to become proficient in Norman-French. For 200 years, English was the language of uneducated peasants. During this period English was greatly simplified. It ceased, for example, to classify nouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter or to show the grammatical function of words by adding a different ending to the root form.Beginning in the 13th century, the century that produced the Magna Carta, English began to reassert itself. By the time that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales (around 1390), it was truly a national language, used by all social classes. But it was no longer a Germanic language; it was a blend of Germanic and French or Latinate elements. It retained, for example, the words for domesticated animals, such as cow, calf, ox, and sheep, which are mainly Anglo-Saxon in origin, and incorporated different words for the corresponding types of meat, beef, veal, and mutton, which come from French. Reflecting the social divisions of the period after the Norman Conquest, it had simple words with Germanic roots for the humbler living quarters of the native English—hut, house, home, and dwelling—but it had also acquired the grander words castle, mansion, palace, domicile, and residence from French and Latin, along with a host of other words, covering every aspect of intellectual inquiry then known.The average modern dictionary of English now contains more words that derive from the French and Latin connection than it does words that can be traced back through Old English to Germanic roots. This is partly because English adopted not only French and Latin words but also the mechanisms that the Romance languages (languages that derive from Latin) use to construct new words from already existing ones. Some sense of the range and nature of the Romance contribution to English may be gained by considering that the prefixes ab-, anti-, co-, de-, dis-, ex-, inter-, mis-, pre-, post-, pro-, re-, sub-, super-, and trans- and the suffixes -able, -ant, -ent, -ize, -ment, and -tion all entered our language by this route. So did most of the words of which they form part. In the Middle Ages, French was the language of the court, and Latin was the language of the church. The capacity that English acquired from French to assimilate Latin terms gave us much of the language of abstract concepts, science, and technology.Anglo-Saxon versus LatinBecause of the way it developed, people sometimes talk about English as if it were a two-level language, as if it had a solid Anglo-Saxon foundation with an ornate French and Latin superstructure built on top or, to change the metaphor, a sturdy Anglo-Saxon body and fancy Latinate clothes. Indeed, it has often been suggested that any writer's prose style would benefit if he or she stripped away the fancy dress and concentrated on using good, plain Anglo-Saxon English.In the opening chapter of his 1819 novel Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott introduces two minor characters, a jester and a swineherd, who comment on how the language they use reflects the different social statuses of Norman lords and Anglo-Saxon peasants. Speaking in his own authorial voice, Scott also compares the French and Anglo-Saxon languages in terms that have set the tone for this particular debate:French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. Although he goes on to describe "our present English language" as one "in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together; and which has been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages," some later writers continued to maintain that the Anglo-Saxon should, wherever possible, be preferred to the Latin because of its greater vigor, simplicity, and earthiness.This debate touches on an important question of style. It is unhelpful, however, to present the issue as if it were wholly or mainly concerned with the historical origins of the words that writers have at their disposal. It sometimes appears, in fact, that earlier advocates of "manly" Anglo-Saxon had a national if not racial ax to grind when they argued in its favor. Although most of the abstract vocabulary in English comes from Latin via French, not all the words that came into the language by that route are abstract, let alone rarefied or pretentious. The word beef is no less expressive than the word ox. The words cap, car, and dozen, all of which come originally from Latin, are no more complex than the words hat, wheel, and twelve that have impeccably Germanic origins. Likely is Germanic and probable is French, but there is no justification for always preferring the former to the latter on those grounds or any other. Sternutation is a pretentious word, but there are plenty of other Latin imports ending in -ation—conversation, identification, and justification, for example—that are part of everyday vocabulary.Words that come from Anglo-Saxon do sometimes have "warmer" connotations than their counterparts derived from Latin. The pairings motherly and maternal, fatherly and paternal, and brotherly and fraternal are the most obvious examples. There is a sense that "brotherly love" is something that people feel, whereas "fraternal love" is something that psychologists analyze and write about. Meanwhile, the Latin equivalent for sisterly, sororal, has not become as current in ordinary usage as the other terms.It would take a conscious effort—and, for most people, frequent consultation of the etymologies given in dictionaries—to produce a passage of prose consisting of words with a purely Anglo-Saxon origin. And, despite the fact that these words are sometimes characterized by greater warmth and concreteness, the effort would not be worthwhile.Nevertheless, the argument over Anglo-Saxon and Latin, which occasionally resurfaces, even in the 21st century, does lead in to the broader question of what sort of word one should choose, if offered a choice. As we have seen, when English vocabulary does offer alternatives, the choice, as often as not, is between a simple word and a more complex one. That is where the discussion should begin.
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