" Alarm over the Decay of English" & "Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English"

" Alarm over the Decay of English" & "Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English"

1. In English we think of it as very natural to say "Do you walk?", however if we were to learn any other language we would have to unlearn the do, as they say "walk you?

   • Earlier forms of English used "walk you?" or the negative "you walk not?"... Modern English uses the delexical do

2. Many things in English arose illogically.

   • For example, In Old English there was a time when the 2nd person singular subject pronoun was 'Thou' and the plural was 'you'. Now singular 'you' seems fine to us.

3. Modern English is a product of change

4. Descriptivists - Describe language

   • Prescriptivist- prescribe language

5. Old English- The first recorded form of English, known from the 5th Cen A.D and spoken until the end of the 11th Century; the language of Beowulf

   • Also known as Anglo-Saxon, it was named after the largest two groups among those traditionally thought to have migrated across the North sea to Britain after the retreat of the Romans.