RE: English origins (was Wanted: Opinions on a grammar book)

["Sarah Bouchier" <Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com>]

>According to my Linguistics professors, the inherent difficulty with
>English
>is that it is a Germanic language to which the Roman conquerors
forcibly
>applied their Latin rules of grammar.

I think it was largely the Normans and the Victorians, actually.  The
Romans never had much more than a tenuous grip on England, and it was
the waves of vaguely Saxon invaders at the time of the Roman pull-out
that was the real start of the development of English as a language.

Of course, most of the pre-Chaucerian chroniclers were largely churchmen
and thus writing in Church Latin (I believe, rather than know), which
would probably have confused the later generations somewhat.

S.

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