Modern English: Which Medieval Languages Are We Really Speaking?

(23-minute read)

Us Native English speakers are famously monolingual. In 2005, the European Commission carried out a survey of the European Union’s 25 member states and found that the two with the lowest rates of bilingualism were the UK and Ireland. It’s a similar story wherever English is spoken as the mother tongue.

English has become the language of science, technology, business, diplomacy and popular culture. It’s the most widely spoken language in the world, with 1,132 million speakers (native and non-native), so we can rely on it to get us around (and many of us choose to do this rather than learning a second language – a shame in so many ways!).  

But what if I told you that Modern English is a product of three languages and, in a weird form of medieval code-switching, we still flick between the three somewhat deliberately to this day?

My Little Experiment

I tested this hypothesis out on some of my English-speaking friends, who were able to easily paraphrase a sentence with Old English roots into one with Old French roots, and even into one with roots directly from Latin (without knowing anything about the etymology of the words or the reason for my asking).

My little experiment started with the last two sentences I’d spoken – “I’m so hungry, my belly hurts! When are we gonna eat?” – sentences rooted almost entirely in Old English (not a coincidence… but more on that later).

How did they do it?

First, I asked them to speak as though they were super rich and pretentious. There were various somewhat comical reinterpretations but they all had a consistent theme. Hungry (Old English) was switched out for famished (Old French), eat (Old English) for receive sustenance (Old French), and even when for at what hour, a phrase more in keeping with the French grammatical structure.

Then, I asked them to speak as though they were academic and deep-thinking. In response, belly (Old English) became abdomen (Latin), and when (Old English) invoked the use of agenda (Latin). Some even worked in words like corporeal, consciousness, resolve, and edible – all borrowings directly from Latin.

It was impressive and (as a linguistics enthusiast) exciting to see them switching obliviously between different medieval tongues!

But… why did they do it?  

Although Old English gives the Comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary only around 1 percent of its words, it gives us around 80 percent of the words we actually use day-to-day.

The majority of words derived from Old French relate to politics, and they often make our speech sound a little hoity-toity.

Most Modern English words derived directly from Latin are terms used in theology, philosophy, or the natural sciences.

To understand why this is the case, we need to get our heads around some medieval history. Below, I’ve summarised a millennium in a few short paragraphs. This period can be neatly divided into three parts: the early medieval period; the medieval period; and the black plague. I’ll keep it short, but I can’t promise it’ll be sweet.

(And if you really aren’t interested in the history lesson, you can skip to the TLDR section.)

The Early Medieval Period

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were three powerful Germanic-speaking groups from northern Europe and Scandinavia. When a bunch of them came to Britain, they were lumped together by historians and labelled Anglo-Saxons. From 400 to 1066AD, the Anglo-Saxons were the dominant political force in what was to become their namesake, Englaland (land of the Angles, which of course later became England).

The collection of Germanic dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons has come to be known as Old English. 

The Medieval Period

In 1066, William the Conqueror (or William the Bastard, depending on who you’re talking to) headed across the Channel from France to shake things up a bit. He led an army of Normans (Frenchies) to victory against the Anglo-Saxons and had the English crown plonked on his head, effectively bringing an end to Anglo-Saxon dominance in England.

The conquest divided English society into a neat pyramid; at its peak, the newly settled Normans prospered. At its base, the defeated Anglo-Saxons worked.

For more than three centuries, the small ruling aristocracy of England (who dealt in matters of politics, the law, the military, and, um, being loaded) spoke Old French, while the much larger peasant and serf population spoke Old English.

Old French was made the official language of the nation despite the majority of the population – the Anglo Saxons – not speaking it. Old English was not actively banished, but the class divide was clear; if you spoke Old English, you wouldn’t be invited to the fancy parties. That sort of tyrannical language division would never fly in a modern democratic society, right? 

What about Latin?

Though Old French was the official language of the nation and in regular use at the royal court, Latin was the major administrative language of record in legal and other official documents for most of the Medieval period.

Spoken first by the Romans, Latin gets its name from the Latium region which the city of Rome was founded on.

The Romans spent a lot of time conquering and claiming land across Europe to build their empire, and they took both their religion and their language along for the ride. When the Empire fell, Catholicism and Latin stuck around. The church kept Latin as a way to unify Catholics in different places. With Latin so widespread, it became a great way for literate people across Europe to communicate; scholars in Poland could correspond with those in Germany using Latin as linguistic common ground (this is called a lingua franca).

Effectively, the Roman Empire established Latin not only as the language of theology, but also that of philosophy and the natural sciences across Europe. It became the accepted language of scholarship; writing in Latin gave authors’ works weight and authority. This included in England, where Latin remained the language of scholars and the clergy throughout the medieval period.

Many words were introduced to English via Latin but it’s not always clear when or in what form. Most were introduced via French or other Romance languages, and a smaller proportion directly from Latin. Some words have been introduced more than once; Latin gave us ‘fragile’ directly, and ‘frail’ via French, for example.

But I’m getting side-tracked. Let’s recap.

Too Long, Didn’t Read:

During the Medieval period (450 to 1450AD… ish), England was divided by a feudal system which placed the minority Norman rulers above the majority Anglo-Saxon peasantry. Old English was the language of the common Anglo-Saxon (i.e., work, work, work, work, work); Old French was the language of the Norman aristocracy (i.e., wealth, politics, and the military); and Latin, which was widespread thanks to the Roman Church, was the language of scholars (i.e., theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences).

But this linguistic hierarchy was built on the doorstep of an unprecedented strain which would threaten its survival entirely... 

The Plague

By the 14th century, Old English, Old French, and Latin had been mingling for a while (especially because the children of the aristocracy were being raised by Anglo-Saxon servants), so when the black plague hit in 1348, the conditions were right for the three languages to become one.

With more than a third of the population of England wiped out by the plague, those on the lower tiers of our pyramid – the workers – became a scarce resource. The top tier would have to make some Anglo-Saxon pals if they wanted their labour. This dependency was the foot on gas of linguistic change, and the three languages were effectively squashed together to create a new version of English with simpler grammar and a huge combined vocabulary. This linguistic lovechild is what we know as Middle English.

The rest is history

Middle English headed through the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and British colonialism, and came out as Modern English – the English spoken in over 65 countries today.

What Does That Mean for Modern English?

Latin is the root of more than 60 percent of Modern English words – although only about 15 percent of those have come directly (without an intermediary such as French). Since Latin has historically been the language of scholars, it’s unsurprising that over 90 percent of the vocabulary related to science and technology comes from Latin. But let’s not forget that it only became the language of scholars once it had been adequately spread by the Roman Empire and their church.

We saw the impact of this influence when I asked my friends to speak as though they were academic and deep-thinking; they chose words like abdomen, agenda, consciousness, and edible – words which were all more closely related to the natural sciences than the original wording had been, and all borrowings directly from Latin. To this day, we still look to Latin in medicine, science, and legal practice (where do you think we got the name for our more recent global pandemic – the Coronavirus?).

Old French can be found in the roots of more than a third of Modern English words. We use this section of our lexicon to discuss political and leisurely matters historically left to the ruling classes. That’s why we look to our Old French roots when we want to impress people whom we see as above us (perhaps when talking to a job interviewer), or when we want to come across as above those we’re talking to (perhaps when talking to job interviewees).

Case in point, when asked to speak as though they were super rich and pretentious, my friends automatically switched to words with roots in Old French, clearly highlighting the relevance of the words’ aristocratic etymology.

Simple, ‘everyday’ words contributed by Old French are relatively rare, especially compared with the amount of technical jargon.

But if Latin and Old French give us so much of our vocabulary, what does Old English give us?

Truth be told, saying that Latin gives us more than 60 percent of Modern English, and Old French more than 30 percent is, well, it’s pretty misleading. Of the words we actually use in everyday life – I, you, him, need, house, some, food, drink, etc. – 96 percent come from Old English. We also have Old English to thank for most of our grammatical structure. This is no surprise, considering it was the language spoken by the majority of the population (Anglo-Saxons) when the three main contributors came together.

Let’s compare some Old English words with their Old French and Latin equivalents. As you read them, consider the connotations of each; how do they make you feel? Where would you expect to hear such words? Who would you expect to be using them?

Old English	Old French	Latin
Start	Commence	Initiate
Talk	Converse	Confer
Ask	Inquire	Query
Teach	Advise	Educate
Think	Consider	Speculate
Good	Excellent	Beneficial
Before	In advance	Prior
Find	Encounter	Locate/detect
Leave	Depart	Evacuate
Eat	Dine	Ingest
Belly	Paunch	Abdomen
Child	Adolescent	Juvenile
Yearly	Annual	Per annum
Cold	Brisk	Frigid

My favourite representation of this medieval linguistic divide can be seen in the Modern English distinction of animals for farming and animals for eating. The names we give to animals in fields usually come from Old English (cow, pig, sheep, deer, etc.) – no surprise there, since the Anglo-Saxons were the ones doing the farming. And the names we give to animals on our plates (beef, pork, mutton, venison, etc.) are more often from Old French, since the Norman aristocracy were the ones eating the meat. The less expensive meats, such at chicken and duck, often kept their Old English etymological roots, as they were still relatively accessible meal options for Anglo-Saxons.  

Wherever you look, you’ll find examples of this linguistic phenomenon: do you live in a house (Old English) or a mansion (Old French)? Do you go out for drinks (Old English) or beverages (Old French)? It’d be weird to hear words with Old English roots in contexts that are usually Latin-based – imagine if your doctor asked if they could look at your bollocks (Old English) rather than asking to examine your testicles (Latin). We’re more likely to trust a scientist (Latin) with nuclear fission than someone who knows things (Old English).

And yet, most of the Modern English words spoken or written in almost any context today come from Old English (the only two that didn’t in that sentence, for example, were modern and context). That says a lot, considering only around 4,500 of the 130,000 Modern English words can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons. Oh, and 130,000 is a huge number, by the way. In fact, Modern English is often quoted as having the largest vocabulary in the world! If you want to know more about why our vocab is so vast, head to the ‘Further Reading’ section at the bottom of this article.

Why Should I Care?

Speaking a (sort of) trilingual language can come in handy.

For starters, it’s cool that we have so many words to choose from and play with (see ‘Further Reading’).

Secondly, this overlapping etymology gives us relatively easy access to a bunch of other languages. Like Modern English, many languages have strong roots in Latin thanks to the spread of the Roman Empire (that’s why we call them Romance languages), and ample other languages are Germanic, like Old English, so they’re likely to be somewhat familiar. Between the Romance and the Germanic language families, we’ve got a lot of bases covered.

And lastly (but not unimportantly), understanding this history can make us sound smart at dinner parties! It enables us to take a decent guess about where a word comes from: does it sound a little snooty? It probably comes from the Normans and their Old French. Do most English-speakers use it every day? It probably comes from the Anglo-Saxons and their Old English. Is it a deep or academic kind of word? It most likely comes from Latin. Okay, it's not quite as thrilling as solving a Rubik’s cube in 15 seconds, but it is more impressive than pulling a coin out of someone’s ear.

Of course, these perks can be easily countered.

It’s been six centuries since England was truly trilingual, yet it’s clear that Modern English still carries pieces of that feudal pyramid. We can see how speakers choose different words depending largely on the power dynamics present. Our word choices can still give away our social position, educational level, and often even our geographic origins.

Without the ‘proper’ vocabulary (based in Old French), we aren’t invited back for second interviews. Seemingly, you’d need to become fluent in a second language to practise medicine or law, considering the amount of Latin involved. Is this not odd, when we can make ourselves perfectly well understood using mainly words with Old-English roots?

The medieval feudal system isn’t even the full picture – not nearly! The English language has been taken by colonisers through centuries of brutality. It is a language created from kyriarchy. Since it carries such a bloody history, we must be careful of the stigma we associate with its diverse use.

Notice if you judge others when they say, “I want this job” (Old English) and not, “I’m deserving of this position” (Old French), and remind yourself of where our language choices come from.

What systems will you allow your language choices to carry into the future?

To be clear, I’m aaaaaall for a huge, diverse vocabulary! I think the size of our lexicon is absolutely fantastic awesome marvellous the cat’s meow. But who is our language diverse for?

When I find stats on ‘The 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language’, I can’t help but wonder, ‘Used by whom?’. The word most used by one person might be very different to that most used by another — our word usage largely depends on our circumstances. If our language carries a history of oppression, is it likely to reward the words used by the historically oppressed?

Words change in pronunciation and definition over time, and they carry stories with them. It’s our job, as the users of a language, to tell the next chapter.

Further Reading

(7-minute read)

Why Is Our Vocabulary So Vast?

The coming together of different languages is what gives Modern English such a thick dictionary. We could describe our lunch as appetizing, yummy, delectable, enjoyable, tasty, or any of the 42 other adjectives Thesaurus.com throws up, and we’d be understood.

Our expansive vocab gives us room to play, too! With so many words, there were bound to be some homophones, and what are homophones good for if not making puns?

It’s also why words with similar definitions often look totally unrelated, notably Germanic nouns with Latin adjectives, such as bird/avian, house/domestic, and hand/manual.

Our giant lexicon isn’t just a result of how many languages English has borrowed from, but also of how long we’ve been borrowing for. For example, although most Modern English words from Latin have a somewhat academic history, a small minority are related to more working-class endeavours such as trade and battle. This might seem odd, but can be traced to before the Anglo-Saxon period, when Germanic speakers had traded and fought with the Latin-speaking Roman Empire on the Continent and let a bunch of words slip into their Quasi-Old-English vocab in the process (such as butter, camp, copper, dish, fork, gem, street, wine, and pepper). These words are great examples of just how long we’ve been borrowing from other languages – since before Old English was even really defined as such!

As if our vocab wasn’t vast enough already, some words have entered English twice from the same language (usually French). Entering a few centuries apart means the same word can reflect a few centuries’ difference in definition and pronunciation, for example, chief/chef, canal/channel, and disk/dish (all from French).

There are thousands of other words we’ve borrowed from languages outside of the main three this article has focussed on.

Where Else Has English Come From?

Okay, I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding Greek. I haven’t wanted to muddy the water, as it has huge overlaps with Latin historically so can become difficult to follow, but it’d be remiss not to mention it. Greek has been (and still is) a huge contributor to Modern English. Anyone who’s watched ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ knows that.

This muddy water is familiar territory for linguists – the etymology of many words is so convoluted, it becomes hard or impossible to trace. Some languages do develop within the boundaries of one distinct geographical region, like Iceland, Lithuania, or Latvia, making this task that bit more simple. But this has clearly not been the case for English, which has evolved by crossing boundaries and invading other lands, picking up words and phrases from other languages along the way.

The impact of colonisation on the Modern English lexicon is not to be overlooked. During the British Empire’s brutal expansion, colonisers settled on lands they’d stolen, and came into contact with other languages through the native peoples they persecuted. This is how words such as kangaroo (from the Indigenous Australian language Guugu Yimidhirr), chutney (from Hindi), and sofa (from Arabic via Turkish) came into the English language.

English became a language of power not because of how easy it is to learn, or because it’s in any way better than other languages. It became such a dominant language across the world because of colonialism – military power used against innocent people by people who happened to speak English.

There have been many events and eras which have contributed to Modern English – notably the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution –  as well as other languages which we’ve borrowed loanwords either directly or indirectly from (Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Russian, Maori, Hindi, Hebrew, Persian, Malay, Urdu, Irish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian, Zulu, and Swahili to name a few). Suffice to say, the English vocabulary has its fingers in a number of pies.

I feel odd using the words borrowed and loanword; they reek of colonialism. I need to do more research to find out if there is substance to this feeling, and what alternatives are available if so. But these words are also just… wrong? Once we’ve adopted a word (in any language) we’re probably going to keep it. What’s more, it isn’t erased from the language we ‘borrowed’ it from!

I loved the analogy drawn by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne in their podcast, ‘Lingthusiasm’, which compares this sharing of words across languages to the copy/paste function on a computer. In many ways, this better describes what we’re doing when we select a word from another language and insert it into our own, especially considering how often parts get altered a little or lose some of their original meaning in the process.

In the case of Modern English, all these copy-pasted words have added up, in effect creating what is often recognised as the biggest lexicon of any language in the world.