English Words :: New Words For Old :: Ramifications of Different Words in English Language

Words get used over and over again. Words adopt new meanings. Words beget words. Words proliferate. Words proliferate in different ways. Words proliferate through the tendency of language to split into different dialects. When this happens the two forms of the same word may exist side by side.

Did you know that 'daft' and 'deft' were once the same word?

Well they were. Old English daefte meant gentle or docile. In the south of England it became 'deft', good with one's hands. In the rugged north of England to be soft and gentle was thought silly, and so 'daft'.

Many pairs of words have split in this way. 'Skirt' and 'shirt' are of the same origin. The Danish 'sk' is less harsh than the Anglo-Saxon 'sh'. In the 10th century both forms referred to the loose linen garments worn below Dane and Saxon tunic's. Northerners adopted the word for the lower part of garments, the skirt, and Southerners adopted it for the upper part, the shirt. Why? Who knows? What I do know is that both forms are available to English speakers.

Dialectic variation can generate far moe than just two offspring. This is especially true if the word is of great age. Why, otherwise, for instance, would we have so many words for 'shining in the dark'?:

• Glow, gleam, glimmer, glitter, glint, glister, glisten.

And this tendency for gl- can be extended to 'glimpse' from 'glimmer', as a quick flash of light. The first known meaning of 'glad' is bright, as in 'get your glad rags on' (put on your bright clothes). A 'glade' is a bright part of a forest. The roots of glass, glaze, gloss and glare could also fall into this dialectic variation schema and link with the Latin gloria . From where did the Scottish 'gloaming' emanate?

In ancient times a parent language evolved somewhere between the Baltic and the Black Sea. It has been given the word Indo-European. As it's speakers colonised new lands each tribe expanded and manipulated the language to cater for their own set of circumstances. In essence new dialects of the old parent language were established. At some point each dialect became so different to the original parent language that it could no longer to classified as a dialect and became known by it's own word. It happeed just the same as if it were a living species diversifying and changing until it becomes a new species with enough genetic mutation to become classified separately.

The principal branches of the Indo-European language have now been classified as:

• Indo-Iranian
• Armenian
• Greek
• Latin
• Slavonic
• Celtic
• Germanic

Each has the parent language of Indo-European and because of this there are a number of basic root words, common across the sibling languages, that emanate from that earliest parent language.

The oldest examples of literature in any quantity from the Indo-European group are those of the Indo-Iranian language set. They are the Hindu Vedas, written in Sanscrit, the parent language of Hindi, Persian and other west-Asian languages. From these sacred books, some written more than 3,000 years ago, scholars have been able to glimpse the roots of words that are still current in Europe. They can determine the links between widely differing languages.

• 'Night' in English may be linked with Sanscrit nacta, Greek nichta, Italian notte, Russian noch, Welsh nos and German nacht.
  

As these branches of the Indo-European language spread further they kept dividing. One branch, the Germanic language family, eventually provided languages for Germany, Holland, all of Scandinavia and for England. At the time of the invasions of England by the Angles, Saxons et al these languages were a lot closer in word forms than they are now. This was even to the extent that when a following wave of invasions from Danes and Norwegians followed some 300 years later, the languages had not diversified so greatly that the influx population could not understand the standing population. The languages were still closely akin to one another.

For a time the north of England adopted the incoming language and the south of England remained with Anglesc but eventually they merged to become English with dialectic differences due to the external language influences.

To most the meaning of dialect is the survival of local speech from the past which is considered incorrect because it differs from the standard form. However, an equally valid meaning is that of a different branch of the same language with no ordinate or subordinate connotations associated with each. They survive as separate and equally viable sub-'species' within the parent language.

Anglo-Saxons spoke in several dialects:

• Anglian in the north and midlands of England; West Saxon in the greater part of the south; and Kentish in the south-east.
• Each had several sub-divisions.

It was not until the fifteenth century that East Midland English was adopted as the standard to which all others conformed. The influence for this consolidation was the emergence of London as the pre-eminent city and the universities as the pe-eminent force in acceptable language usage.

But not all regions of England conformed entirely. The northern counties are still markedly different in speech from the southern counties and the English of Scotland retains its distinctive pronunciation and much of its own vocabulary. This distinct character has been carried around the world and is instantly recognisable from Canada to New Zealand.

Linguistic branches do strange things not found in nature. Some branches can grow to inordinate lengths. A thousand years ago English was spoken by, at most, a million people on one small island. Now it has branches across the globe each with creative powers of their own. American English, Canadian, Australian each with its own specialities. Each has deviated from the main trunk to some extent but in detail rather than in substance.

Even our antiquated spelling has only been modified slightly. The words still look the same even though the pronunciation may be different.

As a world language English has now established itself as the language of choice as a secondary or tertiary language among people that have no physical Anglo-Saxon inheritance. In India it is the chief official language though not the native tongue of those that speak it. They develop their own style of pronunciation. The same for African countries and Asian countries where the native tongues are completely alien to English. However, there are influences that constrain change to the language: trade, diplomacy, air travel, radio, television and films from the US and UK. Each assist in gluing the parts together. But change occurs.

In places where English is learned as a second language it has a transient formality. It is static for a time until local speakers become more proficient and confident to innovate. The creativity and fluidity of man determines that new meanings for old words will prevail; new constructions out of old material will be developed; adoptions from local languages will occur and the result will be more words for all of us.

Occasionally a dialect word that is nearly forgotten in English can be revived overseas to enjoy a new vibrant life. The Old English verb, to go, had a northern England form, gangan . This lingered on in Scotland and the north of England well after it had disappeared from southern English. In modern English it has survived in 'gangway', 'the way to go'. It also has the connotation for groups of workmen. However it was revived in America as 'gang' from which gangster has derived and everyone around the world now knows what these two words mean.

Another example, poignantly considering the current crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, is the noun 'rig'. Six hundred years ago rig was a common nautical term around the coasts of Britain. To rig was to fix up, generally with the use of ropes, hence the rigging on ships. It was not until the nineteenth century that Texans adopted the word for their oil extraction contraptions and now it is universally used as the name for such contraptions.

And what about 'walkabout' coined by Australians for the Aboriginal tendency to wander off into the bush. The new application came about when Queen Elizabeth walked freely among the people of Wellington, New Zealand when on an official visit. Jubilee Year brought walkabouts to Britain and politicians have been doing them ever since.