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Thoroughly Tough, Right? Why Don’t Tough, Through, and Dough Rhyme? Thoroughly Tough, Right? Why Don’t Tough, Through, and Dough Rhyme?
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Getting and Giving the General Gist: Why Are There Two Ways to Say the Letter G? Getting and Giving the General Gist: Why Are There Two Ways to Say the Letter G?
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Egging Them On: What Is the Egg Doing in Egg On? Egging Them On: What Is the Egg Doing in Egg On?
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I Eated All the Cookies: Why Do We Have Irregular Verbs? I Eated All the Cookies: Why Do We Have Irregular Verbs?
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It Goes By So Fastly: Why Do We Move Slowly but Not Fastly? And Step Softly but Not Hardly? It Goes By So Fastly: Why Do We Move Slowly but Not Fastly? And Step Softly but Not Hardly?
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Elegantly Clad and Stylishly Shod: Why Is It Clean-Shaven and Not Clean-Shaved? Elegantly Clad and Stylishly Shod: Why Is It Clean-Shaven and Not Clean-Shaved?
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Six of One, Half a Twoteen of the Other: Why Is It Eleven, Twelve Instead of Oneteen, Twoteen? Six of One, Half a Twoteen of the Other: Why Is It Eleven, Twelve Instead of Oneteen, Twoteen?
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Woe Is We: Why Is It Woe Is Me, Not I Am Woe? Woe Is We: Why Is It Woe Is Me, Not I Am Woe?
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Cite
Abstract
This chapter tells the story of how English got to be the weird way it is, which begins with the Germanic languages and the barbarians who spoke them. During the 5th century, an assortment of them poured across the North Sea, from what is today Denmark, the Netherlands, and Northern Germany, and conquered most of England. After about a century of the Germanic tribes taking over and settling in, the Romans returned. This time it was not soldiers but missionaries who arrived. The monks who came to convert the island to Christianity brought their Latin language with them, and they also brought the Latin alphabet. They set about translating religious texts into the language of the people they encountered, a language that by this time had coalesced into something that was Old English. However, there is another group of barbarians to blame: the Vikings. Their language was similar enough to Old English that they could communicate with the Anglo-Saxons without too much difficulty, and over time their own way of speaking mixed into the surrounding language, leaving vocabulary and expressions behind that do not quite fit the rest of the pattern at the old Germanic layer.
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