Looking Behind the Words

By William J. Nissen

Presented at the meeting of

The Chicago Literary Club

January 31, 2011

When you meet someone for the first time, you are seeing only who that person is at that moment. But that person has a history which includes both ancestry and life experience. Getting to know that person involves going behind what you are seeing and learning how that person came to be what he or she now is.

The same is true for words. The words we encounter have ancestry and a history of development over time, which have caused them to take on the look, sound and meaning which they now have. Our language has been developing since people first began to speak, and like people, the words we now use have been shaped by events and experiences. Looking behind the words and getting to know how they came to be what they now are is like getting to know a person.

The name of our club, The Chicago Literary Club, is a good example of how much can be found by looking behind a few words. Each of these four words is widely used in the English language, and each of us, when we first heard them combined, instantly recognized what they meant, both individually and together. But if we look behind these words, we can see that each of these four words has a history. Knowing that history, much like knowing the background of a person, can lead to a deeper understanding of the meaning of each, and a greater appreciation for what they are. Knowing the history of these words can also teach us much about the different ways in which words from different sources have come together to form what we now call the English language.

The English language is classified by linguists as a member of the West Germanic subgroup of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Other West Germanic languages include German and Dutch. The other Germanic languages are the North Germanic languages, which include the Scandinavian languages, and the East Germanic languages, which are now extinct but at one time included Gothic and other tribal languages. All of the Germanic languages are derived from a proto-Germanic language believed to have been spoken in Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia, perhaps as early as 2000 B.C.

The Indo-European family, to which the Germanic languages belong, includes most of the European languages as well as languages found eastward to the Indian subcontinent. There is no written record of the original Indo-European language, which is known as proto- Indo-European. Linguists, however, have reconstructed many of the word forms of proto-Indo-European by comparing words in the various descendant languages and making educated guesses about the forms of the roots of these common words.

The place we now call England was once inhabited by Celts, who spoke Celtic languages that are also part of the Indo-European family. Modern examples of the Celtic languages include Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish. The Celtic languages spoken in England, however, were largely displaced by the Germanic dialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who settled in England beginning in about the fifth century. The earliest written form of these Germanic dialects in England is known as Old English, which is considered by linguists to have been spoken from about 700 to 1100, followed by Middle English from about 1100 to 1500, and by Modern English from about 1500 to the present time.

As English developed as a separate language, there were two major influences on the language that were brought by invaders of England. During the period of the Vikings, settlers came to England from Scandinavia and brought their own Germanic dialects, which, despite their common source in proto-Germanic, had been developing separately. In the regions where they settled, the Scandinavians added their own words to the English that was being spoken by the earlier inhabitants. Then the invasion by the Normans in 1066 A.D. brought a group of French speaking rulers to England whose language also added to, rather than replaced, the English language. French words brought by the Normans tended to be used primarily in matters such as government where the Normans were in charge.

The French brought by the Normans to England was one of a number of dialects of French spoken in what is now France. The Normans themselves were descendants of Viking settlers who originally spoke Old Norse, but over time they came to speak the Norman dialect of French. French is one of the Romance languages derived from the Latin spoken in the Roman Empire, and its dialects developed their own identities after the break-up of the Empire. The modern Romance languages, which include Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian in addition to French, are descendants of a Common Romance language reflecting the everyday speech of the subjects of the Roman Empire, which was different from the Classical Latin used by the educated citizens of Rome. Latin is believed to have developed initially in central Italy as the Italic branch of Indo-European. Although not descended from Greek, the structure and words in Latin were influenced by those in Greek, as Greek speakers had colonized much of the Eastern Mediterranean, including southern Italy, in ancient times.

After having absorbed major influences from the Scandinavian and Norman French settlers, Modern English was further influenced by the use of the printing press, which resulted in the wide dissemination of English in the written form. The printed English language publications tended to reflect the language as spoken in the area of London, thus leading the London area dialect to predominate over the dialects spoken in other parts of England. As England became a world power and established the British Empire, English spread throughout the world to the colonized lands. In the colonies, the language took on local words from the indigenous people who preceded the colonists.

The four words in our club’s name reflect the diverse sources of the English language and also reflect the way in which words develop over time. Each of these words has a unique lineage which has been traced by linguists, and the development of each shows the way in which words change meaning over time. In addition, the different sources of just these four words demonstrate the varied sources of the Modern English we use today.

The first word in the club’s name is “The.” This word can be traced back to a proto indo-European word root “so-“, which had the meaning which we now express with the word “this” or “that.” The original meaning in Old English, where the word was used as a demonstrative pronoun, was similar. Nouns and pronouns had genders in Old English, and the masculine form of the “so-“ root became “se” and later evolved into “þe” which began with a letter known as “thorn” which had the “th” sound, and was written as þ. Over time the word’s initial use as a demonstrative pronoun changed to its current meaning as a definite article.

The thorn, which was initially used for the “th” sound in “the,” was used not only in Old English, but also in Icelandic and Old Norse. After the invention of the printing press, the thorn in English was replaced in printed material by the letter “Y,” because the thorn was not in the printers’ fonts that were imported from Continental Europe. The use of “Y” as a replacement for “þ” to signify the “th” sound led to phrases used today to signify something old and quaint, such as “Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.” The þ, and the Y used to signify it in printing, were eventually replaced by “th.”

The word “Chicago” is derived from a Native American word, and shows how the spread of the English language with the British Empire led to the absorption of words from the natives of the colonized lands. Before being used in English, moreover, it is believed that “Chicago” may have been altered by French-speaking Canadians. It comes from an Algonquian word, either a Fox word meaning place of the wild onion, or an Ojibwa word meaning place of the bad smell. It is believed that there were wild onions growing in the area now known as Chicago that had a bad smell which gave the area its name. The word may also be related to a New England Algonquian word that became the word “skunk” in English.

“Literary” is a word which came from French and can be traced back to Latin. Literary was first used in English to mean pertaining to letters, and comes from the French word littéraire. The French word in turn comes from the Latin litterarius meaning belonging to letters or learning, and the Latin word is an evolution of an earlier Latin word littera meaning letter. It is unclear where the word littera in Latin came from, but one theory is that it is derived from a Greek word “diphthera” meaning tablet. The word literary was first used in its modern sense, meaning pertaining to literature, in 1749.

The development of the word “Literary” shows how the word changed from initially referring to a tangible object, and over time taking on more abstract meanings. If the theory that the word is derived from the Greek word for tablet is accepted, then the initial meaning for the term was tangible. Later the meaning became more abstract, while retaining some tangibility, by referring to letters written on a tablet, and eventually letters on paper. When the leap was made to the term literary, there was no longer a tangible aspect to it, and it had taken on a wholly abstract meaning.

The final word, “Club,” comes from an Old Norse word brought to the English language by the Norse invaders who settled in England. The word club comes from the Old Norse word klubba, which in turn comes from the proto-Germanic klumbon. The Old Norse word meant a cudgel and the earlier proto-Germanic form of the word meant “clump.” In the 1590s the word began to be used as a verb, to mean hit with a club, and in the 1660s, the word began to be used to refer to a social club, as it is today. It evolved prior to that time in the 1620s to be used to refer to gathering in a club-like mass, and it referred to an association of people in the 1640s. As with the word literary, the development of the word “club” has been from the concrete to the abstract.

Taken together then, just the four words in “The Chicago Literary Club” have much to teach us about the development of our language. They reflect that English has roots in proto-Indo-European, as do almost all of the European languages, which is as far back as linguists have been able to trace those languages. They also reflect the descent and divergence of proto-Indo-European into its proto-Germanic and Italic branches which led to most of the languages of Western Europe, including our own.

These four words also teach us about the movement of peoples over time as one group has displaced another, but with each displacement leaving lasting imprints on the language. We see in these four words, the movement of Germanic speaking peoples from the Continent to Britain to displace the original Celtic inhabitants, the spread of the influence of the Roman Empire from Central Italy to Northwestern France and from there to England. We see the Viking raiders settling in both England and Normandy, with their language taking hold in England but not in Normandy where they became French speaking before taking their language to England. And finally we see the spread of the British Empire to North America where the Native Americans were largely displaced but at least some of their language survives in the name of our city.

We often make acquaintances of people without getting to know them well, and as a result we miss out on much we could learn from and about them. Just as our friendships with other people can be enriched and deepened by getting to know those people, including their backgrounds and experiences, so can our relationship with our own language be enriched and deepened by looking behind the words that we often use, without even considering that they too have backgrounds and experiences that are worth knowing.

Sources:

Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, William J. Frawley, Editor-in-Chief, 2d ed. (2003)

Wikipedia: Thorn (Letter)