It is absolutely not french anything, but instead, french and english both decend from latin.
English decending from french you say! The nerve! (I assure you, my 6th grade english teacher would correct you thusly)
English decending from french you say! The nerve! (I assure you, my 6th grade english teacher would correct you thusly)
At least that is the conventional view. Apparently, according to this author, it actually descends from French. But that is a very fringe take.
This is why modern english is a mix.
Clearly an attempt to take the shine off of "that sub language english" which keeps pestering their ears.
From what I was repeatedly taught by my English, english teacher, all the latin loanwords came from when the Romans were hanging around the Isles. "They left more than walls!", she'd say.
Take care now, lest her ghost rise from the grave to correct your slanders against her beloved english.
Not that it matters, given that we are talking about this in English, which has become the lingua franca in an amusing twist of fate, thanks to the East India Company.
If you’ve got a specific agenda, say x > y, you can be very selective about success criteria to suit yourself.
In this particular case of English and French, the reality is that few modern French speakers can read the Song of Roland. “Resembles x much more” is pretty irrelevant because it cherry-picks similarities while glossing over differences. One can equally say Old English’s “and forgyf us ure gyltas” is pretty readable, but really you’re scraping the bottom of the argument barrel.
Also glossing over an older literary tradition because the language mutated in response to a new political reality (conquest) is ... curious.
Also
> something understandable by modern French speakers
The Song of Roland, used as an example in a previous comment, doesn’t qualify, and actually is yet another reason why this line of argument is pretty sad.
The Beowulf manuscript dates from around 975 CE and is written in what might be better termed Anglo-Saxon. How much can you understand from this random sentence: "þa me þæt gelærdon leode mine, þa selestan, snotere ceorlas"? ("So my vassals advised me well…) I personally can't understand a single word or even relate it in any way to the English I know.
On the other hand, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia was composed in "Old French" in 880 BCE and seems rather intelligible to me. I also just took a random sentence from the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100 BC) and can understand all of it: "Seignurs, vos en ireiz. Branches d’olive en voz mains portereiz, Si me direz a Carlemagne le rei Pur le soen Deu qu’il ait mercit de mei." I'd even go so far as to say that's closer to modern French than Shakespearean English despite being written in Anglo-Norman … Which also means it should probably count as being English literature if Beowulf qualifies…
I guess the lesson here is simply to remember that reality is always a lot more granular than we first expect and that any sweeping judgements on languages, countries, etc. over the span of millennia make very little sense. By that criteria, the linked article was pure clickbait to begin with.
Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum
þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon
hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scéfing sceaþena þréatum
monegum maégþum meodosetla oftéah
It's a long stretch to say it's the same language as modern English, so shouldn't be counted as "literature in the English language".
It could however count as literature written by the English people.
For a comparison, these are the first 5 lines of Chanson de Roland
CARLES li reis, nostre emperere magnes,
Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne:
Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.
N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne;
Mur ne citet n’i est remés a fraindre,
Relative to modern French and English, the French of Chanson de Roland is comparable to the English of Chaucer.
Not that it’s a competition or anything. But it’s interesting to see people make assumptions about easily-looked-up stuff.
no