How is English a mixed language?

LANGUAGE

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at how English can be considered a mixed language.

WHEN languages come in contact with each other, it is normal for words and expressions to be taken from one language into the other.
It is quite possible that your native language has words for modern technology taken from English. It might have even taken words into the language for which there were already common words in the past.
In one PNG language that I have looked at, for example, people use the English and Tok Pisin word “plate” in their own language, even though there was already a word for this item in the language. Today that older word is used so seldom that many young people don’t even know it.
But in spite of this occasional borrowing, most of the core vocabulary of this language has been unchanged and the grammatical patterns of the language have not changed. We would not say that this language has become a mixed language. It has just borrowed a few words from an unrelated language.
The situation is different when two languages come together and their speakers mix so intimately that they begin to blend the everyday vocabularies of the two languages and the grammatical patterns themselves change. This happened three times in the early history of English, making it a language very different from the way it was originally formed and very different from the languages to which it is closely related.
The English language came into being when three different migrant tribes crossed over to England from continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. The original people they met either moved north and west or were absorbed into the more powerful newly arrived tribes.

The languages the three tribes spoke were closely related and in a short time, they merged into a new language that today we call Old English. There were still differences in the ways people spoke this Old English in different parts of England, but the languages were so similar that people from one area could understand most of what people in other areas said.
So from the very beginning, English was the product of people moving and mixing.
The second time English experienced great change was a bit later, in the 800s and 900s, when England was invaded again, this time by Vikings from Denmark and elsewhere in northern Europe.
At first these invaders simply attacked and stole from the English, but in a short time, they began to move and establish villages and towns. Many of the men brought their families with them, but others married English women. Many of the people in the new towns and villages established in northern and eastern England by the Vikings had mixed populations, some speaking English and others speaking Danish.
English and the Danish language of the Vikings were similar enough that it was easy for people to learn each other’s languages and become bilingual. As adults learned each other’s languages and children grew up hearing both languages, the languages tended to merge. New Danish words were introduced for things that were used in everyday life.
The structure of English also changed. The Viking pronouns replaced the original English pronouns.
The third mixing of languages was also the result of an invasion, this time in 1066 by people speaking French, a language quite different to English. These French-speaking invaders took over the country and replaced the English ruling class. The first and even second generation rarely spoke English, so English servants, merchants, and workers needed to learn at least simple French to communicate with their new rulers.
As the new rulers grew up with English housegirls and began to think of England as their home, they learned English. Of course, not all learned English well, and a kind of mixed French-English way of speaking developed. Slowly the ruling class stopped speaking French and used this mixed language as their native language. This French-English mixed language was adopted by native English people who wanted to work with the ruling class as well.
The result was a language with a great many French words, especially related to areas where many of the French rulers were active, such as government and the church.
Many times the French words replaced English words completely. At other times the English word was kept, but the French word was thought to be more fancy or educated—original English “baby”, for example, is still used in English, but French “infant” is thought to be more formal, and while the original English word “king” is used in normal conversation, French “sovereign” is used in legal documents or formal speeches.
Many of these pairs of words that relate to food are interesting, because the name of the animal is the original English word, such as “cow” or “pig”, but the word for the meat of the animal comes from the French word for the name of the animal, such as “beef” (from the Old French word for “cow”: “boef”) or “pork” (from the Old French word for “pig”: “porc”).

In the years after the French invasion, the animals would have been looked after by English-speaking workers, calling the animals “cows” and pigs”, but when they were slaughtered, the meat would have been eaten by the French-speaking rulers, enjoying the meat of their “boef” and “porc”. Today English continues to keep these pairs of words for the animal and its meat.
The grammar also changed, becoming much simpler and more like French grammar. We can see the results today, where the complicated Old English ways of making plural nouns by changing vowels and adding various endings has been kept in only a small number of words, such as “mouse/mice” and “ox/oxen”. Most English nouns become plural by simply adding the French ending “-s” (“dog/dogs”).
Similarly, the very complicated Old English system of changing the word for “the” depending on whether the word was male, female, or neuter and whether it was the subject or object of the sentence has been replaced by a much simpler system in which we use only “the”.
Most short English adjectives, such as “tall” and “pretty”, are original English words. We still compare them by adding the original English endings “-er” and “-est” (“taller”, “prettiest”). Longer adjectives in modern English, such as “monstrous” and “beautiful” come from French and use a French-like construction with “more” and “most” to make comparisons (“more monstrous”, “most beautiful”).
The result of these three invasions in the early history of England is the language we use today. It is a mixed language that is based on the mixing of the languages spoken by the three early tribes that invaded England, together with elements of the Danish language spoken by the Viking invaders and of the French language spoken by later invaders from France.
It was this mixed language that the English colonists took around the world and that eventually became one of the most important languages of modern Papua New Guinea.

• Prof Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.