Activity 2 (Tue-Nov 20th, 2012)

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How Did We Get English Grammar Rules?

Who made these rules and why?

Virtually every written human language has developed rules for its use. English is no different. Sometimes people wonder where these rules came from and who made them. God did not give them on a mountaintop. Why are we taught them? Why do so many people try to follow them?

In European nations, grammar was developed to teach Latin. Latin had become the lingua franca of Western Europe because of the Roman Empire. The Romans ruled, and people from all over Europe could communicate in that language regardless of what their native language was. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Latin language was still used as a lingua franca because most literate Western Europeans had learned it. A little later it became the official language of the Western (later Roman Catholic) Church.

Latin after the Fall

By the eighth or ninth century, the language of Rome had changed. It was no longer the language of Julius Caesar or even of St. Jerome the Bible translator (the Latin of the Catholic mass). There were no native speakers of classical or church Latin any more. Still, it was very useful for literate people to learn it. It was the language of the Western Church, international politics, and most existing European literature.

The Origins of Grammar as We Know It

Since there were no longer any "conversational Latin" classes, teachers of Latin began teaching it according to its patterns - the way the words related to one another and formed sentences.This became known as grammar,the art of writing.

The word grammar comes from the Greek word gramma which means "writing" or "letter." This root is also found in other English words like parallelogram and telegram. Grammar school was the basic school where students learned to read and write. In the late Roman period and Middle Ages that meant reading and writing Latin.

Consequences of Grammar

The system for analyzing Latin became codified. This was useful for two reasons. First, readers could read older Latin documents. Second, writers could communicate with people who knew Latin, regardless of their native tongue, and be understood because schools throughout Western Europe taught it according to the same rules.

Some argue that Julius Caesar might not have been able to completely understand the Magna Carta (A.D. 1215), but that is not the point. Any educated person living in Europe in 1215 would have understood it!

What about English?

At this time the vernacular languages, the native languages of the people, did not really have grammar rules as such. Those languages were of more limited scope. They tended to be local. On the island of Great Britain alone there are recognized between thirty and fifty distinct dialects of English. In the Middle Ages, most of them would not have been mutually intelligible.

The West Saxon (Wessex) dialect had become the literary standard in Old English because that is where rulers like Alfred the Great came from. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England in 1066, there was no standard at all for three centuries. The spoken language of the government was French. The language of the Church and official government documents was Latin. English was the language of the conquered lower classes.

The 1300's & London English

By the fourteenth century, England had lost most of its Norman domains to the French. The leaders lost their connections to French speakers. Serious writers like poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Bible translator John Wycliffe began writing in English. 

Their standard became the English of London. If we read their work, however, we begin to see that it was not terribly standardized by our reckoning. Words were sometimes arranged unusually and frequently spelled differently. English of the Late Middle Ages was not at all like the orderly Latin of the grammar schools.

Frankly, there was no great need for it to be standardized. Most of the population was illiterate. Most spoke dialects different from the Midlands English of London.

If someone had gone to a village or city in Yorkshire with a written document from London, he would probably have to translate it for the locals whether the document were written in Latin, French, or English.

Now the English dialects at this time were not entirely static. As London grew in influence, its words and style became more recognizable in other parts of the realm. When the government began conducting its official spoken work in English, it became more necessary to be able to understand and be understood in the Midlands English. But this mostly affected the elite minority, those in government and those literate in English.

The BIG Change

In the fifteenth century something would happen that would change all that. Something so revolutionary that it would completely alter the history of the continent and in England would contribute to making the language of the London middle and upper classes the standard for English.

To be continued...