Unpredictable Words

Did you think that by "Mother Tongue" I was talking about about our dear English? Maybe so, but I really was referring to what most of the language of now a days: Latin and Greek. Our real mother tongues. We have so many words that come from words in latin, for example: father is pater, and mother mater. It's not they copied Latin, but they deriver from the same language family. For example in French you welcome is de rien and in Spanish denada. Not identical, but similar.

Let's focus in what the documentary The Story of English by Robert MacNeil is really about English. I really never knew how much language change, and even how many places its has been around. For example have you ever heard in the 21st century saying the word "thy"? I don't think so, unless you are a constat reader of The Daily 9GAG, like myself. Not only words have modernized from thy to "your" (belonging to you), but it also has been influenced by other languages, from different families. Words such as "Waltz" (type of dance) that descend from German, "lacrosse" from French, and there's so much more words that one assimilates as their own. So many changes occur to the language, even slang. Who knows maybe when they unfreeze me because they found the cure for my disease, I wont be able to speak, because they talk an exotic language once known as English.

 I wonder if I had a wish to bring back Shakespeare for a little talk, would he understand me? Would he think I'm talking in another language? The English we know is contemporary, and in my opinion our English and the Shakespeare's are completely different, they can be classified in the same languages but in totally different dialects.

The Story of English. Dir. Robert MacNeil, Robert McCrum, and William Cran. BBC, 1986. 27 Aug. 2009. Web. 13 Jan. 2013