Nearly all of the inhabitants of Western Europe speak either a Romance
language -- i.e., derived from Latin (like French, Italian, Spanish)--
or a Germanic language (like German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages).
The Romance languages sound alike, as do the Germanic languages, but the
two groups sound very different from each other. They are split geographically
as well, with the Latinate languages stretching to the south and west of
Europe and the Germanic languages to the north and east. Only in England
did the two languages combine, welded together by the fusion of two populations
co-existing on the same island. Speakers of Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic language,
invaded Britain in 449, pushed back the Celts, the previous inhabitants,
and settled there permanently. Four centuries later, the Normans, who spoke
French, conquered the Anglo-Saxons. The two populations existed side by
side, with the aristocrats speaking French and the peasants, Anglo-Saxon,
until the fourteenth century, when the two languages coalesced to form
English.
In general, the common words of English are Germanic. The "function words"--prepositions,
conjunctions, pronouns, demonstratives, etc.--are almost all from the Anglo-Saxon.
So are words for actual things and physical actions in the real world.
Sir Walter Scott pointed out in Ivanhoe, English has separate words
for an animal and the meat of an animal. The French lord would demand boeuf,
mouton, or porc; the French for cow, sheep, or pig, which, when
cooked, became beef, mutton, or pork. Latinate words had higher status
than words from Anglo-Saxon, and this tendency increased during the Renaissance
when professional vocabulary entered English from Latin, directly or through
the French. Thus, Latinate diction became an indicator of education and,
consequently, of social status. Formal speech also tends to be heavily
Latinate, because it tends to simulate upper-class speech. Coarse language
tends to be Germanic -- almost all the four-letter words, for example,
are from the Anglo-Saxon. Social prejudices came to elevate Latinate words
over the Germanic ones, but this elevation can be precarious. Latinate
words came to be indicators of deceptiveness, found in high density among
people who wished to seem upper class, intelligent, or virtuous. Germanic
words, on the other hand, often connote frankness and sincerity.
In his essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell showed
the essential difference between Latinate and Germanic words. First, he
vividly described three terrible events in predominantly Germanic language.
Then he gave Latinate summaries of those events. The Latinate words are
purple; the Germanic words are green:
Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. . .Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. . . . The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. |
The Germanic words make the reader see cruelty and suffering; the Latinate
words remove human beings from the picture. Orwell proved a true prophet
about Latinate euphemisms, which are still used today to transform an ugly
reality into a bloodless abstraction, a "killer"
into a "terminator."
Latinate words can be misused for deception, but some ugly realities are
best left covered over. The dentistís office is an excellent place
to find examples of Latinate euphemisms. "Injections"
have replaced "shots,"
and patients feel "discomfort"
instead of "pain."
Like Orwell's deceivers, dentists use long, Latinate words as a kind of
Novocain to detach their patients from what is happening. "Discomfort"
does hurt less than "pain"
because using that word distances the sufferer from the reality and one
can use that distance to become a co-creator of reality, not merely its
victim. If you are interested in other examples of Latinate words set against
Germanic ones. Click
here for other examples.
Click here for Latin Course
at University of Colorado at Denver.