I mean Rome came first everywhere, William the conqueror came from Norsemen, which means Normandy was where the Vikings settled there. Pretty much all of Europe has had this kind of multiple conquests different language groups percolating everywhere - but English is the one that chose this model of how to handle it.
It’s been known for some time that English started as a pidgin language, but some recent linguistic analysis suggested that it wasn’t a pidgin once, but twice. And that’s why it’s particularly messy.
Despite another responder’s assertion that William the Conquerer was Norse, the fact is that he spoke French. So you had a ruler who didn’t even speak English, and a ruling class that was familiar with French.
Which, by the way, is why English names for animals and their meats are such a mess. For the most part the peasants raised the animals and the aristocracy ate them (still an era when protein deficiency limited the upward mobility of peasants). So animal names are from one linguistic root and meat names from another. Sheep/mutton, cow/beef, pig/pork,ham.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
Ah, English is not exclusive in that. It's the language acquisition model of all languages from what I can tell.
What English had and still has, and say, Romanian, doesn't, is the wide exposure.
Romanian was traditionally spoken in the region of Romania, so Eastern Europe, with some interaction with Central Europe, Southern Europe, Even-More-Eastern Europe, the Middle East. So those are the influences, plus some recent additions from international languages such as French or English.
English, on the other hand, was needed to describe and interact with Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Souther Europeans, Native North Americans, Pygmys, Indians, Native Australians, Chinese, Japanese, Incas, Ethiopians, etc and their associated environments and lifestyles.
If you saw curry, you needed to either come up with a word or adopt theirs. Or avocado. Avocado wasn't even a word in Romanian until 2000-something, I'm quite sure.
ok most languages do that, take another language word in, but I think English has the habit of turning things into metaphorical phrases, adjectives, adverbs and the like for the things it imports.
Admit I can't come up with an example at the moment though.
Something like "mesmerizing" coming from the German person named Mesmer?
That also happens in other languages, too, but English has a great affinity.
I think that's just drive by English having, what, 40-50 sounds? Which is quite a lot for a language, and English speakers having a huge aversion towards words with many syllables. 1 is perfect, 2 is okish, 3 is a lot, 4+ is an abomination.
So they tend to import anything they can pronounce and is under 3 syllables.
