In article <mailman.987630149.8017.python-list at python.org>, D-Man <dsh8290 at rit.edu> wrote: . . . >Only in English. In other languages (Spanish comes to mind, I don't >really know any others but AFAIK all Romance languages are identical >in this regard) the verb changes to indicate the subject. I belive >this comes from the time (~1044 AD) when the Norman French invaded >England. At that time the smart (rich) people spoke French while the >uneducated (poor) people spoke English. As a result of the English >speakers being uneducated and spread out the language evolved to >become closer to slang and varied from region to region. Sometime >after the french were no longer ruling the writers of the time began . . . This is a vulgarization of the "English as creole" hypothesis I learned and believed a long time ago (along with a few tech- nical errors on which other posters commented). I think there's now no good reason to believe this (that English "became closer to slang" as a result of the Norman conquest). <URL: http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LingWWW/LIN101-102/NOTES-102/Socio8.html > readably makes the case, the high point of which I'll summarize here in engineering terms: we have considerable evidence that English was on a trajectory before and after Norman influence that does not require a "shock" to explain. -- Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com> Business: http://www.Phaseit.net Personal: http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
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