There was no discrete dividing line between Old English, according to John McWhorter in The Power of Babel, which as spoken would have taken days to recognize as related to what we speak, and “English” as we know it. As it happened, Shakespeare wrote in a period (1500s becoming 1600s) […]
History
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Our Americanized version of English is a conglomeration of words borrowed from different foreign languages. In fact, as John McWorter says in his book, The Power of Babel, the variety of the world’s languages is miraculous because “it is the product of a process of six thousand imperceptibly gradual transformations […]