Say What? Read online

  How did schoolkids ever learn all those endings? Memorize, memorize, memorize!

  Euphemisms (from Greek eu pheme, “fine-speaking”) are polite ways of not saying what we really mean — and we work them overtime when it comes to certain bodily functions. Our word “toilet” is from French toilette, dressing room. The Romans went to the necessarium; we go to the washroom, but not just to wash; to the bathroom, but not to bathe; to the powder room, but not to powder anything! We go to the ladies’ and gents’, the little room, the bog (wet like a swamp), the privy (private place), the john. In England we pop out to the WC (water closet), lavatory (from French laver, to wash,) or loo (perhaps from French l’eau, “water,” or lieu, “place”). And if we need to “spend a penny,” we’re recalling the days when many public toilets in England were behind a one-penny turnstile.

  We don’t know when humans first arrived in England, or how they lived. We do know that by about 2,500 years ago, they were not only using stone and copper tools; they also were mixing copper and tin to make bronze, for tools and weapons that were stronger and lasted longer. But over in Europe, some tribes called Celts were even more advanced. They had learned to make tools and weapons out of iron, which was stronger than bronze. They had mastered the art of riding horses, and harnessing them to chariots.

  Sometime around thirty-five hundred years ago, people in Britain built Stonehenge and other monuments out of giant, roughly carved stones. We’re still not sure what these constructions were used for, and we don’t know what language people spoke as they worked together on these huge projects. (photo credits 4.1)

  By 700 BCE, small bands of Celts were sailing from Europe to England as traders or settlers. Larger and larger groups followed. The native Britons, the Stonehenge-builders, tried to resist the invaders, but they were defeated again and again.

  More Celts flooded in, building great earthen castles on hilltops, and fortifying them with high walls and deep ditches. They were ruled by priests and by fierce warriors who fought on horseback or from chariots, cloaked in bronze armor and brandishing iron weapons. Celtic artisans crafted ornate jewelry, wove fine fabrics that they colored with vegetable dyes, and made fragrant soaps and lotions and perfumes. Fleets of Celtic merchant ships carried goods to distant kingdoms, to be traded for exotic novelties.

  Celtic weapons and armor were often decorated with superbly crafted metal and enamel, and precious stones like coral and amber. This bronze shield, with its pattern of elegant curlicues, is studded with disks of red glass. (photo credits 4.2)

  The Celts’ language, religion, and folklore spread across much of Britain with them. Celtic was not a written language, but Celtic bards (storytellers) knew endless ballads of adventure and romance to enthrall their listeners. For hundreds of years Britain was dominated by the Celts, yet only a few English words come from Celtic – including Britain, from Prydein.

  But while the Britons and Celts were learning to live together, sometimes fighting, sometimes intermarrying, a new empire was creeping toward their shores. The citystate of Rome had overgrown its boundaries and spilled out into the rest of Italy. Rome’s armies were on the march, fighting their way across one land after another, building an empire. The well-armed Roman legions became renowned for their discipline and organization. Building a great navy, Rome spread its rule into France, Spain, and Africa. In 146 BCE, Rome conquered Greece. A hundred years later, Roman territories circled the entire coast of the Mediterranean. And wherever the Romans went, they took Latin as the language of law and government, and Greek as the language of the arts.

  In 55 and 54 BCE, Julius Caesar led the first two Roman invasions into Britain. Some ninety years later – in 43 AD – forty thousand Roman troops braved the sea crossing for a massive attack. By 67 AD, four legions (about twenty thousand soldiers) were posted in Rome’s new province of Britannia.

  Caius Julius Caesar (100?-44 BCE) was not only a Roman general but a brilliant statesman, writer, and orator. He was also a military genius, and he expanded the empire so spectacularly that later Roman emperors also called themselves Caesar. Various forms of the name now mean “emperor” in other countries: Kaiser in Germany, and czar (or tsar) in Russia. (photo credits 4.3)

  Castra is Latin for army camp. Today, the names of many English towns – Lancaster, Cirencester, Winchester – mark them as places where Roman soldiers lived almost two thousand years ago.

  In time, Rome took over much of Britain, well up into what is now Scotland. Roman troops were kept busy suppressing rebellions from within the province, repelling cross-border raids by Celtic tribes on the north and west, and fending off raids by seafaring Germanic tribes along the south and east.

  But the Romans were a practical, businesslike people. Once they more or less controlled Britannia, they focused on matters of trade and government (especially tax-collecting!) The result was the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace (27 BCE to 180 AD), a fairly calm and prosperous interval after so many years of warfare.

  Roman soldiers were tough, highly trained professionals who used expert tactics against their many enemies. By locking their shields into this tanklike testudo (“tortoise”) formation, for example, they could stay protected while attacking an enemy position. (photo credits 4.4)

  The Romans built fortified towns as refuges for times of rebellion, warehouses to protect trade goods, safe harbors for their ships. They laid out long, straight, solidly built roads, with stone bridges and distance-markers, so their armies and supplies could travel swiftly. Then they turned their attention to the details of everyday life: aqueducts to bring water to towns and garrisons, and sewers to take it away; temples and statues to please the many Roman gods; theaters and amphitheaters for entertainment; public toilets and bathhouses; lavish villas for the wealthy. Towns grew into cities, and little villages blossomed into towns.

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” exclaimed Superman’s boss at the Daily Planet newspaper, when he was excited. Most of us use exclamations that don’t mean anything except that we’re astonished or angry or we’ve stepped on a wasp. Each culture has its own exclamations, many of them not too polite. When religion dominates daily life, expressions like damn or hell are forbidden (people get around that with inventions like dang or darn or heck). At other times, quite innocent body parts (legs, for example) have been seen as offensive. Today, various body parts and functions are considered unmentionable – so we won’t mention them!

  The Romans did their best to spread Latin and the Roman culture in the province. Roman-style schools were set up, to teach elite British boys. It was difficult to succeed in business, at least in the towns and cities, without speaking passable Latin. Britons enlisted in the Roman legions, to serve at home and abroad; aging Roman soldiers acquired land in Britannia, and built themselves retirement estates. One way and another, Latin became part of the Britons’ life, especially around Londinium (London). But in the countryside, and farther north and west, Celtic remained the language of the land.

  The Romans had countless gods and goddesses, and they are with us still. Cereals are named for Ceres, goddess of grain harvests. Flora and fauna, the plants and animals of a particular area, are named for Flora, goddess of flowers, and Fauna, sister of Faunus, a god of woods and forests. And vulcanizing - treating something (like a rubber tire) at high temperatures to make it hard and durable - is named for Vulcan, god of fire. His name also gives us volcanoes, and volcanology or vulcanology, the science of volcanoes.

  Meanwhile, things were happening back in Rome. All those colorful, quarrelsome gods were being challenged by the single god of a new religion, Christianity. Rome itself was being attacked by primitive tribes from the east. Weakened by corruption, bad government, and a host of other problems, the Roman Empire split into two sections, and its power declined. The troops occupying Britannia were withdrawn and sent to fight elsewhere. In 410 AD, Rome officially gave up its occupation of Britannia. By the late 400s, the days of the Ancient Roman Empire were over.

  On the other side of the English Channel, in the Roman provinces of Gaul and Iberia (France and Spain), Latin had gradually replaced most Celtic languages. (Italian, French, and Spanish are known as Romance languages because they developed from the language of the Romans.) But although Latin was Britain’s language of law and government for some four hundred years, it never caught on among the common people. They continued to speak Celtic, with a sprinkling of handy Latin words.

  What was Latin like? The Romans had adopted the Greek alphabet, dropping some letters, changing others, and rearranging the sequence. They ended up with pretty much the alphabet we use today.

  Like Greek, Latin was highly inflected. Nouns, and the adjectives that described them, changed their endings depending on their number and gender and case (the role played by the word). We often use a preposition to indicate the role: “to a friend, from a friend, about a friend;” the Romans could just change the ending, like this:

  nominative (subject of verb) My friend (amicus) came.

  vocative (one spoken to) “Hey, friend (amice)!”

  accusative (direct object) I gave my friend to the frog (amicum).

  genitive (possessive) The father of my friend (amici) came.

  dative (indirect object) I gave the frog to my friend (amico).

  ablative (other indirect connection)

  My frog is from my friend (amico).

  Salt – mined from the ground or recovered from sea-water – used to be a precious commodity; that’s why we call good people the salt of the earth. Salt seasoned many dishes people ate, and kept food from spoiling during the long, hungry months of winter. Domestic animals like cows and goats couldn’t survive without it. The soldiers of the Roman armies were sometimes paid in salt (sal in Latin), giving us our word sa
lary, and we still say that people who earn their pay are worth their salt. Greens with salt and other seasonings make a salad, and preserved meats are salami. All of this from salt!

  As in Greek, if the friend was a girl, or there were several boys, or several girls, or the word’s nominative (subject) case didn’t end in us (like amicus), the endings were different.

  Compare this to English. Do we change endings for number, gender, and case? We usually change plurals, one way or another (frog, frogs; mouse, mice). We occasionally change endings to show gender (actor, actress; waiter, waitress), although this is going out of fashion. And we don’t change adjectives at all – whether we’re talking about one rude girl or ten rude boys!

  When you study Latin, you learn how to “decline” the nouns – how to change them according to their use. Here’s how you decline the word for “pig.”

  Now, here’s how we decline the word in English: pig pig pig pig’s pig pig; pigs pigs pigs pigs’ pigs pigs.

  It’s no wonder you don’t find a lot of people speaking Latin these days!

  We don’t use all those case endings for nouns, but we do say, “My friend’s glove,” or the plural, “My friends’ house.” The apostrophe tells us that “friend” is in the possessive case. In fact, we can use three systems to show the role of a noun: that s, if it’s possessive; a preposition (like to or from); or simply the order of the words. We can say, “I showed Jason’s bike to Ali,” or “I showed Ali Jason’s bike,” putting Ali first. (Because “I showed the cat the bird” is not the same as “I showed the bird the cat”!)

  People sometimes confuse the possessive s with the plural s. This mistake so often appears on shop signs that it’s known as the greengrocer’s apostrophe. Another common mistake is to put an apostrophe in the possessive its. Remember: the possessive his, hers, and its have no apostrophe. It’s is short for it is. (photo credits 5.1)

  We still see Latin as a language of scholarship. Those spells that Harry Potter struggles to learn at Hogwarts are Latin, or at least mock-Latin – Ferula! Lumos! Expelliarmus! When Harry forgets his Latin cases and cries, “Expecto patrono” instead of “Expecto patronum,” his patronus doesn’t appear. (In Latin, a patronus is someone who protects people – like Harry’s patronus, a dazzling silver stag that appears out of nowhere to drive away his enemies.)

  Even today, some Latin words appear, unchanged, in English. Campus means “flat field.” Victor means “winner.” Veto (“I forbid”) now means a rejection: “Your parents will veto your plan to go sky-diving.” Recipe meant take; now, as well as telling you what ingredients to use and how to cook them, a recipe is a prescription for medicine (the “Rx” you see in drugstores is a short form for recipe). Alibi (“in another place”), exit (“he, she, or it leaves”), ignoramus (“we don’t know”) – see how much Latin you already know?

  After the Romans abandoned Britannia, life there changed for the worse. Without the Roman merchant fleet, international trade collapsed, and workshops ground to a halt. Without constant maintenance by the Roman army, roads and aqueducts fell into disrepair. With fewer jobs available, and not much law enforcement, there was more crime. Towns dwindled as people moved back to the countryside, to make a living any way they could.

  The most serious threat, though, was from overseas. The Romans had fought vigilantly against pirates, raiders, and invaders from all sides. They had manned a chain of forts and watchtowers along the borders, and kept a fleet of warships nearby. Now, Britain’s coast lay undefended.

  Fewer jobs? Less jobs? Which is right? Fewer refers to things counted in whole numbers; less is for things you might have just part of. You wash fewer than three teacups but you drink less than three cups of tea (maybe just two and a half). You go trick-or-treating at fewer than twenty houses (it must be raining!) and bring home less than two bags of loot (the second bag isn’t full).

  By 440 CE, immigrants from Germanic tribes were beginning to arrive in Britain from northern Europe. Although they were expert seafarers and skilled farmers, they were not as advanced as the Britons had become under the Romans. And they were pagan, worshipping a host of Scandinavian gods of war and nature. In the last years of the Roman occupation, Rome had adopted Christianity, and the new faith had swept through Britain as well.

  At first, the Britons and the new arrivals got along fairly peacefully, despite their differences. But then more and more immigrants came flooding in – Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and others – and began spreading through the southeast. The Britons fought many desperate battles, trying to drive the invaders out, but they failed.

  (photo credits 6.1)

  Although the borders of Anglo-Saxon Britain were constantly changing, we generally divide it into seven kingdoms: Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia. (photo credits 6.2)

  By the mid-600s, there were Germanic communities through much of southern and eastern Britain. These grew into little kingdoms that were constantly fighting one another, killing each others’ kings, merging territories and then splitting them up again. We call these people the Anglo-Saxons. They called themselves Angles, and their land was Engla-land. Their Germanic dialects, mixed with Celtic and Latin, became the early form of English we call Old English.

  As the Anglo-Saxons took over, many Celts fled back across the sea to Europe, or deeper into the hinterlands of the west and south. The Anglo-Saxons dismissed them as foreigners, Wealas – the root of our word Welsh. (To this day Wales and Cornwall, in the far southwest, are strongholds of Celtic history and language.) The Wealas built tiny chapels and erected stone crosses, and clung to their Christianity. But while their faith remained strong, their memory of Latin slipped away. They repeated the rites and ceremonies of their church, but many of them barely understood the words they were saying.

  The years after the fall of Rome are sometimes called the Dark Ages, because so much knowledge was lost, or at least temporarily misplaced. As the Roman Empire disintegrated into small territories, learning and culture took a back seat to rivalry and war. But Europe still had some important centers of scholarship, mostly in religious communities – especially in Rome, where the Catholic Church had grown wealthy and powerful.

  In 597, the pope sent a party of monks, led by a learned monk named Augustine, to King Ethelbert of Kent, who was married to a Christian. Augustine persuaded Ethelbert to become Christian, and the religion began to spread through the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The monks built a church and monastery in Ethelbert’s capital city, Canterbury. Augustine became the first Bishop of Canterbury, and later Saint Augustine of Canterbury. (Today, the Archbishop of Canterbury is still the senior clergyman of the Church of England.)

  At first, many Anglo-Saxons resisted Christianity fiercely. Monks and nuns were murdered; churches were robbed and burned. But the upper classes were gradually converted by scholars like Augustine, while country folk were won over by humble traveling priests. The pagan gods were set aside. The spring festival of the pagan goddess Eastre became Easter, and the pagan winter festival became the Christ-mass.

  These days, with scanners and photocopiers and faxes, it’s hard to imagine the time and labor and mental concentration needed to reproduce a book by hand. Yet texts were not only copied meticulously, but embellished with illustrated initials and ornamental borders, sometimes with real gold. Notice all the birds and animals lurking in this capital P. And what’s that funny little face in the top left? (photo credits 6.3)

  By the end of the 600s, most of England was once again Christian. New churches were built, and adorned with “ivories and jewelled crucifixes, golden and silver candelabra … superbly embroidered vestments, stoles and altar-cloths.” Convents and monasteries sprang up, where ordinary people, as well as monks and nuns, could learn to read and write. The spread of literacy brought back basics of society like record-keeping and accounting and report-writing.