‘A Light History’ of our mother tongue in plain ‘Engel-ish’

By JILL PROUTY

On Saturday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., guest speaker Dr. Elliot Engel will present his informative and entertaining lecture, “A Light History of the English Language,” at the second annual Peachtree City Literary Festival.

For those not familiar with Dr. Engel, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at UCLA. While at UCLA, he won the university’s Outstanding Teacher Award before moving on to Duke University and N.C. State. Dr. Engel now travels the world giving over 260 lectures a year covering over 50 literary topics.

I had the pleasure of attending this particular lecture at a library conference a few years ago. Dr. Engel gives listeners an entertaining glimpse into the origins and development of our native language with enough humor and trivia thrown in to delight the high school crowd as well as the more seasoned attendees — think salt and pepper.

One thing Dr. Engel will stress is that English, at its roots, is not a Latin-based language. Why? Dr. Engel will tell you that while Julius Caesar made every other Roman conquest speak Latin, he took one look at that god-forsaken island in 55 B.C.E. and decided it wasn’t worth it.
Instead, English developed from an early Germanic language (about 500 C.E.), thanks to the Anglo-Saxons, and later the Vikings, followed by the Norman-French influence introduced by William the Conqueror in 1066. The Norman occupation of England led to a more elaborate layer of French words being added to the Germanic core.

Thus, English began its practice of borrowing words from other languages, resulting in the huge vocabulary we have today.
Not to be missed is Dr. Engel’s recitation of the opening lines of “The Canterbury Tales” in Middle English.

Perhaps the most fun (or frightening) is Dr. Engel’s dissection of the modern English we speak today, as well as his prediction for its future.
This entertaining evening of literature and laughs is not to be missed.
[Jill Prouty, M.S.L.S., is library administrator for the Peachtree City Library at 201 Willowbend Road in Peachtree City, Ga. You can go to the library on the Internet at www.peachtree-city.org/library.]