Babel and Battle

I like learning languages. Well, really I like the idea of learning languages. I studied some German in high school—Gymnasium—and college, and I managed to pick up a fair bit of Esperanto too. But I haven’t made any serious studies since then at learning any language. Duolingo does not count.

I’m not concerned much with “usefulness,” that’s the privilege of being a native English speaker, so I just pick and choose which languages to fantasize about knowing based on feeling. This leaves plenty of room for ancient ones—I do like a bit of ancient history.

Greek and Latin are of course the classic languages in this category, but I like the idea of Old English as well. It is fascinating to see the origins of the language I speak. And the words I have heard of it have a certain flavor to them that I quite like.

Knowledge of Old English also opens the door to opportunities for incredible snark. What better way to respond to tiresome complaints about singular they and the other ways that kids these days are ruining the language, than with incomprehensible sounds that are the “real” English?

It was these thoughts that led me to the actual point of this post. If Old English is the real English and everything else is a corruption, than there isn’t really any change worth complaining about after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. That’s what ruined the language, obviously.

But although I’ve read about that event before¹, today the date struck me in a way that it hadn’t previously. The 1000th anniversary is coming relatively soon, in 2066. I checked some actuarial tables² and I have a good chance of living long enough to see it. It’s funny to me, the idea of that nice, round number anniversary makes the event feel closer, more present, even though in fact it will be almost half a century farther away than from today. I wonder if I’ll remember then.