More French in English than You Think

I'm a Latin Lover

This burning desire of our young (dare i say it) fundamental physisist to explore the effectiveness of philosophy (its self a term which remains undefined) by evaluating its production of truths, seems to be avoiding the issues of not only what is truth (a wonderfull question in itself) but also why would such a quest be a validation for an area of human exploration such as philosophy - which is (at least as i understand it) concerned, surely, with the production and exploration of concepts and constructs, and the relations between them, (as they are percieved). Cant we leave the sciences born from such self indulgent intelectual masturbation to drag out 'laws', and argue over 'paradoxes' (how dull things would be if they did not contradict) while we get back to pleasuring ourselfs in the nobelest persuit of test driving this fantastic evolutional masterpiece that is our minds to the speed of light and the stillness of meditations.

Clark
Are you really a Latin Lover ?!

That was a faker, and I am ignoring the post. I hope everyone else is doing the same.

I'm very sorry Clark.

Clark - The idea of an 'English Grammar' as such is relatively new. The work of the first English grammarians, such as Aelfric, was on Latin purely. However, it is possible to tell much about Old English from these grammars - indeed, it was by working back from these Latin grammar books that scholars in the early modern period learned Old English in the first place.

The Latin influence was brought into English with monasticism and Christianity in the seventh century. As monks wrote in Latin, certain Latin terms filtered down into everyday speech and were declined appropriately, hence the adoption of a small amount of Latin grammar into the English langauge.

As far the genetive is concerned ('the woman's foot' vs 'the foot of the woman'), this doesn't owe much to Latin. The apostrophe to indicate posession is there to indicate the loss of the 'e'. In Old English, that sentence, for example, would read 'wifes fot'. The use of 'of' to indicate the same thing is also Germanic.

I think the isolation from the continental mainland also helped. Compare how different Icelandic is to the other North Germanic languages.