Morphology is the study of words.  How words are structured, patterned and evolve tell us a lot about who influenced what language.  In How Vikings Changed the English Language: Spelling we discussed how words were spelt in Old English and Norse – phonetically.  However, as English went through the Great Vowel Shift English spelling was [...]

When you look at Norwegian words and English words they are very similar.  In fact, you can often make out what a Norwegian word is by the way it looks, however, the sounds can be quiet different. One of the major changes that occurred to the English language is known as the Great Vowel Shift. [...]

I always hear, from Norwegians, Brazilians, Chinese – everyone – that English is very hard to learn.  They say it is because English is notorious for breaking all the rules.  For example: why does ‘heard’ and ‘beard’ have different vowel sounds when they have the same ending ‘-eard’?  Same with ‘great’, ‘treat’ and ‘threat’?  There [...]

Language progressively changes over time.  In theorising how a language changes, scholars look at two things – internal and external change.  Internal change relates to grammar – word patterns (morphology), sound patterns (phonetics) and meaning patterns (semantics) etc.  External change relates to influences from innovations (such as the printing press), politics and social identity (such [...]