reductionism gone wild

[Jonathan Lighter]

Llast night on the PBS show _England_ Michael Wood observed breathlessly
that we "still speak" Old English, "with a few foreign words more or less!
... 'One small step for man, one great [sic] leap for mankind.' Each of
these words is Anglo-Saxon!"

Then came a few lines from the OE dialogue (called here an "interview with
a farmer") in which the husbandman is addressed as "eorthling."

"Earthling!" Wood exclaims. "It's like _Star Trek_!"

OK, right, it's just a show. Current English comes from Old English. I
should calm down.

JL



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org