It is certainly true that the vernacular languages went through an astonishing development over the course of a thousand years. To convince ourselves, all we need to do is look at the differences between Anglo-Saxon, Chaucerian English, Shakespearean English, and the various Englishes spoken today. The same may be said of the evolution of German and French. We get the impression that these languages have always been “living”; their written forms simply took their cue from the state of the oral language at any particular time. But the truth is that this seeming aliveness was possible only
...more
