The Land Of The Frontier

The United States of America can be described in one word. That word is "frontier".

First of all, there is the name itself. I live in an area that has been nowhere near the western frontier for centuries. Yet, not far away there is an avenue called Frontier. There is a phone company, bowling lanes, a school and, a fire department, all named Frontier. In the phone book of our mid-sized city, there is at least a dozen businesses named Frontier.

The days of the western frontier have made a great imprint on American culture, everything from cowboy hats to western movies. Many went west in those days with the hope of "striking it rich" by finding gold. The gold mines are gone now, but Las Vegas has taken their place. Moving out west, or at least spending some time there, is still an American rite of passage.

America is all about the frontier. It is the frontier that gives the country it's sense of purpose. When one frontier closes, America looks for another one to take it's place.

The worst times for America come when it doesn't have a frontier. Before the western frontier was declared closed in 1890, a man who was out of a job could simply head west and start over. There was land for the taking and plenty of work.

The country didn't really adapt well to the closing of the frontier. This would have been an ideal time to join other western countries in implementing a program of social benefits, to be sure that everyone had enough money to live on. The result was the 1929 economic crash. It happened because workers were not being paid enough to be able to buy the products that the factories that they were working for were producing. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money to buy manufactured products, and it spiralled into a devastating crash.

The same pattern can be seen in warfare. America has always been more comfortable with conventional wars centered around a front line, such as the world wars, as opposed to unconventional wars without a front line, most notably the Vietnam War. The reason is that the front line in a war is actually a frontier, and America is all about frontiers.

America was the world leader in the early development of aircraft. Why? Because the sky was a new frontier, and America is made for frontiers. We were just going upward instead of westward. The same can be said about America's pioneering of skyscrapers.

For the past century, or so, one branch of science that has really revolved around America is astronomy. Much of the modern view of the universe was developed at the Mount Wilson and Palomar astronomical observatories in California, and later at the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii. Should this surprise us, considering that space is a frontier? The latest step has been the Hubble Space telescope.

When people developed the ability to actually send spacecraft and to travel in space, Russia was a very capable space power that put the first satellite and the first human in space. But space is a frontier, and frontiers are America's game. At the time of this writing only Americans have ever been to the moon, not counting unmanned spacecraft.

Is it really a surprise that the internet was developed in America, before spreading to the rest of the world? Remember that cyberspace is a frontier, and frontiers are what America is all about.

The Story Of The English Language

The reason that the English language is suitable to be the global language that it is today is that it has such a wide "span" of words, in comparison with most other languages. This makes it easy for foreign words to be readily adapted into English.

To understand how this came about, we must go far back into history. English is basically a northern European, or Germanic, language. The structure of the language is similar to that of German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish. A close correspondence can be seen between many English words and their counterparts in German, for example. There is I and Ich, water and wasser, house and haus, Friday and Freitag.

But the English language underwent a special event that transformed it by greatly broadening it's span of words and sounds. There are two basic language groups in western Europe, the Germanic languages in the north and the Romance languages around the Mediterranean area. Romance languages include Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan (spoken in the area around Barcelona) and, Romanian. What is now England turned out to be the frontier where the two would meet.

England was originally a part of the Roman Empire. But it is one of the few areas of Roman occupation in Europe that did not end up speaking a Latin-based Romance language. England was later settled by Anglo-Saxons, from what is now Germany, and also Danes and Vikings. This was the beginning of English as a northern European language.

The critical event in shaping the language that we have today was, in my view, the landing of a group of Vikings, known as Normans, in what is now Normandy on the north coast of France. The Normans established a kingdom and adopted the French language. Later they crossed the English Channel, into what is now England, and brought their language with them.

English remained a northern European language in it's structure. But the mixing in of the Normans, and their language, introduced a flood of French words. This would make English almost as much a Romance language as a northern European one. In many cases, new words from French would displace the older Germanic words. As one example, English uses the French "place" instead of a variation of the German "stadt".

You may wonder what real difference this makes, whether we say "place" or "stadt". But it is this influx of new words from a foreign language group that gave English the very wide span that it has today, and this is what gives it the adaptability to be a global language. It readily adapts words from all over the world, just as it once did French words from the Normans.

Most of the new words were changed in pronounciation, or spelling, or both. The French language itself had earlier undergone a similar process. French is classified as a Romance language, descended from the Latin of the Romans and related to Spanish, Portuguese and, Italian. But the Celts were very prominent in France and a lot of their words were absorbed into the language.

This is a fairly common occurence, a language being spread by conquest but then being changed by absorption of local words. Mexican Spanish differs from that of Spain because of the inclusion of so many native Indian words.

I spent a few days keeping a list of all the words I coult think of that seemed to be of French origin or influence. So many of the words that we use everyday have a very French appearance, even though these words may not be used any more, or were never used, in French: active, avenue, beautiful, boutique, bureau, carousel, cataract, chandelier, change, complete, dentist, depot, economy, enroute, envelope, equal, finish, force, glorious, individual, office, origin, palisade, persevere, pharmacy, entreat, precise, provide, route, sequence, service, severe, spontaneous, tour, treasure, unique, venue.

Some French words are still pronounced the same in English, such as depot and debut. Others have has their endings anglicized from -ie to -y, such as economie to economy, -eur to -or, -aire to -ary, such as documentaire to documentary and, -ique to-ic, such as electronique to electronic. The common -aux and -eux endings in French are rarely seen in English.

French words are often formed from a "mix-and match" selection of prefixes and suffixes. A good example is the word "constellation", an arrangement of stars. The word "stellar" means something to do with stars. The prefix con- means "put together", as in construction. The suffix -tion means "a manifestation of something" so that a constellation is a manifestation of an arranging of stars.

The French language is, like English, not always as precise as this. Induction and capacitance are two French words for related concepts in electronics. But one uses the -tion suffix and the other uses the -ance suffix.

Intend and extend are also French words that seem as if they should be opposites. But the two apparently related words actually have nothing to do with each other, to intend is to plan something and to extend is to lengthen something.

The most common French influence on English is probably the -tion, or -ion, ending. It simply means a manifestation of something. The list is nearly endless: addition, communication, compensation, conclusion, concussion, conduction, confirmation, construction, contraption, deception, definition, destruction, division, edification, edition, education, induction, information, institution, instruction, introduction, nation, obstruction, occupation, pension, perfection, position, probation, provision, subtraction, vacation, validation, vibration, vision, vocation.

Then there is the French -ment ending: basement, confinement, escarpment, employment, government, ointment, parliament, replacement, retirement, treatment. This -ment ending is somewhat more focused than the -tion ending, and usually means a place or thing or method that does something. A government is that which governs and a basement is that which acts as a base.

Then there is the -age ending: adage, advantage, beverage, encourage, entourage, language, mortgage, village and, voyage. The -age ending is similar in meaning to -ment. An entourage, for example, is those that are all around one.

The -ance ending falls into the same pattern of something that does something: capacitance, distance, entrance, finance, insurance, renaissance, resistance, resonance.

Notice that these various endings are of the same pattern as common French verbs. There are the verbs in French ending with -er, those ending with -re, and those ending with -ir.

Some French words in English end with -ant: brilliant, enchant, important, infant, restaurant, servant.

Other end with -ate: estate, exaggerate, illuminate. There is altitude, attitude and, gratitude. There is lovable, portable and, soluble. There is also interest and modest. There is defense and offense, content and patent and patient, frontier and cavalier, mortician and politician.

Even if some of these are not French words, they still show the tremendous influence of the patterns in French on English and how it gave it the wide span of the global language that it is today.

Then there is the prefixes, or beginnings of words, from French.

The in- prefix is often seen: incomplete, influence, information, inspection, institution, instruction, insurance, interest. The prefix inter- means between, such as intermission or international.

Examples of the con- prefix are: conduction, confinement, congruent, consolidate, continuation, control, construction.

There is the ex- prefix: exaggerate, exchange, exhibition, explain.

Then there is the French en- prefix: enchant, encourage, enlighten.

The de- prefix means to undo something. Decode means to undo a code. Perception is to see something, deception is to prevent from seeing something. But there is also deficient, definition and, deliver.

The dis- prefix is similar in meaning: discontinue, discourage, disengage.

Re- is generally the opposite of de-: reconnaissance, renaissance, replace, report, request, reverse.

There is pro-: produce, pronounce, provide.

Com- means to put together: combination, compare, compensation, compile.

Pre- means before: precede, prefer, previous.

Even though cars were developed long after the time of the Normans, the subject of cars is especially loaded with French words: alternator, automobile, carburetor, chassis, chauffeur, coupe, exhaust, garage, gasoline, limousine, lubrication, sedan, transmission.

Now, you can see how much the French language has influenced English. It is the grafting of all of these French and French-influenced words onto the northern European structure of English that has given it the broad span that makes it suitable to be the global language that it is today.