WHEN LANGUAGES COLLIDE SLOWLY—THE CELTICS.

WHEN LANGUAGES COLLIDE SLOWLY—THE CELTICS. McWhorter contrasts the kind of changes to English that the Vikings brought about and the changes to English that arose from contacts with the Celtics. The difference arises because Welsh and Cornish were spoken in England alongside English for over a thousand years. This kind of long-term contact, referred to as a “linguistic equilibrium”, does not result in one language being simplified (such as by developing a simpler grammar). McWhorter argues that this kind of long-term contact with Celtic languages resulted in the addition of two unusual features to English grammar: what McWhorter calls “meaningless do” (“did you notice” and “I did not notice”) and what he calls the use of the verb-noun progressive to express present activity (“I am writing” instead of “I write”). The only languages in the world with “meaningless do” are Celtic and English. The only Germanic language that uses the verb-noun progressive as the only way to express the present tense is English. Cornish and Welsh use the progressive in the same way. As the theory of linguistic equilibrium predicts, English added these features, resulting in a hybrid language with elements of Celtic grammar.