nd tenth centuries the Danes invaded England, and ruled it for a time,
but they caused no great change in the language. In the year 1066 the
Norman Conquest took place, and William the Conqueror became King of
England. Large numbers of the Norman French came with him, and French
became the language of the court and of the nobility. By degrees our
English language grew out of the blending of the Anglo-Saxon of the
common people and the Norman French of their new rulers, the former
furnishing most of the _grammar_, the latter supplying many of the
_words_. Now the French was of Latin origin, and the English thus got an
important Latin or "Classical" element, which has since been increased
by the adding of many Greek and Latin words, especially scientific and
technical terms.

The two great events in the history of the English language, as of the
English people, are the Saxon and the Norman conquests. To the former it
owes its grammatical frame-work, or skeleton; to the latter much of its
vocabulary, or the flesh that fills out the living body.

It must not be inferred that our grammar is just like the Anglo-Saxon
because this is the _basis_ of it. The Anglo-Saxon had many more
_inflections_ (case-endings of nouns and pronouns, etc.) than the
French, and in the forming of English most of these were dropped,
prepositions and auxiliaries coming to be used instead. It was not until
about A.D. 1550 that the language had become in the main what it now is.
Some words have since been lost, and many have been added, but its
grammar has changed very little. Our version of the Bible, published in
1611, shows what English then was (and had been for fifty years or
more), and has done much to keep it from further change.

As a rule the most common words--those that chiefly make up the language
of childhood and of every-day life--are Saxon; and very many of them are
words of one syllable. In the inscription above, every monosyllable is
Saxon, with _Boston_, _grateful_, and _coming_; the rest are French or
Latin. In the case of pairs of words having the same meaning, one is
likely to be Saxon, the other Classical. Thus _happiness_ is Saxon,
_felicity_ is French; _begin_ is Saxon, _commence_ is French; _freedom_
is Saxon, _liberty_ is French, etc. The Saxon is often to be preferred,
though not always; but, as has been implied above, if a short and simple
word conveys our meaning, we should never put it aside for a longer and
less famili