English-History
Of—From http://www.reference.com/search?q=English%20Language
History
of English
Today's
English is the continuation of the language of the 5th-century Germanic
invaders of
It
is convenient to divide English into periods—Old English (or Anglo-Saxon; to
c.1150), Middle English (to c.1500; see Middle English literature), and Modern English;
this division implies no discontinuity, for even the hegemony of French
affected only a small percentage of the population. The English-speaking areas
have expanded at all periods. Before the
A
Changed and Changing Language
Like
other languages, English has changed greatly, albeit imperceptibly, so that an
English speaker of 1300 would not have understood the English of 500 nor the
English of today. Changes of every sort have taken place concomitantly in the
sounds (phonetics), in their distribution (phonemics), and in the grammar
(morphology and syntax). The following familiar words show changes of 1,000
years:The changes are more radical than they appear,
for Modern English ō and ā are diphthongs. The words home, stones,
and name exemplify the fate of unaccented vowels, which became ə, then ə disappeared. In Old English important
inflectional contrasts depended upon the difference between unaccented vowels;
so, as these vowels coalesced into ə and this disappeared, much of the
case system disappeared too. In Modern English a different technique, word
order (subject + predicate + object), is used to show what a case contrast once
did, namely, which is the actor and which the goal of the action.
Although
the pronunciation of English has changed greatly since the 15th cent., the
spelling of English words has altered very little over the same period. As a
result, English spelling is not a reliable guide to the pronunciation of the
language.
The
vocabulary of English has naturally expanded, but many common modern words are
derived from the lexicon of the earliest English; e.g., bread, good,
and shower. From words acquired with Latin Christianity come priest,
bishop, and others; and from words adopted from Scandinavian settlers
come root, egg, take, window, and many more. French
words, such as castle, began to come into English shortly before the
Norman Conquest. After the Conquest, Norman French became the language of the
court and of official life, and it remained so until the end of the 14th cent.
During
these 300 or more years English remained the language of the common people, but
an increasingly large number of French words found their way into the language,
so that when the 14th-century vernacular revival, dominated by Chaucer and
Wyclif, restored English to its old place as the speech of all classes, the
French element in the English vocabulary was very considerable. To this phase
of French influence belong most legal terms (such as judge, jury, tort,
and assault) and words denoting social ranks and institutions (such as duke,
baron, peer, countess, and parliament), together with a great number
of other words that cannot be classified readily—e.g., honor, courage,
season, manner, study, feeble, and poor. Since nearly all of these
French words are ultimately derived from Late Latin, they may be regarded as an
indirect influence of the classical languages upon the English vocabulary.
The
direct influence of the classical languages began with the Renaissance and has
continued ever since; even today Latin and Greek roots are the chief source for
English words in science and technology (e.g., conifer, cyclotron,
intravenous, isotope, polymeric, and telephone). During the last 300
years the borrowing of words from foreign languages has continued unchecked, so
that now most of the languages of the world are represented to some extent in
the vocabulary. English vocabulary has also been greatly
expanded by the blending of existing words (e.g., smog from smoke
and fog) and by back-formations (e.g., burgle from burglar),
whereby a segment of an existing word is treated as an affix and dropped,
resulting in a new word, usually with a related meaning.
Bibliography
See
H. L. Mencken, The American Language (rev. 4th ed. 1963); G. W. Turner, The
English Language in Australia and New Zealand (1966);M. Pei, The Story
of the English Language (new ed. 1968); P. Roberts, Modern Grammar
(1968); M. M. Orkin, Speaking Canadian English (1971); T. Pyles and J.
Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language (3d ed.
1982); W. F. Bolton, A Living Language (1982); B. Kachru, ed., The
Other Tongue (1982); R. Hudson, Invitation to Linguistics (1984); J.
Baugh, Black Street Speech (1985); The Random House Dictionary of the
English Language (2d ed. 1987).
The
Licensed from
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source
English is a West
Germanic language developed in England, and
the first language for
most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth
Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and
the United States. It
is used extensively as a second language and
as an official
language throughout the world, especially in Commonwealth
countries such as India, Pakistan and South Africa, and
in many international
organisations.
Modern English is sometimes described as the world's lingua franca.
English is the dominant international
language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment
and diplomacy. The influence of the British Empire is
the primary reason for the initial spread of the language far beyond the
Because a working knowledge of English is required in certain
fields, professions, and occupations, English is studied and spoken by up to a
billion people around the world, to at least a basic level (see English
language learning and teaching). English is one of six
official working languages of the United Nations.
History
English is an Anglo-Frisian
language. Germanic-speaking
peoples from northwest Germany (Saxons and Angles) and Jutland (Jutes)
invaded what is now known as Eastern England around the fifth century AD. It is
a matter of debate whether the Anglo-Saxon
language spread by displacement of the original population, or the native Celts
gradually adopted the language and culture of a new ruling class (see Sub-Roman
Britain), or a combination of both of these processes. There is also
debate as to whether there were substantial numbers of Saxons already in
Whatever their origin, these Germanic dialects eventually
coalesced to a degree and formed what is today called the Old
English language, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now
north-west Germany and the Netherlands
(i.e., Frisia).
Throughout the history of written Old English, it
retained a synthetic
structure closer to that of Proto-Indo-European, being
based on a single literary standard, while spoken Old English became
increasingly analytic in
nature, losing the more complex noun case system, relying more heavily on
prepositions and fixed word-order to convey meaning. This is evident in the
Middle English period, when literature was first recorded in the spoken
dialects of English, after written Old English lost its status as the literary
language of the nobility. It has been postulated that the early development of
the language may have been influenced by a Celtic substratum.
Later, it was influenced by the related North
Germanic language Old
Norse, spoken by the Vikings who
settled mainly in the north and the east coast down to London, the
area known as the Danelaw.
Then came the Norman
Conquest of England in 1066. For about 300 years after this, the Norman kings and
the high nobility spoke only Anglo-Norman,
which was close to Old French. A
large number of Norman words found their way into Old English, particularly
those in the legal and administrative fields. Later, many words were borrowed
directly from Latin and Greek,
leaving a parallel vocabulary that persists into modern times. The Norman
influence strongly affected the evolution of the language over the following
centuries, resulting in what is now referred to as Middle English.
During the 15th century, Middle English was transformed by the Great
Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in
government and administration, and the standardising effect of printing. Early
Modern English can be traced back to around the time of William
Shakespeare.
Classification and related languages
The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic
branch, which is itself a branch of the Indo-European
family of languages.
The question as to which is the nearest living relative of
English is a matter of discussion. Apart from such English-lexified creole languages such
as Tok Pisin, Scots
(spoken primarily in Scotland and
parts of Northern
Ireland) is the Germanic variety most closely associated with English.
Like English, Scots ultimately descends from Old English, also known as
Anglo-Saxon. The closest relative to English after Scots is Frisian,
which is spoken in the