A
Brief History of the English Language
English is a member of
the Indo-European family of languages. This broad family includes most of the
European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several
major branches: Latin and the modern Romance languages (French etc.); the
Germanic languages (English, German, Swedish etc.); the Indo-Iranian languages
(Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit etc.); the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech
etc.); the Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian; the Celtic languages
(Welsh, Irish Gaelic etc.); Greek.
The influence of the
original Indo-European language can be seen today, even though no written
record of it exists. The word for father, for example, is vater in German, pater in Latin, and pitrin Sanskrit. These words are all cognates, similar words in
different languages that share the same root. Of these branches of the
Indo-European family, two are, as far as the study of the development of
English is concerned, of paramount importance, the Germanic and the Romance
(called that because the Romance languages derive from Latin, the language of
ancient Rome). English is a member of the Germanic group of languages. It is
believed that this group began as a common language in the Elbe river region
about 3,000 years ago. By the second century BC, this Common Germanic language
had split into three distinct sub-groups:
East Germanic was
spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No East Germanic
language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language that
survives is Gothic.North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian
languages of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic (but not Finnish, which
is related to Hungarian and Estonian and is not an Indo-European language). West
Germanic is the ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and
English.
Old
English (500-1100 AD)
West Germanic invaders
from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the
words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began to settle in the British
Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible
language, similar to modern Frisian – the language of the northeastern region
of the Netherlands – that is called Old English. Four major dialects of Old
English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of England, Mercian in the Midlands,
West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the Southeast.
These invaders pushed
the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into
Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words.
These Celtic languages survive today in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and
Ireland and in Welsh. Cornish, unfortunately, is, in linguistic terms, now a
dead language. (The last native Cornish speaker died in 1777) Also influencing
English at this time were the Vikings. Norse invasions and settlement,
beginning around 850, brought many North Germanic words into the language,
particularly in the north of England. Some examples are dream, which had meant
‘joy’ until the Vikings imparted its current meaning on it from the
Scandinavian cognate draumr, and skirt, which continues to live alongside its
native English cognate shirt.
The majority of words
in modern English come from foreign, not Old English roots. In fact, only about
one sixth of the known Old English words have descendants surviving today. But
this is deceptive; Old English is much more important than these statistics
would indicate. About half of the most commonly used words in modern English
have Old English roots. Words like be,water, and strong, for example, derive
from Old English roots. Old English, whose best known surviving example is the
poem Beowulf, lasted until about 1100.
The
Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)
William the Conqueror,
the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons in
1066 AD. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman.
The Normans were also of Germanic stock (“Norman” comes from “Norseman”) and
Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in
addition to the basic Latin roots.
Prior to the Norman
Conquest, Latin had been only a minor influence on the English language, mainly
through vestiges of the Roman occupation and from the conversion of Britain to
Christianity in the seventh century (ecclesiastical terms such as priest,
vicar, and mass came into the language this way), but now there was a wholesale
infusion of Romance (Anglo-Norman) words.
The influence of the Normans
can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and cow. Beef, commonly eaten
by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while the Anglo-Saxon
commoners, who tended the cattle, retained the Germanic cow. Many legal terms,
such asindict, jury , and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the Normans
ran the courts. This split, where words commonly used by the aristocracy have
Romantic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have
Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.
Sometimes French words
replaced Old English words; crime replaced firen and uncle replacedeam. Other
times, French and Old English components combined to form a new word, as the
French gentle and the Germanic man formed gentleman. Other times, two different
words with roughly the same meaning survive into modern English. Thus we have
the Germanic doom and the French judgment, or wish and desire. It is useful to
compare various versions of a familiar text to see the differences between Old,
Middle, and Modern English. Take for instance this Old English (c. 1000)
sample:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
si þin nama gehalgod tobecume þin rice
gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we
forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us
of yfele soþlice.
Rendered in Middle
English (Wyclif, 1384), the same text is recognizable to the modern eye:
Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi
name;
þi reume or kyngdom come to be. Be þi wille
don in herþe as it is doun in heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure
synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men þat han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but
delyuere us from euyl.
Finally, in Early
Modern English (King James Version, 1611) the same text is completely
intelligible:
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be
thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth
as it is in heauen.
Giue us this day our daily bread.
And forgiue us our debts as we forgiue our
debters.
And lead us not into temptation, but
deliuer us from euill. Amen.
For a lengthier comparison of the three
stages in the development of English click here!
In 1204 AD, King John
lost the province of Normandy to the King of France. This began a process where
the Norman nobles of England became increasingly estranged from their French
cousins. England became the chief concern of the nobility, rather than their
estates in France, and consequently the nobility adopted a modified English as
their native tongue. About 150 years later, the Black Death (1349-50) killed
about one third of the English population. And as a result of this the
labouring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance, and
along with them English increased in importance compared to Anglo-Norman.
This mixture of the two
languages came to be known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle
English is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Unlike Old English, Middle English can
be read, albeit with difficulty, by modern English-speaking people.
By 1362, the linguistic
division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over. In that year,
the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the
courts and it began to be used in Parliament.
The Middle English
period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English.
Early
Modern English (1500-1800)
The next wave of
innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of classical
scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language.
These borrowings were deliberate and many bemoaned the adoption of these
“inkhorn” terms, but many survive to this day. Shakespeare’s character
Holofernes in Loves Labor Lost is a satire of an overenthusiastic schoolmaster
who is too fond of Latinisms.
Many students having
difficulty understanding Shakespeare would be surprised to learn that he wrote
in modern English. But, as can be seen in the earlier example of the Lord’s
Prayer, Elizabethan English has much more in common with our language today
than it does with the language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were
coined or first recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless idioms
are his. Newcomers to Shakespeare are often shocked at the number of cliches
contained in his plays, until they realize that he coined them and they became
cliches afterwards. “One fell swoop,” “vanish into thin air,” and “flesh and
blood” are all Shakespeare’s. Words he bequeathed to the language include
“critical,” “leapfrog,” “majestic,” “dwindle,” and “pedant.”
Two other major factors
influenced the language and served to separate Middle and Modern English. The
first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change in pronunciation that began
around 1400. While modern English speakers can read Chaucer with some
difficulty, Chaucer’s pronunciation would have been completely unintelligible
to the modern ear. Shakespeare, on the other hand, would be accented, but
understandable. Vowel sounds began to be made further to the front of the mouth
and the letter “e” at the end of words became silent. Chaucer’s Lyf(pronounced
“leef”) became the modern life. In Middle English name was pronounced
“nam-a,”five was pronounced “feef,” and down was pronounced “doon.” In
linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major changes occurring
within a century. The shift is still not over, however, vowel sounds are still
shortening although the change has become considerably more gradual.
The last major factor
in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press.
William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476. Books became
cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. Publishing for the masses
became a profitable enterprise, and works in English, as opposed to Latin,
became more common. Finally, the printing press brought standardization to
English. The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located,
became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first English
dictionary was published in 1604.
Late-Modern
English (1800-Present)
The principal
distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary.
Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern
English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical
factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the
technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that
had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height,
Britain ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface, and English adopted many
foreign words and made them its own.
The industrial and
scientific revolutions created a need for neologisms to describe the new
creations and discoveries. For this, English relied heavily on Latin and Greek.
Words like oxygen,protein, nuclear, and vaccine did not exist in the classical
languages, but they were created from Latin and Greek roots. Such neologisms
were not exclusively created from classical roots though, English roots were
used for such terms as horsepower, airplane, and typewriter.
This burst of
neologisms continues today, perhaps most visible in the field of electronics
and computers. Byte, cyber-, bios, hard-drive, and microchip are good examples.
Also, the rise of the
British Empire and the growth of global trade served not only to introduce
English to the world, but to introduce words into English. Hindi, and the other
languages of the Indian subcontinent, provided many words, such as pundit,
shampoo, pajamas, and juggernaut. Virtually every language on Earth has contributed
to the development of English, from Finnish (sauna) and Japanese (tycoon) to
the vast contributions of French and Latin.
The British Empire was
a maritime empire, and the influence of nautical terms on the English language
has been great. Phrases like three sheets to the wind have their origins
onboard ships.
Finally, the military
influence on the language during the latter half of twentieth century was
significant. Before the Great War, military service for English-speaking
persons was rare; both Britain and the United States maintained small,
volunteer militaries. Military slang existed, but with the exception of
nautical terms, rarely influenced standard English. During the mid-20th
century, however, a large number of British and American men served in the
military. And consequently military slang entered the language like never
before. Blockbuster, nose dive, camouflage, radar, roadblock, spearhead, and
landing strip are all military terms that made their way into standard English.
American
English and other varieties
Also significant
beginning around 1600 AD was the English colonization of North America and the
subsequent creation of American English. Some pronunciations and usages “froze”
when they reached the American shore. In certain respects, some varieties of American
English are closer to the English of Shakespeare than modern Standard English
(‘English English‘ or as it is often incorrectly termed ‘British English’) is.
Some “Americanisms” are actually originally EnglishEnglish expressions that
were preserved in the colonies while lost at home (e.g., fall as a synonym for
autumn, trash for rubbish, and loan as a verb instead of lend).
The American dialect
also served as the route of introduction for many native American words into
the English language. Most often, these were place names like Mississippi,
Roanoke, andIowa. Indian-sounding names like Idaho were sometimes created that
had no native-American roots. But, names for other things besides places were
also common. Raccoon, tomato, canoe, barbecue, savanna, and hickory have native
American roots, although in many cases the original Indian words were mangled
almost beyond recognition.
Spanish has also been
great influence on American English. Mustang, canyon, ranch, stampede,and
vigilante are all examples of Spanish words that made their way into English
through the settlement of the American West.
A lesser number of
words have entered American English from French and West African languages.
Likewise dialects of
English have developed in many of the former colonies of the British Empire.
There are distinct forms of the English language spoken in Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, India and many other parts of the world.
Global
English
English has now
inarguably achieved global status. Whenever we turn on the news to find out
what’s happening in East Asia, or the Balkans, or Africa, or South America, or
practically anywhere, local people are being interviewed and telling us about
it in English. To illustrate the point when Pope John Paul II arrived in the
Middle East recently to retrace Christ’s footsteps and addressed Christians,
Muslims and Jews, the pontiff spoke not Latin, not Arabic, not Italian, not
Hebrew, not his native Polish. He spoke in English.
Indeed, if one looks at
some of the facts about the amazing reach of
the English language many would be surprised. English is used in over 90
countries as an official or semi-official language. English is the working
language of the Asian trade group ASEAN. It is the de facto working language of
98 percent of international research physicists and research chemists. It is
the official language of the European Central Bank, even though the bank is in
Frankfurt and neither Britain nor any other predominantly English-speaking
country is a member of the European Monetary Union. It is the language in which
Indian parents and black parents in South Africa overwhelmingly wish their
children to be educated. It is believed that over one billion people worldwide
are currently learning English.
One of the more remarkable
aspects of the spread of English around the world has been the extent to which
Europeans are adopting it as their internal lingua franca. English is spreading
from northern Europe to the south and is now firmly entrenched as a second
language in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. Although
not an official language in any of these countries if one visits any of them it
would seem that almost everyone there can communicate with ease in English.
Indeed, if one switches on a television in Holland one would find as many
channels in English (albeit subtitled), as there are in Dutch.
As part of the European
Year of Languages, a special survey of
European attitudes towards and their use of languages has just published. The
report confirms that at the beginning of 2001 English is the most widely known
foreign or second language, with 43% of Europeans claiming they speak it in
addition to their mother tongue. Sweden now heads the league table of English
speakers, with over 89% of the population saying they can speak the language
well or very well. However, in contrast, only 36% of Spanish and Portuguese
nationals speak English. What’s more,
English is the language rated as most useful to know, with over 77% of
Europeans who do not speak English as their first language, rating it as
useful. French rated 38%, German 23% and Spanish 6%
English has without a doubt become the global
language.
A
Chronology of the English Language
449 Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain begins
450-480 Earliest Old English inscriptions date from
this period
597 St. Augustine arrives in Britain. Beginning
of Christian conversion
731 The Venerable Bede publishes The
Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin
792 Viking raids and settlements begin
871 Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin
works translated into English and begins practice of English prose. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun
911 Charles II of France grants Normandy to the
Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of Norman French
c. 1000 The oldest
surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period
1066 The Norman conquest
c. 1150 The oldest surviving manuscripts of Middle
English date from this period
1171 Henry II conquers Ireland
1204 King John loses the province of Normandy to
France
1348 English replaces Latin as the medium of
instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge which retain Latin
1362 The Statute of Pleading replaces French with
English as the language of law. Records continue to be kept in Latin. English
is used in Parliament for the first time
1384 Wyclif publishes his English translation of the
Bible
c. 1388 Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales
1476 William Caxton establishes the first English
printing press
1492 Columbus discovers the New World
1549 First version of The Book of Common Prayer
1604 Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English
dictionary, Table Alphabeticall
1607 Jamestown, the first permanent English
settlement in the New World, established
1611 The Authorized, or King James Version, of the
Bible is published
1702 Publication of the first daily,
English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London
1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary
1770 Cook discovers Australia
1928 The Oxford English Dictionary is published
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