A Short History of the English Language
Short History of the English Language
This is theIndo-European language family. It stretches from the north of India all the way to western Europe. Almost half of the global population speaks an Indo-European language and that includes you and me. English is an Indo-European language, specifically part
of the Germanic branch of the family along with languages like German, Dutch and Swedish. in the early 5th century the Romans, who had ruled over England for over 400 years
withdrew their hold over the island. Filling this vacuum, a number of Germanic tribes from Denmark and the north of Germany ventured onto the island, and slowly replaced the Celtic and Romano-British cultures that had been dominant in the area. Celtic speakers became concentrated in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall while the area we now know as England became culturally Germanic.
The Germanic peoples in Britain, while from a number of separate tribes, eventually developed a common cultural identity as Anglo-Saxons. And with these Anglo-Saxons our story truly begins .
Old English
The Anglo-Saxons, in
their many kingdoms, spoke a language we now call Old English. Old
English really sounds nothing like our modern language and is
largely incomprehensible to us modern speakers.
Here's an example of the language from the epic poem Beowulf: Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
So I assume you understood none of that. not to worry, no modern English speaker would be able to understand. It's so old, and English has evolved so much that it may as well be a foreign language. While not understandable today, half of our most commonly used words come from this Anglo-Saxon tongue. Words like 'water,' 'child,' 'ear,' 'talk' and 'the.' Basically most short simple words come from this Old English language. Now Old English was not a static language; no languages ever are, but most of the major changes to the English language through its history came not from within, but from without.
The first major
influx of change to English came with the Viking invasions in the 8th
century onward. Norsemen from Norway and Denmark invaded the north
of England and even set up a kingdom of their own called the
Danelaw. These Vikings spoke a language called Old Norse which is
the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages. Its
influence on English was mostly vocabulary, with words like 'sky,' 'bag,'
'law,' 'hit' and even 'they' coming from Old Norse.
Middle English
In 1066 William the
Bastard, later called William the Conqueror invaded England with his
Norman army, and at the Battle of Hastings successfully conquered
it. These Normans, now the ruling class of England spoke a dialect of Old
French. This Norman French came to be the language of the royal
court, while Old English continued to be the language of the peasantry.
After around 100 years of this the two languages began to merge,
creating what we call Middle English. If you've ever wondered why English,
a Germanic language, has so many cognates with romance languages
like Spanish or French, this is why. A whopping 30 percent or 10,000
English words are French in origin. These words are most commonly seen
in the spheres of law, religion, and science.
This French
connection is also why English has so many words that mean the same
thing, called synonyms. If you look at an English dictionary it is
almost always much larger than a dictionary of another language. The
most famous example of these synonyms comes from the realm of food.
In English we use two different words when referring to an animal and the
meat that comes from said animal. Words like pig, cow and chicken
are all Anglo-Saxon, as the farmers who raised these animals were English
speakers, while pork, beef and poultry are all Norman French because
the elites who ate the fine food were French speakers. With this influx
of French words, as well as a simplification of the grammar rules of
Old English, Middle English is one step closer to the language we know
today. Still, it is by and large incomprehensible to most English
speakers.
Here is an example
from the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, the most famous Middle English
writer:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour.
Early Modern English
In the 15th century a
phenomenon known as the great vowel shift started occurring, which propelled
English into its Early Modern version. This vowel shift affected almost
all English pronunciation in quite dramatic ways. We won't get too
into the specifics because I don't want to get into complicated
linguistics, but basically English long vowels like 'ooh' started
becoming shorter diphthongs like 'oh.' A diphthong by the way is
basically a sound made of two vowels.
Also there were many
consonants that became unpronounced which we now call silent
letters.
A good example of
this change is in the word knife. In Middle English it was
pronounced 'kneef' but after the vowel shift the 'k' became silent
and the 'e' turned to the diphthong 'ai.' As you can see while the
pronunciation of the word has changed, the spelling has not. This is one
of the major reasons why English spelling is so notoriously
difficult.
So with this change
over around 200 years the English language landed in a place most of us
will recognize. A good example of what we call Early Modern English
is the work of Shakespeare. Two households, both alike in dignity (In fair
Verona where we lay our scene), From ancient grudge break to new
mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. That was a small
part of the prologue from Romeo and Juliet. It is understandable,
but the word choice is quite different from how Modern English speakers
speak, making it sometimes difficult to comprehend entirely.
Beginning in the 16th
century the British started exploring and subsequently created an
empire. At its height in the 19th century the British Empire covered a
quarter of the Earth, and had control over almost a quarter of the
Earth's inhabitants. This spread of English, as well as the later
industrial revolution transformed English even further, mostly in
the realm of vocabulary. New words from English colonies as well as new
words for new technology ballooned the English vocabulary into what it is
today.
Also the spread of
English created many English varieties, most prominently in North America
where English pronunciation froze in place. The standard American
accent like my accent is actually closer to the accent of Shakespeare than
most modern British accents. American English is particularly influential
because of the success of American pop culture around the
world.
English today is
still evolving as much as it ever was, with new words being added
to dictionaries every year, as well as many old words falling out of
use. English grammar is also changing and it will continue to change
so much so that in a few hundred years our language will sound just as
foreign to future English speakers as Chaucer does to us.