A Short History of the English Language


This is the indoeuropean language family it stretches from the north of india all theway to western Europe almost half of the global population speaks an indo-european language and that includes you and me english is a indo-european language specifically part of the germanic branch of the family along with languages like german dutch and swedish in the In the early 5th century, the Romans who had ruled over England for over 400 years withdrew their hold over theisland filling this vacuum a number of germanic tribes from Denmark in 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 whilethe area we now know as England became culturally germanic the germanic peoples in Britain well froma number of separate tribeseventually developed a common cultural identity as anglo-Saxons and with these Anglo-Saxons our story truly begins. The Anglo-Saxons in their manykingdoms spoke a languagewe 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 what way Gardena in yardage so I assume you understood none of that not to worry nomodern English speaker would be able to understandit'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 usedwords come from this anglo-Saxon tongue words like water child ear talk andthe 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 centuryonward Norsemen from Norway and Denmark invaded the north of England and even set up akingdom of their own called the Danelaw these Vikings spoke a language called Old Norse which is the ancestor of the modernScandinavian languages itsinfluence on English was mostly vocabulary with words like sky bag law hit and even they coming from old Norse 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 the dialect of old french thisnorman 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 languagehas so many cognates with romance languages like Spanish or french this is why a whopping 30 per cent or 10 000 English words are French in origin these wordsare 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 farmerswho raised these animals were English speakers whilepork beef and poultry are all normans 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 largely incomprehensible to most English speakers here is an example from the canterbury tales by Chaucerthe most famous middle English writer Wanda da pre el with his shore also the draft of march hath passed it to the rota and bathed every vine in switched lacuna of which vertu engendered is the floor in the 15th centurya phenomenon known as thegreat vowel shift started occurring which propelled English into its early modernversion this vowel shift affected almost all English pronunciation is 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 vowelslike 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 whichwe now call silent letters a goodexample of this change is inthe word knife in Middle English it was pronounced knees but after the vowel shift the k became silent and the e turned to the diphthong. 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 changeover 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 newmutiny 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 aquarter of the earth and had control over almosta quarter of the earth's inhabitants this spread of English as well as the later industrial revolution transformed English even further mostly in the realmof 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 tous.

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