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“The history of the english language”

 PLAN

IntroductionHistory of the English Language Germanic to Old English and

Influence: Romans, Celts, Danes, NormansDevelopment of Middle English Great
Vowel Shift Present and Future of English
 INTRODUCTION
is one of the greatest cultural accomplishments the humanity has made. It
evolves and develops together with the nation that speaks it. Such historical events
as wars, exploration, colonization, migration make the language change, borrow
new elements or sometimes even disappear. So, we may say that the history of the
nation is reflected in its language.English language is no exception. Throughout the
centuries it experienced the influence of many other dialects and languages and
evolved from Germanic to Old, Middle, and Modern English. On the way it had
revolutionary language upheavals such as the ones brought about by the Norman
Conquest and the Great Vowel Shift [2].makes us human. It is the use of language
that differs us from animals, since the possession of abstract language is a uniquely
human characteristic. The greatest cultural achievements are either made with the
help of language or rely upon it for their accomplishment and dissemination. is the
main medium of human communication. There exist over six thousand languages
in the world today, though we are losing some of them. They die, because there
remain no persons speaking those languages. Some languages are more difficult
than the others. For example, Finnish has more than ten noun cases; the verb
system of Spanish is exceedingly complex and so on. has a lot of rules and
numerous exceptions to all of them, it rapidly adopts new vocabulary, and its rules
of reading are so vague that one has a hard time learning how to read in English.
However these rules don’t seem so strange for those who know the history of the
English language. As any living creature, a language changes constantly and many
of its “unexplainable” features have logical historical explanations.
 THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
origin of English, as any other human language lies in the very deep past.
Scientists state that humans have had language from the dawn of their existence
and that the development of language was a great evolutionary leap that separated
us from animals. Unfortunately, we will never know for sure when the English
language was born, because it existed long before people learned to write down the
sounds. That’s why a lot of information conveyed orally and got lost on the way.
Of course, oral tradition can preserve some information about old languages, but it
not too much as the language changes constantly.proved that hundreds of
languages in the world derived from one ancestor. They called it Indo-European
language as its language family included European and Indian languages. Scholars
figured out how most European languages related to each other and what their
ancestors must have been. The Indo-European family can be divided into two
branches: “Satem” and “Centum”.Satem group includes the Indo-Iranian,
Armenian, Albanian, and Balto-Slavic families. The Centum group includes the
Tocharian, Anatolian, Hellenic (Greek), Italic (Latin), Celtic, and Germanic
languages families. We are particularly interested in the Germanic branch, because
it is the branch to which the English language belongs [3].Germanic branch in its
turn is divided into three other branches: East Germanic, West Germanic and North
Germanic. The English language belongs to the West Germanic group, which is in
its turn divided into two parts, High and Low. High German was the language of
uplands of Germany. The Low German languages include Old Saxon, Old Low,
Old Frisian, and Old English.
GERMANIC TO OLD ENGLISH
earliest use of Old English date from approximately 700 A.D. Before that
time, we must rely on Latin chronicles and the techniques of the comparative
method, because writing reached the Germans only in the IV century. Even after,
the West and North Germanic couldn’t boast any significant texts for several
hundred years.studying the history of the English language it is important to
remember that the British Isles were originally settled by Celts, who spoke Celtic
languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Gaelic, Manx). When Julius Caesar invaded
Britain Latin became the dominant language in Britain for almost four hundred
years. However after the withdrawal of the Roman legions the remaining Romano-
British were sorely oppressed by the Celtic-speaking peoples whom they had
dominated before. More over somewhere around 449 Germanic tribes started
migrating to England and rapidly took over the island. They were the tribes of the
Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. These tribes spoke a form of Old English, and
this language rapidly replaced Latin and Celtic. Although England was divided into
numerous small kingdoms, the people seem to have been able to communicate with
each other without difficulty. Then in 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent the
missionary Augustine of Canterbury to England. Augustine replaced the idols with
the Christian cross, therefore allowing people to maintain many of their traditional
customs in their traditional places. With Christianity came both Latin and writing,
and it the first written records of language come from that time. One of them is The
Lord’s Prayer in Old English, from the West Saxon Gospels [2].Lord’s Prayer (Old
English)ure †u †e eart on heofonum;†in nama gehalgodbecume †in rice†e ∂in
willaeor∂an swa swa on heofonum.gedaghwamlican hlaf syle us todagforgyf us ure
gyltasswa we forgyfa∂ urum gyltendumne gelad †u us on costnungealys us of yfele
so†lice.us examine several lines of the prayer in detail.ure †u †e eart on
heofonum†in nama gehalgod
“Fader” is recognizable as “father,” and “ure” is close enough to “our”. “ˇu”
means “thou,” “†e” is a relative particle which can be translated as “who.” “Eart”
is “art” and “on heofonum” means “in the heavens.” “Si” is a form of the verb “to
be” that is lost from Modern English. “ˇin” is “thine” and “nama” is “name.” [5].
English is West Germanic and rather close to Modern English. Closer than Celtic
or Cothic, anyway. It has an additional set of sound shifts that makes the words
sound more like Modern English. Its grammar is also evolving gradually toward
that of Modern English.English, like Modern German, still has strong verbs in
which the vowel of the verb stem is changed to indicate changes in number or
tense: Modern English “to bite, bit” comes from Old English “bitan,” “bat.” Old
English also had weak verbs, which added an ending to indicate the past tense. Just
like modern regular verbs. modern English and German languages, Old English
easily produced new compound words and was open to borrowing. It readily
adopted Latin or Celtic words, for example. English started its life in the British
Isles as an essentially Germanic language with a native vocabulary. At its early
stages it had experienced little influenced from other languages. Later the Old
English had to go through several very significant contact periods in which foreign
language influences would radically change the language.
 BORROWING AND INFLUENCE: ROMANS, CELTS, DANES,
NORMANS

Languages tend to borrow words from one another, it’s a common practice,
and English is no exception. Moreover it was especially prolific in its adoption of
new words from outside sources. Even at the very beginning, it borrowed several
Latin words. It is supposed that Anglo-Saxons took names from the Romans for
things that did not exist in their own culture. For example,
“win” (wine) from Latin “vinus”;
“popig” (poppy); Old English sound “g” before and after front vowels is
pronounced “y”
“cytel” (kettle),
“pyle” (pillow),
“butere” (butter),
“weall” (wall),
“pytt” (pit),
“draca” (dragon; the native Old English word was “wyrm”),
“bisceop” (bishop),
“cirice” (church), and so on.the communication with a Romano-British
population of the British Isles Anglo-Saxons could pick up some Celtic words,
however Celtic languages had surprisingly little influence on Old English. They
influenced the Old English in the realm of place names, most of which are Celtic.
For example, “Wor” in “Worcester,” “Ex” in “Exeter,” and “Win” in “Winchester,”
were Celtic. Rivers and hill in England have a very high proportion of Celtic
names. Beside place names Old English borrowed some other words, for example:
“binn” (bin),
“crag” (rock),
 “ass” (donkey),
“cursian” (to curse).first wave of Latin borrowing took place while Anglo-
Saxon tribes were still living on the continent, but a much greater influence of
Latin on Old English came from Christians in the VI-VII centuries. Roman
Catholic Church was an enormously important cultural presence in England. In the
beginning of the Christian period, key Latin terms were translated into Old
English. They were a sort of neologisms. Strictly speaking such words were not
borrowings, but translations. One of written examples of such a translation is
“Cædmon’s Hymn”. This poem was written in Latin, and than translated. Here is a
part of it: sculon herian heofon rices weardmeahte ond his mod ge†ancwuldorfader
swa he wundra gehwasdryhten or astealde….
[Now we must praise the keeper of the heavenly kingdom the might oflord
and his mind-wisdom, the work of the wonder-father, as he,of wonders, the eternal
lord, first established.] [4]decades later, Latin words were borrowed directly into
English where they replaced their Old English translations. Many of the Latin
borrowings were words for the church: angel, abbot, cleric, candle, hymn, chalice,
mass, noon, nun, priest, temple etc. Among other borrowings were names of
clothes, food and words relating to education, such as sock, sack, radish, beet,
mussel, lobster, school, notary, grammatical. wave of borrowing happened in the
VIII-IX centuries, when Vikings started their attacks on British monasteries and
villages. Small-case attack turned into a full-blown conquest. Eventually they got
almost all of northern and eastern England under control. In the end there was a
treaty between the Viking and British kings in which, among other things, Alfred,
the British king recognized that the Danes would stay in England. influence of
Scandinavian on English was enormous. Hundreds of words from all parts of
speech were borrowed. As a result some of the most common modern English
words have Scandinavian origin. For example the pronouns “they” and “them” the
verb “are” (a form of “be”), prepositions like “to” and many others. The influence
of Scandinavian is obvious not only in lexicon, but in grammar as well. For
example, the ending “-s” in the third person singular, present indicative form of
verbs (“she smiles,” “he talks”) comes from Scandinavian. But far more significant
was the influence of the Scandinavian languages on the inflectional system of Old
English. There were many, many words in common between Old English and the
language of the Danes (man, wife, mother, father, summer, winter, smile, stand,
ride, spin, set, over, under, and so on). For the purpose of better understanding the
speakers of the Old English and Scandinavian languages stripped away the
inflections and relied upon such cues as word order, to indicate grammatical
relationships. This elimination of the inflectional system was a one of the most
important steps toward modifying English from a synthetic to the analytic language
it is today (although it was the Normanwere a lot of common words in Old English
and the Scandinavian languages, but some sound shifts occurred differently in
North Germanic and West Germanic. For instance the distinction of combinations
“sk” and “sh”. The voiceless velar stop “k” in the “sk” sound was, in early Old
English, palatalizated, and entire cluster was pronounced “sh.” To indicate this
sound, Old English writers used the cluster “sc”, as in “scip” (pronounced “ship”),
“fisc” (fish). borrowing from Scandinavian languages was not limited to a few
semantic fields. In fact Scandinavian borrowings spread throughout the language:
bank, bull, birth, dirt, fellow, kid, leg, foot, sister, flat, loose, skill, want, crave
gape, window, get, give, raise, snub, screech, and take all come from
Scandinavian. As Otto Jesperson noted, you cannot “thrive,” be “ill,” or “die”
without Scandinavian words, nor can you even eat “bread” and “eggs.” [1] The
influence of Scandinavian languages on English is enormous. They enriched
English but also primed the language for some of the major steps in its future
evolutions.
 I THE DEVELOPMENT OF MIDDLE ENGLISH

Old English had a long history of coexisting with Scandinavian languages.

For some period that lasted about a century and a half, England and Normandy
even was one kingdom. Old English turned into the language of common people. It
was not spoken at the court, and most members of the aristocracy spoke
Scandinavian languages better than Old English. However charters continued to be
written in English and Latin, not French, for example, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
continued to be updated, in Old English. The Katherine Group texts also prove the
idea that Old English was spoken rather widely after the Conquest. The Katherine
Group includes the Lives of three virgin martyr saints (St. Katherine, St. Juliana,
and St. Margaret), Hali Mei ∂had (a discussion of the benefits of virginity), and
Sawles Warde (a treatise on the care of the soul). These texts are also associated
with Ancrene Wisse (a guide for nuns). a result, Old English was spoken by the
lower classes, and rarely written, so its could evolve faster than it would have been
if there was some written standard.
It was not until 1204, that English became once again the language of
England. But the language now was different from the one that had been spoken a
hundred and fifty years before. Here is an example of The Lord’s Prayer in Middle
English. It is different fro the one in Old English discussed in the previous
paragraph. fadir †at art in heuenes halwid be †i name;
†i reume or kyngdom come to be.†i wille don in her†e as it is doun in
heuene.to us today oure eche dayes bred.foryeue to us oure dettis †at is oure
synnys as we foryeuen to oure†at is to men †at han synned in us.lede us not into
temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.the prayer is quite understandable to a
Modern English speaker, and almost all of its the words exist in Modern English.
The biggest difference lies in the pronunciation of vowels is somewhat different. It
is the result of enormous changes in vowel pronunciation that come at the end of
the Middle English period. The change from Old to Middle English mostly didn’t
affect consonants. Only “W” was lost in position when it was followed by an “o”
and preceded by another consonant. So the Old English “swa” became “so”,
“hwa” - “who”, and “sc” -“sh”. pronunciation changes were not so significant but
they affected greatly the Middle English grammar. In 1204, English was no longer
a synthetic language, it became analytic. The system of inflections was almost
completely eliminated, as well as the declensions of nouns and adjectives and the
need for case agreement among nouns and adjectives. For example:“e” ending,
became a part of the forms of the noun, resulting spellings like “stone”, “robe”. In
a couple of centuries the final “e” stopped being pronounced, and the
pronunciation became as it is today. plural ending of nouns “-s” remained in
Modern English, but for a while it was balanced between another Old English
plural form, “-en” (“oxen”, “brethren”). English lost grammatical gender. In the
Old English period there were contradictions between grammatical and natural
genders. So, the noun “wif-mann” (“woman”) had a masculine gender. pronouns
were reduced. There remained only “the” and “that”, though the group was larger
initially (se, seo †at), and another group of demonstratives was compressed to
“this,” “those,” “these.” Dual forms of personal pronouns were lost, and the Old
Englishalso suffered some changes, and the biggest one was the decay of the strong
verb system. Some strong verbs disappeared, others were transformed into weak
verbs. Middle English is grammatically almost the same as Modern English
 THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT
major event that affected greatly the English language was the Great Vowel
Shift. Its simplest description is that the seven long Middle English vowel shifted
higher (it is are called high front vowel) with greater closing of the mouth. That
now became diphthong. So, in the Great Vowel Shift, “fif” (pronounced “feef”)
becomes “five” (with the “iy” diphthong). The mid front vowel moved to the now
vacant high front vowel space, and became high front vowel, so: “mede”
(pronounced “maid - eh”) became “meed.” The low front vowel in its turn moved
to slot left by the mid front vowels “breke” (pronounced “bray - keh”) became
“break.” The next vowel from the back of the mouth moved to this spot: “name”
(pronounced “nahm - he”) became “name.” The high back vowel inEnglish “mus”
(pronounced “moose,” (mouse)) became a diphthong, “mouse.” The sound that had
been a mid back vowel jumped into that vacant high back vowel place: “roote”
(pronounced “row - teh”) became “root.” A mid back vowel in tis turn moved to
the slot of the previous low back vowel moved: “goote” (pronounced “gaw - teh”)
becomes “goat.”one can see, this shift is only applicable to the long vowels. The
short vowels were not affected and almost didn’t change at all. Word elements that
were not stressed did not undergo vowel changes.explanation of the Great Vowel
Shift is rather controversial and sound as follows: at the time of the Shift England
experienced a major demographic change. There was mass immigration from the
north to the south of England after the Black Death and a shift from rural to urban
living patterns.suppose that the sudden arrival in the south of many individuals
with northern accents or the arrival of many rural dwellers in urban areas triggered,
a major pronunciation change.Great Vowel Shift was the most significant factor in
changing Middle English into the language that we now speak, but not the only
one. following grammatical changes happened:plural ending “-n” continued to lose
ground and finally “-s” won the battle. apostrophe s (’s) appeared as the genitive
ending. The genitive case was the Old English method of indicating possession.
For strong nouns, the genitive singular ending was “-es,” “stan” (stone) - “stanes”
(pronounced “stahn - ehs”) “of the stone”. In Middle English the genitive ending
was unaccented it ends up being spelled with a variety of vowels, such as “-is” or
“-ys”. Thus the apostrophe marks the missing “e” in the “-es” ending.significant
grammar changes occurred in the pronouns and the verbs. In Old English, “ge”
(pronounced “ye”) and “†u” (pronounced “thoo”) indicated different numbers in
the second person (“ge” - plural, “†u” - singular). In the thirteenth century, the
forms thou, thy, thee were used when addressing social inferiors, children, and
close friends. The forms (ye, your, you) were a sign of respect. Eventually the
“thou” forms disappeared from speech.ending of the third person singular verb in
Middle English was “-eth”. In XVI-th century it became “-s” and both endings
coexisted for some time, but by the eighteenth century, “-eth” had been lost from
all speech.

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ENGLISH

history english language
As English has spread throughout the world certain dialects and speech
forms have become more prestigious than others. In England Received
Pronunciation (RP) is the dialect form of the Royal Family, the elite schools, the
government, and the courts. RP marks the speaker as educated and socially
important. However, RP is viewed with suspicion in some places. So, even
politicians switch to the dialects of their own regions when speaking for the home
audience. Some research has shown that people evaluating oral arguments in legal
cases rated the arguments in the regional accent as more persuasive than those
made in RP.explains why prestige dialects have not overwhelmed regional variants
throughout the world, and why people persist in using regional forms of language.
the one hand, a person can adopt the prestige dialect and avoid the more
stigmatized form. It is the sign of education and cultural connections. On the other
hand, a parson can choose the dialects of solidarity, trying to sound trustworthy and
friendly. When people switch from one dialect to another, they are said to practice
code switching.switching is a very complicated process that allows individuals to
mediate their own identities. A person’s attitude toward identity is extremely
significant in regional dialect performance. These attitudes toward identity explain
why dialect forms whose speakers are discriminated against nevertheless
persist.development of regional and class variations of English, and the persistence
of stigmatized forms of the language, tell us some very important things about the
future of English. This language is spoken in various forms by nearly one fifth of
the population of the earth. And there is a network effect: the more people speak it,
the more valuable it is to learn to speak it. For native English speakers this is
obviously a good thing, as their natural linguistic ability, acquired in childhood,
provides advantages in the worlds of commerce, entertainment, technology, and
other areas where English is now a global standard. But the success of English has
cost many other languages a lot. Scholars are worried that the more than six
thousand living languages will be radically reduced in the next century, and only
few major languages will survive the next five hundred years. This would be a
tragic loss of human accomplishment no less horrible than the loss rare species.the
spread of new dialect forms, the diversification of English, and the persistence of
even the most stigmatized variants give us reasons for optimism. seems that we
humans preserve our native languages, even under an intense pressure. We may
switch codes, adopt prestige dialects, but still we retain the ability to speak in the
languages that make us feel solidarity and comfort. Even if our language starts
from the same root, it seems to have a drive to diversify, and to continual changes.
The story of English has been one of change and diversity, and hopefully its future
will be also.
 CONCLUSIONS
the English language is one of the dominant languages in the modern world.
However its history is full of rises and falls. Over the centuries, English was
influenced by several other languages. Old English, for example, was affected by
the Latin and Celtic languages and the dialects of the tribes of Saxons, Angles, and
Jutes. when Vikings, invaded England, the English language borrowed many Norse
words, particularly in the north of England. the second period of its development
the English language (Middle English) was affected and even almost completely
replaced by Old French and Latin. The proper English language was considered to
be a language of the lower class. Middle English is also characterized for the
beginning of the Great Vowel Shift, a massive sound change that affected the long
vowels. English developed after the establishment of the printing press in 1476.
This invention made books available to more people, who now could learned to
read.English language continues to change and develop, with hundreds of new
words appearing every year. But despite all the borrowings from other languages
the heart of the English language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English.
 REFERENCES
, Albert C., and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 5th ed. New
York: Routledge, 2002., David. The Stories of English. New York: Overlook Press,
2005., M. D. A History of the English Language. Course Guide. Wheaton College,
Recorded Books, LLC, 2005, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams, eds. An
Introduction to Language. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Heinle Publishing, 2002., Robert,
Robert MacNeil, and William Cran, eds. The Story of English. New York: Penguin,
2002.