History of the English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Northern Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a group of dialects reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion. The first was by language speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke a variety of French.

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government.

Proto-English

The Germanic tribes who gave rise to the English language (the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes and perhaps even the Franks), traded with and fought with the Latin-speaking Roman Empire in the process of the Germanic invasion of Europe from the East. Many Latin words for common objects therefore entered the vocabulary of these Germanic people even before any of these tribes reached Britain; examples include camp, cheese, cook, dragon, fork, giant, gem, inch, kettle, kitchen, linen, mile, mill, mint (coin), noon, oil, pillow, pin, pound, punt (boat), soap, street, table, wall, and wine. The Romans also gave English words which they had themselves borrowed from other languages: anchor, butter, cat, chest, devil, dish, and sack.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the Britons, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him in conflicts with the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the south-east of England. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. Modern scholarship considers most of this story to be legendary, and politically motivated, and the identification of the tribes with the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes is no longer accepted as an accurate description (Myres, 1986, p. 46ff), especially since the Anglo-Saxon language is more similar to Frisian than any single one of the others.

Old English

The invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, whose languages survive largely in Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. The dialects spoken by the invaders formed what is now called Old English. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who invaded and settled mainly in the north-east of England (see Jórvík and Danelaw). The new, and the earlier, settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distinct, including the prefix, suffix and inflection patterns for many of their words. The Germanic language of these Old English speaking inhabitants of Britain was influenced by contact with Norse invaders. The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is a fragment of the epic poem "Beowulf", by an unknown poet.

There were several major dialect areas of Old English: Northumbrian in the north, Kentish in the southeast, West Saxon in the southwest, and Mercian in the central Midlands region. Although Mercian is the most direct ancestor of Modern English, few documents survive in it; the vast majority of written materials are in West Saxon, which functioned as the prestige dialect because it was the speech of the Saxon seat of power at Winchester.

Old English had no written form (aside from the occasional use of runes) until the introduction of Christianity; with it came a relatively phonetic alphabetic system, as well as loanwords from Latin and some Greek. Danish incursions along the Eastern coasts created an area of influence known as the Danelaw, and Danish had a substantial influence, particularly on the pronoun system.

Middle English

For about 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and their high nobility spoke only a variety of French called Anglo-Norman. English continued to be the language of the common people. Various contemporary sources suggest that within fifty years of the Invasion most of the Normans outside the royal court had switched to English, with French remaining the prestige language of government and law largely out of social inertia.

While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued until 1154, most other literature from this period was in Old French or Latin. A large number of Norman words were taken into Old English, with many doubling for Old English words (examples include, ox/beef, sheep/mutton, and so on). The Norman influence reinforced the continued changes in the language over the following centuries, producing what is now referred to as Middle English.

English literature started to reappear around 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman, made it more respectable. By the end of that century, even the royal court had switched to English.

Early Modern English

Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift which took place mainly during the 15th century. English was further transformed by the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and by the standardising effect of printing. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th century) the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. The year 1500 is often given as the cutoff date between later Middle English and Early Modern English.

Having already in the Middle English period acquired numerous French loanwords, English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries added a still larger number from Latin and Greek. The process has continued, albeit more gradually, since then, with both new loanwords from numerous modern spoken languages, as well as new coinages from Latin and Greek roots, particularly in the area of technical innovations (e.g. "telephone," "photograph," and "panorama").

See also

• English language
• Old English
• Middle English
• Early Modern English
• British English
• American English
• British and American English

References

• American Heritage Dictionary A full-scale dictionary emphasising the earliest theoretical Proto-Indo-European origins of English words, including an interactive list of Proto-Indo-European roots.
• Project Gutenberg's Beowulf translation by Francis Gummere
• John C. Wells (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3). 
• J.N.L. Myres, The English Settlements (Oxford History of England), Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-821719-6.
• A short history - A short history of the origins and development of the English language