Guess today most of us speak english and are one of the 375million who consider english as their first language of speech (not to forget the 100million who know english and use it as a foreign language). It is listed as the official or co-official language of over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other countries where it has no official status.
But how many of us really know how this language came into being (it surely wasn't like the prehistoric humans got a sudden brain wave and started speaking english)? So I thought it would be an apt start to the second phase of my blogosphere presence.
The history of english can be traced to the arrival of three Germanic tribes to the British Isles in the 5th century AD (around 479 AD to be precise). Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea from what is the present day Denmark and northern Germany. The inhabitants of Britain previously spoke Brythonic, a Celtic language. This was quickly displaced.
Most of the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language was called Englisc from which the word, English derives. The name England is derived from the word Angleland which was what the Angles called it when they invaded.
During the next few centuries four dialects of English developed:
- Northumbrian in Northumbria, north of the Humber
- Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia
- West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex
- Kentish in Kent
During the 7th and 8th Centuries, Northumbria's culture and language dominated Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th Century brought this domination to an end (along with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom.
By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of Britain. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called Runic, derived from the Scandinavian languages. The Latin Alphabet was brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries. This has remained the writing system of English.
English's closest neighbours still remain Scots and Frisian. The history of english can be classified into 6 stages as in the image shown below:
- Old English (700AD - 1100AD): Affected mainly by the Norse language. This was when many Latin texts were converted into English. Danish also affected it to a certain extent. Runic initially and then Latin were the scripts used for writing in this period
- Middle English (1100AD-1500AD): The political event which effected the administration system and language was the Norman Conquest. In 1066 they crossed the Channel and they became the master of England. For the next several next years, England was ruled by the kings whose native language was French. French was the language of court, nobility, society and literature but it did not become the language of the people. The french influence was limited only to minor changes in the vocabulary. Middle English was still a Germanic language but it is different from Old English in many ways. Grammar and the sound system changed a good deal. People started to rely more on word order and structure words to express their meaning rather than the use of case system
- Early Modern English (1500AD - 1700AD): This was charaterised by the Great change in Vowels. Here the currently used half-dozen vowels were formed. It was also a period of English Renaissance, which means the development of the people. New ideas increased. English language had grown as a result of borrowing words from French ,Latin, Greek. The greatest writer of the Early Modern English period is Shakespeare and the best known book is the King Jones version of the BIBLE. Shakespeare alone has coined over 1600 words
- Late Modern English (1700AD - Now): This period was marked by the invention of English Grammar. As English is replaced with Latin as the language of scholarship, it was felt to control the language. This is when all other languages also started influencing the English language. The Indian language Hindi being no exception to this. Moreover the 1millionth word will be added to the English language very soon, with the Indian word 'Jai Ho' being a strong contender.
So guess that would be a short recap of how the Universal Language (if i may call it) English came into being. So the next time you speak english you know its a language with many tweeks done to it over the years...! :)
So after knowing all this,
Guess it only gives you another reason to speak English!
