A brief History of English Language

    The English language is a big and beautiful chaos. Few languages are as diverse and unexpected in their history and few have undergone changes so dramatic and so violent.

The development of English can be categorized into three distinct eras:

                                I.            Old English from 450 to 1100

                              II.            Middle English from 1100 to 1500

                            III.            Modern English from about 1500 up until the present

O       Old English:

               Languages change and evolve over time. Just like animals, languages fade and go extinct. One language may spread so wide, for example, that in specific regions, local dialects creep in and those become new languages.

    That's what happened to Latin basically. It's a very natural process and it's very similar to evolution in animals. Some languages are pretty different just like some animals are pretty different.  English is a Germanic language.

What does that mean?

Does that mean English is German?

No, it doesn't.

    Germanic is a word used for a group of people from a particular part of the world who once probably spoke the same language, a language which doesn't exist today.

    Germanic languages now include German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and quite a few more. All of these modern languages as having a great-great grandma in common called Proto-Germanic.

    It is clear that English does not come from German. English and German are basically cousins. The history of the English language is a history of invasion and the movement of people and the beginnings are no different.

    During that time England was under the control, or protection of the Romans, a few Latin words stuck with the Celtic locals, the people who were living there at that time. We use prefixes like Pro and Sub in Modern English as a result. The Romans left Britain around 400 A.D., leaving the Celtic Britons, the locals, now pretty vulnerable. This allowed Germanic tribes to come in and settle.

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    In fact, it happened over a fairly long period of time so it wasn't exactly an invasion. The Germanic tribes pushed most of the Celtic Britons out and settled in modern day England.

    OldEnglish grew out of this period and, from the early 6^th century to about 1100, we have Old English. From that, we get works like "Beowulf."

Middle English:

    Everything was going fine in Britain until those Vikings invaded, bringing with them another language called Old Norse. It's another language.

    From there, we get words like reindeer, dirt, choose, egg, and kindle. The word Thursday means Thor’s Day. It comes from Old Norse.

    To put that into perspective, about 1% of Modern English comes from Old Norse. That's about 2,000 words.

    The next important event in the history of the English language was the Norman invasion or the Norman Conquest. This was an invasion led by a guy who was basically a French-speaking Viking named William the Conqueror.

    After William took over Britain in 1066, French started sneaking into the English language. French words were spoken more by the upper class, the wealthy people, and Old English was spoken more by common people, by people in the lower classes.

    So today we have pairs of words that have almost the same meaning, one from Old English and one from Old French. Words like lawyer and attorney, deem and judge, hunt and chase, pig and pork, cow and beef, freedom and liberty, weird and strange and so on.

    Now we don't make the distinction, but the Norman Conquest resulted in a much more colorful language that allowed for more creative expression.

    Over 7,000 English words that we use today are from French, basically, the Norman Conquest. So this invasion gave us what we now call Middle English. "The Canterbury Tales” from about 1400 is an example of Middle English.

Early Modern English:

    In Early Modern English and there's no real invasion but only important people and events. First, Shakespeare is credited with creating a huge number of English words and phrases, and his plays are extremely influential to this day.

    From him we get words like assassination, cold-blooded, manager, uncomfortable, and many more. Whether you know it or not, you're probably quoting Shakespeare on a daily basis.

    The other really important event that helped to shape Modern English was the Great Vowel Shift, which was happened in the 15th century. Now this was essentially a change in English pronunciation.

    Vowels are A, E, I, O, and U and you can say them different ways. Sometimes we say A as ay and sometimes we say A as ah.

    There was a major shift in the way that vowels and many other sounds in English were pronounced. A word like knave, K-N-A-V-E, would've been pronounced something like ke-nah-veh, ke-nah-veh. Now we have a silent K, so we don't say ke-nah rather we say know, knowledge, knave, knives.

    The rules of spelling were being written down around the same time, and unfortunately, the writing people and the spelling people didn't seem to be talking to the pronunciation people. So the pronunciation changed, but the spelling hasn't really changed. That is why people get confused with English spelling.

    The influence of the King James translation of the Bible is also very vital in building Modern English Language.  Apart from strengthening these strange word spellings, many new phrases and idioms were created for that translation and we still use them these today.

    Phrases like by the skin of your teeth and a broken heart and a sign of the times. There are a ton of modern expressions that come from the King James Bible.

Modern English:

    Finally, we come to Modern English, and an ironic reverse invasion as Britain began to explore the world by sea and colonize. As English spread to places like India, Africa, North America, and Australia via trading and colonization, some words began to trickle back slowly to England.

    We get pajamas from India, trek from Africa, and ketchup from China. Of course, English also spread to those colonies and new dialects began to take shape in those places.

Conclusion:

    The English language continues to evolve, and someday, the words we are speaking right now will sound as old and strange to future listeners as Old English sounds to us. That's just how it goes.

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