A Short History of the Origins and Development of EnglishI. Origin

A Short History of the Origins and Development of English
    Good morning, everyone. Today, I am going to talk about the origins and development of English language. The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders—mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from an angle-shaped land area and their language was called Englisc—from which the words England and English are derived. Generally speaking, the history of the language is divided ,in to three: Old English, Middle English, Modern English. In some books, Modern English is divided into two—Early Modern and Late Modern English.
    Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. It had some sounds which we don’t have now. In grammar, Old English was much more highly inflected than Middle English because there were case endings for nouns, more person and number endings of words and a more complicated pronoun systems as well as various endings for adjectives. In vocabulary, Old English is also quite different from Middle English. Most of the Old English words are native English which weren’t borrowed from other languages. On the other hand, Old English contains borrowed words coming from Norse and Latin. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words, be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around 1100.
    Now let’s come to the Middle English. In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy which is part of modern France, invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors called the Normans brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer. 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. "This can be called as a simplification but it is not exactly. Languages don’t become simpler, they merely exchange one kind of complexity for another", Clark and Es-chholz says. Middle English would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today.
    Following up is the early Modern English. Towards the end of Middle English, English underwent a couple of sound changes. One change was the elimination of a vowel sound in certain unstressed positions at the end of the words. The change was important because it effected thousands of words and gave a different aspect to the whole language.
    The other change is what is called the Great Vowel Shift. This was a systematic shifting of half a dozen vowels and diphthongs in stressed syllables. These two changes produced the basic differences between Middle English and Modern English. But there are several other developments that effected the language. One was the invention of printing. It was introduced to England by William Caxton in 1475. The invention of printing meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published. From the 16th. century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world. Many new words and phrases entered the language. The period of Early Modern English 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.
    Next, let’s talk about the Late Modern English. The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth’s surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.
    Now I’d like to briefly introduce to you varieties of English. From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain. For example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies. Spanish also had an influence on American English and subsequently British English, with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words through Louisiana and West African words through the slave trade also influenced American English and so, to an extent, British English.
    Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA’s dominance of cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology including the Internet. But there are many other varieties of English around the world, such as Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.
    To conclude, English mainly underwent three periods of development. Hope all of you have enjoyed this lecture. Thank you.