History of English Language

ABOUT THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Nearly over 450 millions speakers all over the world and being the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world’s computers, English is the most widespread language in the world. English basically originated in England, think again! The heart of the English language is actually German. Since the long time ago during the sixth century AD, three Germanic tribes, which were called the Saxons, The Angles, The Jutes invaded Britain. These fierce tribesmen from parts of north Germany and Denmark arrived in Britain and brought with them their own languages, which developed into the language we now classify as Old English.

The inhabitants of Britain were Celtic-speaking but these were eventually driven out of their own lands and forced to flee to places like Scotland, Wales and even to Brittany on the coast of France, where their descendants still speak the Celtic language to day.

Meanwhile the fierce warlike tribes introduced their own languages  into the Britain where, through the years the three different languages molded together to from the language we would today call Old English.  One can think that Old English too is a form of English, and you can be able to somewhat understand what it means. Well, as you can se from the extract of the poem “Beowulf” written in Old English that is very difficult to understand indeed. It can only be ready the English experts.

Middle English

Old English was spoken until all over the world nearly 1200. Then just as three Germanic tribes had invaded England, now William the Conqueror, Duke of Edinburgh, invaded and conquered England in 105Ad. Just like the Germanic tribes had brought in their own languages, so did William the conqueror. His nobles spoke French and so instead of Old English, French became the languages of the government.

The reality is that now English was considered to be vulgar tongue, and the language of the lower classes. But upto 14^th Century, the tables had turned once again and as the influence of William wore out, English became dominant in Britain once again. The only changing now was that there were many French words added into English  language, a melting pot of English and French became known as Middle English. Middle English is far easier to interpret than Old English.

Modern English

After sometimes ago, above mentioned changes began to come into English, Imagine a colorfully knitted rug. All those different threads and colours have become fused together to form one smooth, flowing cloth. In the same way Middle English had influences from all sorts of different people, such as French, Greek and Latin and English language took some of the words from these cultures and they became part of the smooth, flowing language we know today as English Language.

At that time, the British Empires were also undergoing many different changes. Events like the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance (period of development) meant that there was a need for new words to identify new things like new machinery that were invented.

The British Empire was constantly changing. Britain had acquired many colonies all over the globe. As the British empire expanded all over the world such as India, Australia, Malaysia and even parts of Africa, The English language continued to change as newer words, borrowed from all these different cultures, were added to the English vocabulary. British people were sent to rule over the conquered places in the world like in India and as the British interacted with the local people, new words were added to the English language vocabulary. At last the English language is still a very versatile language and it continues to change and develop each year, with hundreds of new words being introduced and added to our vocabulary. Despite all the borrowed words from other languages the heart of the English language remains the Anglo-Saxon version of Old English and the grammar is still distinctly Germanic.