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 14th 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.
