A Brief History of the English Language

Before English: The British Isles were first occupied by prehistoric tribes of megalithic people. They’re called “megalithic” because of the complex arrangements of giant stones or megaliths that they created. Stonehenge is the most famous of the megaliths. Then, between 1500 and 500 BC, Celtic people arrived from continental Europe. These tribes spoke Celtic languages, a branch of the ancient Indo-European family of languages, of which English is also a member. The southern Celts were conquered by Latin-speaking invaders from Rome in 43 AD. Calling their colony “Britannia” (Britain) and its capital “Londinium” (London), the Romans achieved control of the regions now known as England and Wales. By about 400 AD, they had to give up this territory and withdraw to continental Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed.

Old English grew out of various dialects spoken by Germanic tribes: the Angles (after which England is named), the Saxons, and the Jutes, who started populating the British Isles in the 6th century. These invaders from Denmark and northern Germany drove many Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of England into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Celtic languages are still spoken by small minorities in these areas. Basic English grammar and vocabulary derive from the Anglo-Saxon languages, but they were modified by the Celts and by Scandinavian Vikings or Norsemen, who began invading northeast England in the late 8th century. The most famous literary work of this period, the epic poem Beowulf, is basically a Norse saga or legend. The Old Norse language seems to have been comprehensible to Old English speakers. Old English would probably be at least partly understandable to today's Icelanders, since Vikings also settled in Iceland, where their isolation prevented the cultural contacts that transformed English.

Communication between Celtic, Norse, and Anglo-Saxon people gradually led to a simplification of English. Most European tongues use genders (masculine and feminine) and inflection, changes in word form that show syntax (the grammatical relationships between words), but in English these changes were slowly lost. This process continued during the evolution of Middle English until it became a language whose syntax is indicated almost entirely by word order. Old English survived until shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when Nordic people from Normandy (northern France) took over England.

Middle English was the product of Norman influence. For almost 300 years, speakers of French (a Romance language) controlled schools, churches, and courts. French was the language of the king and aristocracy, and English remained the language of commoners, though each studied the other’s language and often intermarried. Thousands of sophisticated French words were absorbed into English. Technical words like “observe” and “possess,” for instance, could be substituted for the simple Germanic words “see” and “have.” The Catholic church also contributed Latin and Greek vocabulary. English lost several archaic letters: “ð” and “þ” were replaced by “th,” and “æ” was replaced by “e.” The language changed radically. Late Middle English-speakers could not have understood Old English, yet written Middle English can be understood today with a bit of effort. Its greatest literary work is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

In the 14th century, the disease known as the Plague or the Black Death killed nearly half the population of Europe and many people in positions of power. As a result, English speakers were allowed to rise from the working classes to fill leadership roles, displacing French speakers. Conflicts grew between England and France, and battles ravaged both nations during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). In 1362, Middle English – specifically the dominant dialect of London – was chosen to replace French as the language of government and trade. At the coronation of King Henry IV in 1399, the ruler made an address in Middle English. It was the first time a monarch had spoken English in public in 333 years.

Modern English arose in the 15th and 16th centuries with the Great Vowel Shift, a fundamental transformation in the pronunciation of vowels. For example, words like “house,” “fine,” and “same,” which sounded like “hoosa,” “feena,” and “sahma” in Middle English, developed blended vowels or diphthongs and dropped the final “e” sound. Such words as “see” and “to” lost the sounds “say” and “toh.” English speakers also stopped pronouncing hard Germanic consonants like the “g” in “night” and “light.” Most scholars date Modern English from around 1500, when the invention of the printing press and a flood of books permitted linguistic standardization. This development occurred shortly before the Elizabethan period, in which English power reached a high point. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) set the standards by which all English literature is judged.

The grammar and pronunciation of English have been essentially the same since Shakespeare’s time, with a few exceptions. Gone are pronoun forms (“thou,” “thee,” “thy,” and “thine” – meaning “you,” “your,” and “yours”) and corresponding verb forms (art, dost, hast, shalt, wilt, etc). Also, a regularization of spelling has been encouraged by universal education and the introduction of dictionaries. The first major English dictionary was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755, and the first dictionary of American English was compiled by Noah Webster in 1808.

Modern English is subdivided into two phases: the Early Modern Period, during which Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were Anglicized by force; and the Late Modern Period, beginning around 1800, when British conquests throughout the world added tens of thousands of new words used by native peoples. Colonists in North America, Australia and New Zealand, South Asia, Africa, and other regions also developed their own dialects of English. Since English has continued to adopt foreign and technical words, it is thought to have the largest vocabulary of any language in the world. The second most-spoken language after Chinese, the most-used as a second language, and the common language of science, medicine, business, and the Internet, English is vital to international communication.

1.   giant stones / Stonehenge
2.   1500 – 500 BC / Wales, Scotland, Ireland
3.   Romans / 350 years
4.   Angles, Saxons, Jutes
5.   Scandinavia / the late 8th century
6.   Beowulf
7.   Iceland
8.   genders, inflections, letters
9.   Normans / French
10. Plague (the Black Death) killed leaders
11. French, Latin, Greek
12. The Canterbury Tales / Chaucer
13. 1399 / He spoke English
14. Great Vowel Shift / pronunciation changed
15. printing press, books, military power
16. Shakespeare / 1564
17. Johnson / 1755
18. forced to learn, speak, or use English
19. new words, dialects / colonies (India, etc.)
20. science, medicine, business, Internet