when was english invented?
cj
Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English language
was invented?
Thanx!! CYA
Roderick Stewart
> Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English language
>
Who can say? Certainly hundreds of years, and it's still being invented.
Rod.
Apex
"Roderick Stewart" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:VA.0000054...@privacy.net...
As far as I know, the only language to be "invented" is Esperanto.
Real languages evolve, grow, change, forever.
Even French.
--
Peg
Einde O'Callaghan
> Hi there!
>
> Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English language
> was invented?
>
forms, often under the influence of other languages. Crudely speaking,
English developed out of an amalgam of Anglo-Saxon (a West Germanic
dialect) and Nordic (brought by the Vikings) under very strong influence
of Norman French. You could say that modern English, i.e. a language
that is recognisably English from the point of view of both vocabulary
and spelling dates from the end of the 16th (Shakespeare) and the
beginning of the 17th (King James Version of the Bible) centuries. But
there have also been major changes in grammar and vocabulary since then.
The language is still developing and changing (as all living languages do).
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
Mike Stevens
> Hi there!
>
> Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English
> language was invented?
Perhaps someone will be able to tell you when they've finished inventing
it!
My point is that languages are continually evolving and their
separateness from one another is a very blurred issue.
As to when we could say that a language recognisable as English came
into being, that begs a lot of definitions (including that of
"recognisable").
Many people use the phrase "Old English" to mean what others describe as
"Anglo-Saxon", which others yet again would say wasn't a single language
but a family of related languages. But if you accept that in some way
this was the earliest form of English, it pushes the origins of the
language back to about the 7th century.
Another view would be regard "English" as evolving in about the 11th and
12th centuries, when Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman-French elements
merged into something that was recognisably distinct from any of them.
It seems pretty well established that the language of Chaucer (who died
c1400) should be called "Middle English", implying that it wasn't the
earliest form. The language of Shakespeare is often described as "Early
Modern English".
So my answer to your question is that the "invention" of English has
taken something between 900 and 1500 years, so far.
--
Mike Stevens, narrowboat Felis Catus II
Web site www.mike-stevens.co.uk
No man is an island. So is Man.
Dave Fawthrop
| Hi there!
|
| Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English language
| was invented?
Bits were invented by the Celts, Romans, Anglo Saxons, Vikings, Norman
French, etc. etc. There are numerous loan words from Chinese, and Indian
languages. Some words were only invented this year, but I am to old to
know them. Spelling is being drastically changed by the advent of mobile
phone, Toys R us etc.
English is an IndoEuropean language, so the basics are many thousands of
years old.
--
Dave Fawthrop <da...@hyphenologist.co.uk> Sick of Direct Marketing
telephone calls and silent calls? They use a computer which phones many
numbers, but talk to only one. Register your: real name, tel number,
snail mail address, with Telephone Preference Service, t...@dma.org.uk
Zz
> Roderick wrote...
> > Cj wrote...
> > > Anyone know how long was the time period over which the English
language
> > > was invented?h
> > >
> > Who can say? Certainly hundreds of years, and it's still being invented.
>
> As far as I know, the only language to be "invented" is Esperanto.
> Real languages evolve, grow, change, forever.
> Even French.
What about Elvish and Machine Code?
Matthew Huntbach
> Languages aren't invented, tehy develop over long periods form earlier
> forms, often under the influence of other languages. Crudely speaking,
> English developed out of an amalgam of Anglo-Saxon (a West Germanic
> dialect) and Nordic (brought by the Vikings) under very strong influence
> of Norman French. You could say that modern English, i.e. a language
> that is recognisably English from the point of view of both vocabulary
> and spelling dates from the end of the 16th (Shakespeare) and the
> beginning of the 17th (King James Version of the Bible) centuries. But
> there have also been major changes in grammar and vocabulary since then.
> The language is still developing and changing (as all living languages do).
Perhaps "invented" isn't quite the right word, but every written language
has gone through a stage where a formal literary standard was established
for it, and in many cases that involved a fair degree of invention.
Italian can be said, for example, to have been invented in the 19th
century on the unification of Italy when the Florentine form was
established as the norm and the huge variety of other very different
forms downgraded to "dialects". English is rather unusual in not having
gone through a really formal stage of bringing together a variety of
dialects into one somewhat artificial standard. Even so, as you suggest,
the period Shakespeare-KJV Bible does represent a fairly rapid establishment
of what has become the standard.
Matthew Huntbach
Mike Stevens
> Perhaps "invented" isn't quite the right word, but every written
> language has gone through a stage where a formal literary standard
> was established for it, and in many cases that involved a fair degree
> of invention. Italian can be said, for example, to have been invented
> in the 19th century on the unification of Italy when the Florentine
> form was established as the norm and the huge variety of other very
> different forms downgraded to "dialects". English is rather unusual
> in not having gone through a really formal stage of bringing together
> a variety of dialects into one somewhat artificial standard. Even so,
> as you suggest, the period Shakespeare-KJV Bible does represent a
> fairly rapid establishment of what has become the standard.
I suspect that your last point in an illusion caused by the fact that
most people (even many quite literate people) never read anything that
predates Shakespeare & the AV. There are reasons for that - it was
(and had been for a time) a period when a high level of literacy was
fashionable, so that nobody was surprised at Phlip Sidney being
important simultaneously in the literary and military fields of
endeavour. The result was probably the greatest collection of really
good writers in English that have ever been alive at one time. I think
that the effects lasted will into the 17th century.
But if you do look at earlier translations of the Bible, for example
those of Tyndale and Coverdale, both about a generation before
Shakespeare, then ther English doesn't appear much different, which is
hardly surprising as the AV took over whole chunks of them as they stood
(and, even later, the Book of Common Prayer of the 1660s adopted
Coverdale's translation of the Psalms in its entirety). Nor is the
English of More's "Utopia" (the only work of his that I've read)
noticeably different - More died 29 years before Shakespeare was born.
So I don't think there was any sudden change over that period. There
was, of course, a great bout of invention of new vocabulary, much of it
by Shakespeare himself. But all of that comes within the flourishing of
the Tudor literary age, when Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were themselves
important role-models and writers of the first importance.
Looking earlier, the works of Chaucer look very different, but that's
very largely a matter of orthography. If you hear them read, they sound
much the same as stuff of the Shakespearean period, which would probably
not be the case for Anglo-Saxon texts. That's a personal subjective
judgement of how difficult I find it to understand these writers on the
page and in speech - others may differ.
The work of Thomas Malory, at a date between the two, is also not
far-distant from Shakespearean English. There were changes to English
in the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, but they had been
gradual and seem to have affected the written language more than the
spoken one. Perhaps the biggest change was the fading out of inflected
word endings - or was that even earlier?
If there is a period when (written) English did suddenly become much
more unified and formalised, it's in the 18th century, through the work
of Samuel Johnson and his contemporaries, which brought the idea of
"correct" spelling into being. Before then people, even highly literate
people, felt free to spell a word as they felt suitable to its context.
Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
surname!
Englishenglish
Apex ha scritto nel messaggio ...
That's nice:)
David
Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
[Snip]
> Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
> surname!
Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling Shakespeare.
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/joachim/08-0.htm
Through the Valley of Despair they came;
an innumerable surge of gross humanity...
David
<english...@tin.it> wrote:
> That's nice:)
Serpently is; even Esperanto evolved into Ido.
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/aureole/40-map.htm
Wakefield (recent map)
Robert Weemeyer
> As far as I know, the only language to be "invented" is Esperanto.
There are many more "invented" languages, but Esperanto is by far the
most successful one.
> Real languages evolve, grow, change, forever.
So does Esperanto. If it wouldn't, how could I talk about the Internet
in Esperanto? It didn't exist back in 1887 ...
Yours,
Robert
Einde O'Callaghan
> In article <brsor3$70rm2$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>,
> Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>
> [Snip]
>
>
>>Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
>>surname!
>
>
> Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling Shakespeare.
>
>
William Shakespeare - actually I seem to remember reqading once that one
form of his name that he never used when writing his name was "Shakespeare".
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
David
That's as may be. Presumably Will -- whover he/she was//they were --
had reason to use a variety of names but they are not simply different
spellings used at a time before spelling became standardised. Today,
poor spelling "Smiths" might just spell their name "Smyth" in error but
I should think they intended the difference were they to call
themselves "Cobblers".
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/joachim/06-0.htm
"Apsu, apsu, every where, nor any mead to drink..." sighed Noah,
as he gazed across the unfathomable face of the deep.
Mike Stevens
> In article <brsor3$70rm2$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>,
> Mike Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>
> [Snip]
>
>> Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
>> surname!
>
> Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling Shakespeare.
They are different ways in which he actually wrote his surname.
David
<mike...@which.net> wrote:
> David <da...@dacha.freeuk.com> wrote:
> > In article <brsor3$70rm2$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike
> > Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
> >
> > [Snip]
> >
> >> Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
> >> surname!
> >
> > Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling
> > Shakespeare.
> They are different ways in which he actually wrote his surname.
I didn't dispute that. If Bacon had used the pseudonym "Piglet", no
doubt some folks on here would be proposing it as an example of how
tolerant was the English of those days of alternative spellings.
"~shaft" is quite obviously not a different way of spelling "~speare".
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/joachim/05-0.htm
"One should not delve too deeply into things,"
Joachim said to the Great Architect of the University...
Richard Kaulfuss
<mike...@which.net> wrote:
>
>The work of Thomas Malory, at a date between the two, is also not
>far-distant from Shakespearean English. There were changes to English
>in the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, but they had been
>gradual and seem to have affected the written language more than the
>spoken one. Perhaps the biggest change was the fading out of inflected
>word endings - or was that even earlier?
>
Largely gone, along with grammatical gender, by the time the Normans
arrived.
--
Dick
Einde O'Callaghan
> In article <brvlkv$7ulk1$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike Stevens
> <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>
>>David <da...@dacha.freeuk.com> wrote:
>>
>>>In article <brsor3$70rm2$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike
>>> Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>[Snip]
>>>
>>>
>>>>Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his own
>>>>surname!
>>>
>>>Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling
>>>Shakespeare.
>
>
>>They are different ways in which he actually wrote his surname.
>
>
> I didn't dispute that. If Bacon had used the pseudonym "Piglet", no
> doubt some folks on here would be proposing it as an example of how
> tolerant was the English of those days of alternative spellings.
>
> "~shaft" is quite obviously not a different way of spelling "~speare".
>
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
David
Okay, they're different ways of spelling the same thing, then. I must
remember that next time I pop in a stick of shaftmint chewing gum.
Wives have anuses but you wouldn't introduce your better half to your
boss by saying, "I'd like you to meet my anus...."
I do hope we've got to the bottom of it now.
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/penny/1d-01.htm
Ayesha uttered a little Turkish yelp then upped her
voluminous skirts and downed her voluminous knickers
Richard Kaulfuss
<da...@dacha.freeuk.com> wrote:
You might, if you were speaking Latin.
>I do hope we've got to the bottom of it now.
--
Dick
Einde O'Callaghan
> In article <bs5f9n$9k578$2...@ID-93601.news.uni-berlin.de>, Einde
> O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
>
>>David wrote:
>>
>>>In article <brvlkv$7ulk1$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike
>>>Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>David <da...@dacha.freeuk.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>In article <brsor3$70rm2$1...@ID-170573.news.uni-berlin.de>, Mike
>>>>> Stevens <mike...@which.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>[Snip]
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Think how many ways Shagsberd / Shakeshaft had of spelling his
>>>>>>own surname!
>>>>>
>>>>>Shagsberd / Shakeshaft are not different ways of spelling
>>>>>Shakespeare.
>>>
>>>
>>>>They are different ways in which he actually wrote his surname.
>>>
>>>
>>>I didn't dispute that. If Bacon had used the pseudonym "Piglet", no
>>>doubt some folks on here would be proposing it as an example of how
>>>tolerant was the English of those days of alternative spellings.
>>>
>>>"~shaft" is quite obviously not a different way of spelling
>>>"~speare".
>>>
>>
>>However, a "spear" actually does have a "shaft".
>
>
> Okay, they're different ways of spelling the same thing, then.
This is not my point. I should perhaps have put a smiley after my
comment. So there was no need to be quite so snotty in your reply.
My point is that the man we call William Shakespeare never wrote his
name this way. He did did however use "Shagsberd", "Shakeshaft" and
several other variants at various times.
And a "shag" is definitely not the same thing as a "shake" either. ;-)
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
David
That might have been your point but it was in response to an
observation of mine in reply to Mike Stevens that the variations on
Shakespeare's name were not simply different ways of spelling the same
word in an age when spelling had not yet been standardised but were in
fact word plays on the name or its component parts.
> And a "shag" is definitely not the same thing as a "shake" either. ;-)
No, it isn't. Now put it away and stop playing with red herrings.
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/ How to make people and influence fiends
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
a@b.c "Zz" writes:
> Apex wrote...
> >
> > As far as I know, the only language to be "invented" is Esperanto.
>
> What about Elvish and Machine Code?
Or, for that matter, Volapuk (sp?) ?
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are
untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them".
George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919
Einde O'Callaghan
> In article <xWeEb.14338$R6.33...@newsfep2-win.server.ntli.net>
> a@b.c "Zz" writes:
>
>
>>Apex wrote...
>>
>>>As far as I know, the only language to be "invented" is Esperanto.
>>
>>What about Elvish and Machine Code?
>
>
> Or, for that matter, Volapuk (sp?) ?
>
English-speakers off. ;-) I think there's also an artificial language
called Interlingua.
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
David
> >
> > Or, for that matter, Volapuk (sp?) ?
> >
> Volapük, I believe - the name alone is enough reason to put most
> English-speakers off. ;-) I think there's also an artificial language
> called Interlingua.
Also Interflora.
David (saying it with flowers ;-)
--
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/photo/0y13-0.htm
Roseberry Topping on the Cleveland Way
Ensjo
> I think there's also an artificial language
> called Interlingua.
For info on Interligua, see:
Union Mundial pro Interlingua:
http://www.interlingua.com/
(Click on "info national".)
American Society for Interlingua:
http://www.bowks.net/sai/
Greetings,
Ensjo.
http://www.ensjo.net/