An Outline History Of The English Language

[Adriana Gowen]

Quirksand inconsistencies aside, the history surrounding its monumental rise is both a fascinating and rich one, and while we promise to be brief, you just might pick up a thing or two that may stimulate your interest in studying English with us here at Oxford International English Schools. Our English learning course offers a comprehensive curriculum tailored to all proficiency levels. Enroll now to experience an engaging and effective way to improve your language skills.

Albert Baugh, a notable English professor at the University of Pennsylvania notes amongst his published works[1] that around 85% of Old English is no longer in use; however, surviving elements form the basis of the Modern English language today.

It was during the mid-1400s that the Chancery English standard was brought about. The story goes that the clerks working for the Chancery in London were fluent in both French and Latin. It was their job to prepare official court documents and prior to the 1430s, both the aforementioned languages were mainly used by royalty, the church, and wealthy Britons. After this date, the clerks started using a dialect that sounded as follows:

As you can see, the above is starting to sound more like the present-day English language we know.

If one thinks about it, these clerks held enormous influence over the manner of influential communication, which ultimately shaped the foundations of Early Modern English.

The changes in the English language during this period occurred from the 15th to mid-17th Century, and signified not only a change in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar itself but also the start of the English Renaissance.

The English Renaissance has much quieter foundations than its pan-European cousin, the Italian Renaissance, and sprouted during the end of the 15th century. It was associated with the rebirth of societal and cultural movements, and while slow to gather steam during the initial phases, it celebrated the heights of glory during the Elizabethan Age.

It was during the early 17th century that we saw the establishment of the first successful English colony in what was called The New World. Jamestown, Virginia, also saw the dawn of American English with English colonizers adopting indigenous words, and adding them to the English language.

The constant influx of new blood due to voluntary and involuntary (i.e. slaves) migration during the 17th, 18th and 19th century meant a variety of English dialects had sprung to life, this included West African, Native American, Spanish and European influences.

If one endevours to study various English language courses taught today, we would find almost no immediate similarities between Modern English and Old English. English grammar has become exceedingly refined (even though smartphone messaging have made a mockery of the English language itself) where perfect living examples would be that of the current British Royal Family. This has given many an idea that speaking proper English is a touch snooty and high-handed. Before you scoff, think about what you have just read. The basic history and development of a language that literally spawned from the embers of wars fought between ferocious civilisations. Imagine everything that our descendants went through, their trials and tribulations, their willingness to give up everything in order to achieve freedom of speech and expression.

Everything has lead up to this point where English learners decide to study the language at their fancy, something we take for granted as many of us have access to courses to improve English at the touch of a button!

The advances and discoveries in science and technology during the Industrial Revolution saw a need for new words, phrases, and concepts to describe these ideas and inventions. Due to the nature of these works, scientists and scholars created words using Greek and Latin roots e.g. bacteria, histology, nuclear, biology. You may be shocked to read that these words were created but one can learn a multitude of new facts through English language courses as you are doing now!

The idea may have backfired as the English language walked away with a large number of foreign words that have now become part and parcel of the English language e.g. shampoo, candy, cot and many others originated in India!

Many of you will be forgiven for thinking that studying an English Language course consists of English grammar more than anything else. However, preparing for an English test involves a balanced approach, covering listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. While English grammar does play a part when taking courses to improve English overall, it is but a small part of the overall curriculum where one becomes immersed in a history that was partly influenced by myths, battles, and legends on one hand, and the everyday workings of its various social class on the other.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the English language itself really took off with the invasion of Britain during the 5th century. Three Germanic tribes, the Jutes, Saxons and Angles were seeking new lands to conquer, and crossed over from the North Sea. It must be noted that the English language we know and study through various English language courses today had yet to be created as the inhabitants of Britain spoke various dialect of the Celtic language.

[2] Stumpf, John (1970). An Outline of English Literature; Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Literature. London: Forum House Publishing Company. p. 7. We do not know what languages the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons spoke, nor even whether they were sufficiently similar to make them mutually intelligible, but it is reasonable to assume that by the end of the sixth century there must have been a language that could be understood by all and this we call Primitive Old English.

Despite being dormant during the nineteenth century, the Cornish language has been recently recognised by the British Government as a living regional language after a long period of revival. The first part of this paper discusses the history of traditional Cornish and the reasons for its decline and dismissal. The second part offers an overview of the revival movement since its beginnings in 1904 and analyses the current situation of the language in all possible domains.

VI. An Outline History of the English LanguageYou are here: > Main Page > Course Notes > Philology: History of the English languageThe English language originates in the Germanic languages of the Angles and Saxons who settled in Britain in the fifth century. Old English: ca. 500 to ca. 1100.

In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England; as a consequence French was the dominant language in England until the latter part of the fourteenth century. English, reduced to the language of the lower (and illiterate) classes, underwent rapid and profound changes, which turned it into Middle English; but this period of rapid change is also a period from which we have no documents: our first text in what is definitely Middle rather than Old English is Layamon's Brut of the late twelfth century, so although the invasion of 1066 is the principal cause of the changes, these changes are not recognizable until the beginning of the twelfth century. Middle English: ca. 1100 to ca. 1450. Early Modern: ca. 1450 to ca. 1800. Later Modern: ca. 1800 to the present.Old English is a pure Germanic derivative. Middle English shows profound influences of French, especially in vocabulary. Early Modern English brought the first dictionaries and grammars, as an attempt (only partially successful) to "fix" English into a stable form and prevent further changes, and to make it more like Latin (and it is in this period that the vocabulary of English gains huge quantities of "learned" borrowings from Latin--compare Chaucer's very French vocabulary to Milton's very Latinate vocabulary).Orthographic variability is the norm in Old and Middle English: spelling is purely phonetic until about the fifteenth century. Partly under the influence of printers' practices, spelling becomes more stable and "traditional" beginning in the fifteenth century (and many of the peculiarities of the modern English spelling system--the quantities of "silent" letters in words like "knight," for instance--have to do with the fossilization of fifteenth-century spellings), but it is Samuel Johnson's and Noah Webster's dictionaries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which "fix" British and American spelling systems with their differences and idiosyncracies.Old English is, relatively, a highly inflected language, with consequent looseness of syntax. One aspect of the history of English through Middle to Modern English is the gradual loss of inflectional endings and the correspondent fixing of syntactic structures into a quite rigid Subject-Verb-Object order.Punctuation as we know it is an Early Modern development, based upon medieval systems of "pointing" texts. Forward to next page: British Library Manuscript Collections[ Course Notes: Introduction ] [ I. Towards a definition of "manuscript studies" ] [ I.ii. The four branches of bibliographical study ] [ I.iii. Topics in the social history of texts ] I.iii.a The "Rescue" of Medieval Manuscripts from Grocers and Fishmongers [ II. Diplomatics ] [ III. Codicology ] [ III.ii. Decoration and Illumination ] [ IV. Paleography ] [ IV.ii. Historical Notes ] [ IV.iii. Writing Implements ] [ IV.iv. Letter Formation ] [ IV.v. Special Characters in English Manuscripts ] [ IV.vi. Scribal Abbreviations ] [ IV.vii. Punctuation ] [ IV.viii. Paleographical sample: William Herebert, OFM (early fourteenth-century England) ] [ Herebert sample, with transcription ] [ Herebert sample: enlargement of full page reproduced at high resolution ] [ V. Textual analysis (James E. Thorpe) ] [ V.ii. Scribal error ] [ V.iii. Kinds of edition ] [ V.iv. Examples of over emendation on insufficient grounds ] [ VI. Linguistic competence (an example): An Outline History of the English Language ] [ VII. Libraries and archives: ] [ VII.ii. British Library Manuscript Collections ] [ VII.iii. Bodleian Library Manuscript Collections ]

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