The history of the English Language by Laura Howard

Nowadays English is the most popular language in the Earth. It is the default languages on the internet and there are around 140 millions of learners around the world. English is natively spoken in countries such as USA, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zeeland. These countries have an enormous influence around the world. Laura Howard wrote this article to explain how the historic facts made the English this way. This brief summary is for English learners and all people in general.

English didn’t start on England but in what is now Germany. English started around AD 449 and it is part of an Anglo Frisian group within the “Indo European” languages. The Anglo Frisian group consists of the Germanic languages like Swedish, Dutch, Icelandic and Norwegian, and English and they are all related to each other. There are many similarities between modern English and modern German, for example “Father” (in English) which means the same thing as “Vater” in German.

For a good understanding of English History, it should be divided in three phases:

The Old English Period where English was spoken by West Germanic people such as Angels, Saxons and the Jutes, who invaded Britain in the 5^th century AD.  The native Britons spoke a Celtic language, similar to the native Scottish. The Jutes invaded first, occupying the South of England. The Angles went occupied the north of England, even as far up as Southern Scotland. This invasion pushed the native Britons to the North and the West, to what we now know as Scotland, the West Country (Cornwall) and Wales. The word England itself is pretty suggestive of the Anglo Saxon influence. That’s why Eng - Land translates into Angle - Land. Around the 9^th century, the dominant dialect was spoken by the Saxons, mostly in literature. Old English didn’t have abundance in vocabulary, so they borrowed from the Celtic language. Vikings also introduces some words such as “take” and “cut”.

The second phase of the English history is called the “Middle English”. This phase starts with the invasion of the Normans in 1066 which dramatically changed the language introducing a kind of French. Then the English became the dominant language once again but with many words of French added such as crime" which replaced "firen", and "uncle" replaced "eam".

The Early Modern English starts with the Renaissance which influenced English with many Greek and Latin words and also some idioms such as “vanish into thin air", "flesh and blood" and "one fell swoop". English was also influenced by the Great Vowel Shift, named by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. It was a change in the pronunciation of words that began at around 1400. The inventions of the printing press lead to the production of cheap books. So, it meant that many people could read, and then this brought about standardization to English.

The English Today started with new technologic and industrial terms. Nowadays English implies global communication and also domination of the British Empire. It is important to know the origins of this language because it is the most popular language in the world and it evolves little by little every day.