The History of the English Language by Risa

“History is based in written records, the runic alphabet earliest written records of the language we speak today date from the mid to late-seventh century” says Risa

This article has the objective to inform about the history of the English Language in relation with culture, old dialects and written records. This text is written for students, teachers, etc.

English arrived from England: “The land of angels” during the fifth century. The early speakers were the “Saxons” and the language was called “englisc”. When this language arrived, Latin was the language in common in the South and EastTwo varieties of the Celtic languages were in common to the West and Northwest; Pictish to the North and East. Syriac was one of the languages North of Hadrian's Wall. Other languages are preserved in place names, for instance, Tintagal.

English belongs to the West-Germanic sub-family of the Germanic family of the Indo-European languages.

English did not become the language in common of England until the tenth century, when Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, conquered all the kingdoms south of the Firth of Forth. Just as today, regional diversity records distinct dialects of Old English in the documents. Although the majority of documents written in Old English that have survived are in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred's Wessex, modern English is descended from the dialect spoken and written in Mercia.

 In the early centuries, York in Northumbria was the center of the English-speaking world. Then Northumbria submitted to Alfred in 886. The language of power shifted to the South and centered on Winchester. After the Danish rule of Canute, the language of power centered on London and has remained there. This last shift has had a profound effect on the language in our days.

English is a stress language; we use stress on a syllable to distinguish words when spoken. The language, however, has a very strong tendency towards recessive accent. This means that, over time, the part of a word we stress moves from the back to the front of the word. An example of this characteristic is “folces” (of the folk) form the Old English, it was pronounced "folcES." By the 12th-century, the word was pronounced "FOLKes." Unstressed vowels tend to be lost. Today we say and write "folk's." This tendency to move stress back *may* have been the cause of an important change and only dead languages do not change. English has changed, but the original “core” is still there. Change to a living language must continue or the language dies. I think Global English is a new phase of the history of English, this language will continue evolving and maybe in a couple of decades it won’t be the most dominant language in the world.