The Beginning of English - Essay Example

11 September The beginning of English English is a West Germanic language and was first spoken in the Early Medieval England. It is currently spoken as a first language by the majority population. English the third most common language and is mostly learned as a second language (Hogg 67). It is the official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth Countries and the United States as well as in many organizations. English is a Germanic language which belongs to the Indo-European languages. The original group of people that spoke Proto-Indo-European language which later split into a number of branches including the Germanic branch lived somewhere between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea six thousand years ago (McCrum, Cran and MacNeil 1). This population then expanded and migrated eastward, westward and northward and inhabited most of Europe. A casual comparison between Indo-European and English reveals similarities among them (Hogg 67). By studying cognates, words of common origin in different languages, linguistics were able to make qualified guesses about what words may have looked like in a proto-language. Cognates also reveals systematic sound changes that have occurred as new languages have emerged. English has an alphabetic writing system based on the Roman alphabet that was brought to Anglo-Saxon England by Christian missionaries and church officials in the 600s AD (Hogg 55). An earlier Germanic writing system called runes, also alphabetic and originating eventually from the same source as the Roman alphabet, was used for incantations, curses, and a few poems, when the tribes were still on the continent and also after their migration to Britain, up until Christianization (Hogg 87). Crucial elements of the sound stream of a message are thus captured by a linear sequence of marks that can be sounded out to recapture the message by means of its sounds. The entire sound stream is not captured, but enough of it is to provide a prompt for lexical recognition. Other kinds of writing systems are based on written representation of other linguistic units such as syllables, words, or some mix of these (Hogg 98). The Standardization of English is divided into periods. The first is the Primitive Old English Period between 450AD and 700AD. In 500 BC, Britain was invaded by Celtic tribes, who ruled the Island (Hogg et al.). In 43 A.D., however, the islands were invaded by Emperor Claudius and Britain became part of the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire collapsed and the Roman legionaries went home, they left a power vacuum in Britain. The Scots and Picts advanced southwards and the weak Celts could not keep them back (Hogg 78). The distressed Celts decided to seek help from three Germanic tribes living in present-day southern Denmark and north-western Germany. This proved to be a fatal mistake because the three Germanic tribes called the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes did not only conquer the Scots, but seeing that the Islands were fertile they pushed the weakened Celts to the peripheries of the Island (Wales, Cornwall and Ireland) and took the land for themselves. By 600A.D (Hogg 99). the victory was complete and Englaland and English was born. The second standardization phase is the Old English Period and was between 700 and 1100AD. The oldest manuscripts written with Roman letters found in Britain date from 700 A.D. This thus marks the start of the Old English Period. Before this date the Jutes, Angles and Saxons had been converted to Christians, hence Roman alphabet and started to produce Christian literature in English (Hogg 67). A number of manuscripts found from this time have given a fairly good idea of what old English dialects, primarily the dialect of West Saxon spoken in Wessex, looked like. Old English can be described as a highly synthetic language because inflectional endings were used to signal the grammatical function of words, and word order was thus of less importance (Hogg et al.). Old English nouns had two numbers, four cases, three grammatical genders and roughly ten different patterns of declensions. Adjectives also had inflectional endings that reflected the noun they described as did pronouns and articles (Hogg 67). The verb system too, was highly inflectional. The verb took different finishes depending on the grammatical subject and there were ten different classes of verbs. Old English was a purely Germanic language. There were, however, some influences from other languages on the vocabulary. The influence from Celtic was minimal (Hogg 68). This is because conquerors do not usually borrow words from the subdued. Outside of place names, the influence of Celtic on Old English is negligible as compared to Native American languages on American English. There were several terms borrowed from Latin. These can be grouped into different semantic fields of meaning. From the first to fifth centuries A.D (Hogg 69). around fifty words came into Germanic through Germanic contact with Rome before the invasion and settlement of Britain. Most of these loans are related to the fields of religion and learning. Surprisingly there are a number of Scandinavian loans that entered English towards the end of the Old English period. Naturally, the massive migration and settlement that the Scandinavians undertook led to widespread use of the Norse (Scandinavian) language in the area of the Danelaw, and there is proof of it even today through its influences on the English language. It can be difficult to recognize the Scandinavian words since the languages are so closely related and many words that look Scandinavian are actually native English words (Algeo and Pyles). The third standardization phase is the Middle English Period between 1100AD and 1500AD. The Middle English period begins with the Norman Conquest at the Battle of Hastings in 1066AD, when the duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold and become king of England (McCrum & Robert 36). The Norman invasion England in 1066AD and brought French into England. The Normans (North-men, descendants of Danes), spoke a French influenced by Germanic dialect (McCrum & Robert 78). This dialect was Norman French. This led to the unusual situation, in which the common people spoke one language (English), and the aristocrats another (Norman French). Naturally, the two languages gradually began to mix into what we now call Middle English. By the 13th century approximately 10,000 French words had come into English. About three quarters of these French loans are still in the language today. These new words duplicated words that existed in Old English from Anglo-Saxon times (McCrum & Robert 35). Sometimes one word would displace the other or both would co-exist, but develop slightly different meanings. A study of the words that were borrowed from Norman French says much about the socio- cultural state of the time. The enormous majority of the borrowed words belong to the spheres of court, administration, law, the army, the Church, art, literature, medicine and the sciences. Not only did Norman French bring great changes to Old English vocabulary, spelling changes also occurred (McCrum & Robert 33). The Norman scribes listened to the English they heard around them, and began to spell it according to the conventions they had previously used for French. Perhaps as a result of the influence of French pronunciation patterns, unstressed vowels were gradually lost in English. This phonological change had extreme consequences on the grammar of English. As we have seen Old English was a highly inflected language (McCrum & Robert 34). These inflections appeared at the end of words and were unstressed. Because the inflectional endings showed the relationships between words in a sentence. The word order of Old English was fairly free. As a result of the loss of inflectional endings, grammatical associations began to be marked through word order and the use of preposition. English thus changed from being a synthetic language to become an analytic language. The Normans progressively became isolated from their French roots. In 1204AD King John, a descendant of William the Conqueror, lost the province of Normandy to the king of France (McCrum & Robert 24). At the end of the 14th century the Anglo-Normans no longer had any land left in France. The Normans decided to adopt English as their official language and in 1362AD, Parliament was opened in English. This parliament was located in Westminster, London and this occasioned the eventual dominance of the London dialect as the standard spoken and written language due to London’s prominence as a commercial Centre and seaport, as well as its closeness to the court in Westminster. A process of standardization of English begun (McCrum & Robert 24). The fourth and final phase in standardization of English is the Modern English from 1500AD to date. The major factors that influenced the language and served to separate Middle and Modern English were the Great Vowel Shift and the introduction of the printing press. The Great Vowel Shift was a change in articulation that began around 1400AD (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 23). During the next two centuries there was a great arrival of people into the London region and the different dialects began to affect the pronunciation patterns. Vowel shift as a process led to long vowel sounds being raised and diphthongized. The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476AD. Books became cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. Publishing for the masses became a profitable enterprise, and works in English, as opposed to Latin, became more common (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 34). Finally, the printing press brought standardization to English. The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604AD. Much of this standardization in spelling took place before the Great Vowel Shift was completed, and old pronunciation patterns are often reflected in English spelling. The Early Modern English period coincided with the Regeneration (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 29). This was a great time of learning and discovery. Many new words had to be found for all the new concepts that needed naming. At the time, there was a heated debate going on in England whether these terms should be coined from Anglo Saxon words or whether they should be borrowed from Latin and Greek, which were considered to be the languages of learning (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 27). A final factor which affected the vocabulary of English was the expansion of the British Empire. People came in contact with languages all over the world and borrowed freely from them, especially words denoting objects and phenomena that they themselves lacked words for. Current orthography represents two major centers of standardization: British and American English. These reflect the modern trends of standardization. The British standard held influence throughout the world until very recently, when some other countries began to first accept and then to teach American orthography and verbal choices (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 13). Pronunciation variants are spread auditorily rather than through writing, but the same changeover from British to American norms appears to be occurring. The spread of electronic communication in the form of computers and phone texting have provided a large number of abbreviation conventions. The enforcers of spelling norms, schools and publishers, have so far maintained the current orthographic standards in printed documents (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 53). But because spelling norms are hard to obtain given all the spelling-pronunciation discrepancies, and writing has become so democratized through these technologies, the use of non-standard spellings and abbreviations is increasingly widespread (Algeo, John & Thomas 34). Such changes in usage patterns are bound to have some consequence on the written language ultimately, just as speakers usage of words eventually affects what are considered conventional norms. It is still too early to tell how these effects on the written language will play out. Publishing itself as an industry feels endangered by the tidal wave of un-edited electronic publication on the internet (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 43). What happens to publishing as an industry will probably affect how quickly new orthographic norms are adopted, since publishing is one of the major conservative forces of orthographic standardization in the modern world. The others, schools, government, and church, seem less powerful in determining the form of the documents that are actually produced on paper. The English language has grown tremendously. New words continue to be incorporated in the English language. These developments have made words in the language to increase significantly (Rauch, Irmengard & Gerald 23). The use of English language is also increasing. English is becoming the official language in many countries and states. It is also taught in majority of learning institutions all over the world. Works cited Algeo, John, and Thomas Pyles. Problems In The Origins And Development Of The English Language. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972. Print. Hogg, Richard M et al. The Cambridge History Of The English Language. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print. McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story Of English. 1st ed. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1986. Print. Rauch, Irmengard, and Gerald F Carr. Language Change. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Print. Read More