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History of
English Language
The
origins of English point to Germany. English language originated
from languages brought across by Germanic settlers in the first half
of the first millennium AD from various parts of north western
Germany. The language was refined through for seven centuries before
it underwent another sea of change during two successive invasions.
The first invasion was by Scandinavian German families. They
occupied and colonized many parts of Britain in the 8th
and the 9th centuries. The English language absorbed the
resultant changes for 2 centuries before being pulverized again by
Norman invasion in the 11th century. The Normans spoke
French. The cohabitation of Norman with Germanic speakers speaking
French and English resulted in creolisation of English. Creolisation
means developing a new hybrid language based on existing ones for
purposes of communication. The advantage of this arrangement was
that the grammar got simplified and English got lexical enrichment.
The German core of English language was subsequently enriched by the
romantic French due to the Norman invasion. The final grind was when
the creolic English went through the government and courts which
evolved it into a very supple and broad vocabulary based language.
The Germanic invaders of the first
millennium ruled over the Celtic speaking inhabitants. The
linguistic remains of their dominance remained in Cornwall, Ireland,
Scotland and Wales, and the resultant dialect came to be known as
the Old English. Old English was similar to dialects of today’s
coastal areas of Netherlands and north-west Germany. The subsequent
effect on Old English was of North German Norse spoken by Vikings
settled in the north-east. The creolic effect was loss of most Old
English grammar, gender and case keeping pronouns in tact rendering
the language simpler. “Beowulf” is the most famous surviving epic
poem from the Old English period, the poet unknown.
Normans conquered Britain in 1066.
300 years into their rule, they used only French in their circles.
During this period a number of words from Norman French found their
way into Old English, and English started evolving in the following
centuries into Middle English. Notable was change in grammar where
the continuous tense came into use. 15th Century saw
Middle English being transformed by the Great Vowel Shift, due to
its usage in administration and government and requirement to
standardize for printing requirements. “The Canterbury Tales” is the
most famous work of Middle English written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The
evolution of Modern English began from the time of William
Shakespeare.
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