Of course, I guessed that it is not so simple, this English language, but that it is so... Okay, read for yourself, I hope this will help you in your study.
Modern English, as we know it, comes from Scandinavian, German, Celtic, Greek and Latin. Every time a new dictionary is published, there are words that need to be added because there are more and more words that the English language has absorbed. You might think that English came from England, because that language has always been spoken there, right? This is not entirely true. The English language developed with Germanic and Scandinavian settlers who settled in the British Isles. When one country invades another, their languages mix and a completely new language emerges.
English is a language derived from the Anglo-Saxons and some Germanic tribes from the northwestern coast of Europe. The Anglo-Saxons were first known as Angles, then became known as Engles. This is where the word English comes from. The invasion of the Anglo-Saxons and Germanic tribes occurred in the 5th century AD. In the 8th – 9th centuries there was an invasion of Scandinavian tribes.
Before the arrival of English in the British Isles, people there spoke Celtic, but most Celts moved to Wales and Scotland. What we call Old English is an Anglo-Saxon language that also depends on the language of the invading Vikings. Old English was also influenced by the language of the Normans. It was a mixture of old French and Latin. And many of the words have been preserved in the language to this day. For example: servant, juggler, baron, dame, noble, feast, story.
Modern English has survived since about the 15th century. Between 1200 and 1600 there was a significant change in language. A Danish linguist called this phenomenon the Great Vowel Shift.
I understand perfectly well that such a portion of historical material simply must contain clear examples, here you go:
Let's look at the word "date". In modern English we pronounce the long "a" sound, but in old English, the word sounded more like "dot". Differences exist not only in written language. The spoken language also changed at the phonetic level. Phonetics changed during the transition from dialect to dialect. The dialect of people living in England and America was different from each other. Due to the introduction of many languages into English, there are often many exceptions to its rules.
Learning English will help you know a lot of new and interesting things!
In modern business relations, English is a priority. In many countries it is the second official language; newspapers, magazines, and television and radio broadcasts are published in it.
Most export products have instructions in English. Also, in many programs, from telephone to car, systems are initially installed in English. If Russification has not yet been developed for your equipment, with a reasonable knowledge of the language you will be able to cope perfectly with all the difficulties of setting up. However, let's return to our main question: how and when did the English language appear?
In the V-VI centuries. the ancient Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes moved from the continent to Celtic-inhabited Britain. The proximity of these tribes led to the emergence of the English people, and the interaction of tribal dialects led to the gradual formation of the Anglo-Saxon language (VII-XI centuries AD). During this period, the development of the language was significantly influenced by the Scandinavian and Latin languages.
With the beginning of the era of the penetration of Christianity into Britain, the Latin alphabet and Latin words appeared in the Old English language. First of all, these were terms directly related to the church, as well as the names of various types of food and clothing. From the Scandinavian tribes the English, in turn, borrowed such grammatical words as they- They, their- their, same- same.
In 1066, England was conquered by the Normans, tribes living in France. This conquest ushered in a long period of bilingualism. French was the official language - this meant that all documents were written in it and government affairs were conducted. The long-term use of the French language became the reason for the consolidation in writing of some letter combinations that did not fully correspond to the sound composition of the English language, and a vast layer of French vocabulary appeared in oral speech.
Also during this period, the appearance of a number of words that were obtained by borrowing from other languages was noted. For example, new names for simple crafts and animals came from the Germanic language. During the same period, a number of changes occurred in the grammatical structure of the language. First of all, it is necessary to note the confusion of nominal and verbal endings, which subsequently completely disappear from the pages of English grammar.
“The introduction of printing in England (1476) contributed to the consolidation and spread of London forms, which was greatly helped by the popularity of the works of the great writer J. Chaucer (1340−1400), who wrote in the London dialect. However, book printing recorded some traditional spellings that no longer reflected the pronunciation norms of the late 15th century. Thus began the divergence between pronunciation and spelling, so characteristic of modern English.”(Great Soviet Encyclopedia)
This discrepancy between pronunciation and spelling makes it difficult for foreign learners of English to learn to read. But this is not the only difficulty on the path of those who want to thoroughly learn English.
In addition to the official British English, there is also American English. Despite the fact that both of these languages have the same progenitor, there are a lot of differences between them, both lexical and grammatical.
Good day, dear readers. You have already made significant progress in learning English. But few people know where this language came from, how it appeared. It's time to find out. Everyone knows that Latin became the basis of modern European languages. So, for example, the German dialect is a cross between Latin and Gothic, French is Latin and Gaulish, and English appeared as a result of mixing Latin and Celtic. English language
The history of modern English began back in the 8th century BC. During this period, the territory of modern Great Britain was inhabited by Celts who communicated in the Celtic language. So the word “Britain” itself comes from the Celtic - brith — painted. Also from Celtic came words such as "slogan" = sluagh + ghairm = battle cry, "whiskey" = uisce + beathadh = living water.
Afterwards, Britain was conquered by the great Caesar, and in the 1st century BC. it began to be considered part of the Roman Empire. Some Romans began to move to the province, who had to communicate closely with the local population, that is, with the Celts, which was reflected in the language. Thus, words with Latin roots have appeared in modern English.
For example, "street" = via strata = paved road, common nouns - “wine - vinum, pear - pirum, and many geographical names - Manchester, Lancaster. This is how the Romans and Celts interacted with each other, forming new English words right up to the 5th century AD, until the territory of Britain was invaded by Germanic tribes, and a new period began in the history of the development of English.
Old English period in English history
This period covers the period from 449 to 1066. In 449 AD. The ancestors of the English language, the Celts and Romans, were invaded by the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes, who significantly outnumbered the local population. So the Anglo-Saxon dialect gradually began to displace the Celtic dialect, destroying or transforming existing words.
Only in the hard-to-reach and remote areas of Britain were the Germans unable to reach, and Celtic languages remained there to this day. These are Wells, the Highlands, Cornwall and Ireland. Therefore, if you want to touch the ancestors of modern English, then go there.
Celtic alphabet Thanks to the Germanic tribes, many words with common Germanic roots appeared in English, which were also borrowed from Latin at one time. These are words like " butter, Saturday, silk, mile, pound, inch". In 597, the Roman Church began to Christianize pagan Britain, and by the early 8th century AD. Most of the British Isles already professed the new religion.
The close interaction of these cultures was naturally reflected in the language. By borrowing words from Latin and assimilating them with Germanic dialects, many new lexemes appeared. Eg, "school" comes from Latin "schola", "Bishop"- from " Episcopus", "mount"- from "montis" and many others. It was during this period that over 600 words with Latin and Germanic roots came into the English language.
Then, in the second half of the 9th century, the Danes began to conquer Anglo-Saxon lands. The Scandinavian Vikings intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons, mixing their Old Icelandic language with the dialect spoken by the local peoples. As a result, words from the Scandinavian group came into English: amiss, anger, awe, aye. The combination of the letters “sc-” and “sk-” in English words is a clear sign of borrowing from Scandinavian languages: sky, skin, skull.
Middle English period of development of the English language
This is the period from 1066 to 1500. AD In the middle of the 11th century, during the Middle Ages, England was conquered by the French. Thus, in the history of the development of the English language, the era of three languages began:
- French - for the aristocracy and the judiciary
- Latin - for Science and Medicine
- Anglo-Saxon - for the common people
The mixture of these three adverbs gave rise to the formation of the English that the whole world studies today. Thanks to mixing, the vocabulary doubled. The vocabulary split into high (from French) and low (from German) variants of the language. The same distinctions can be traced in the semantic series of synonyms that arose as a result of the use of the languages of the aristocracy and peasants.
Map of Britain 11th century So, an example of social division can be the names of domestic animals that have Germanic roots, that is, worker-peasant: swine, cow, sheep, calf.
But the name of the meat of these animals, which the intelligentsia ate, comes from the French: pork, beef, mutton, veal.
However, despite not all the external factors influencing English, its core still remains Anglo-Saxon.
In the 14th century, English became literary, that is, exemplary, and it also became the language of education and law. In 1474 the first book appeared in English. It was William Caxton's translation of R. Lefebvre's A Collection of Stories of Troy. Thanks to Caxton's work, many English words have acquired completeness and integrity.
During this period, the first grammatical rules appeared. Many verb endings disappeared, adjectives acquired degrees of comparison. Changes are also taking place in phonetics. The London pronunciation became popular in Britain in the early 16th century. About 90% of the country's total population spoke this dialect.
With the beginning of mass migration from England to North America, the language there began to change in a different direction. This is how British, American and other varieties of modern English appeared, which today differ significantly from each other, both grammatically, phonetically, and lexically.
New England period of the formation of English
This period starts from 1500 to the present day. William Shakespeare is considered to be the founder of modern literary English. It was he who purified the language, gave it form, and introduced many idiomatic expressions and new words that English speakers now use to communicate. During the Age of Enlightenment, in 1795, L. Murray’s textbook “English Grammar” was published for the first time. For almost 200 years everyone studied from this book.
Lindley Murray Linguists argue that modern English is a mixture of different languages, and even today it is not static, but is constantly being updated. This is the main difference between this language and other European dialects. English not only allows, but welcomes neologisms, different dialects and variants. As we can see, he still preserves the tradition of “mixing dialects.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, the globalization of the English language occurred, which was facilitated by the colonial policies of the United Kingdom. In the middle of the last century, the global importance of the United States increased, which also contributed to the popularity of the American version of the language.
English has long become not only the No. 1 language of international communication, but also the language of science, media, education, and technology. Today it is difficult to calculate exactly how many people speak this language. Numbers are quoted from 700 million to 1 billion. Some people are carriers of it, and others, like you and me, are trying to learn it.
The history of the English language began in the 5th century, when Britain, then inhabited by Celts and partly by Romans, was invaded by three Germanic tribes. The German influence turned out to be so strong that soon almost nothing remained of the Celtic and Latin languages in almost the entire country. Only in remote and inaccessible areas of Britain that remained unoccupied by the Germans (Cornwall, Wells, Ireland, Highland Scotland) were the local Welsh and Gaulish languages preserved. These languages survive today: they are called Celtic languages, in contrast to Germanic English. Then the Vikings came to Britain from Scandinavia with their Old Icelandic language. Then in 1066 England was captured by the French. Because of this, French was the language of the English aristocracy for two centuries, and Old English was used by the common people. This historical fact had a very significant impact on the English language: many new words appeared in it, the vocabulary almost doubled. Therefore, it is in the vocabulary that the split into two variants of English - high and low, respectively of French and German origin - can be quite clearly felt today.
Thanks to the doubling of the vocabulary, the English language today still has many words of the same meaning - synonyms that arose as a result of the simultaneous use of two different languages, which came from the Saxon peasants and from the Norman masters. A clear example of this social division is the difference in the name of livestock, which comes from Germanic roots:
cow - cow
calf - calf
sheep - sheep
swine - pig
while the names of the cooked meats are of French origin:
beef - beef
veal - veal
mutton - lamb
pork - pork
Despite all external influences, the core of the language remained Anglo-Saxon. Already in the 14th century, English became a literary language, as well as the language of law and school. And when mass emigration from Britain to America began, the language brought there by the settlers continued to change in new directions, often maintaining its roots in British English, and sometimes changing quite significantly.
The beginning of the globalization of English
By the beginning of the 20th century, English was increasingly becoming the language of international communication. The English language, along with other languages of international communication, was used at international conferences, in the League of Nations, and for negotiations. Even then, the need to improve its teaching and develop objective criteria that would allow learning the language more effectively became obvious. This need stimulated the search and research of linguists from different countries, which has not dried up to this day.
It is clear that one of the most important components of learning any foreign language is the accumulation of vocabulary. Only after acquiring some vocabulary can you begin to study the relationships between words - grammar, stylistics, etc. But what words should you learn first? And how many words should you know? There are a lot of words in the English language. According to linguists, the complete vocabulary of the English language contains at least one million words. The record holders among the famous dictionaries of the English language are the second edition of the 20-volume Oxford dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989 by Oxford University Press, and Webster's 1934 dictionary Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd Edition, which includes a description of 600 thousand words. Of course, not a single person knows such a number of words, and it is very difficult to use such huge dictionaries.
The “average” Englishman or American, even those with a higher education, hardly uses more than 1500-2000 words in his everyday speech, although he passively owns an incomparably large stock of words that he hears on TV or encounters in newspapers and books. And only the most educated, intelligent part of society is able to actively use more than 2000 words: individual writers, journalists, editors and other “masters of words” use the most extensive vocabulary, reaching 10 thousand words or more in some especially gifted individuals. The only problem is that each person who has a rich vocabulary has a vocabulary as individual as handwriting or fingerprints. Therefore, if the vocabulary base of 2000 words is approximately the same for everyone, then the “plumage” is quite different for everyone.
However, conventional bilingual dictionaries and explanatory dictionaries, which provide definitions of words in one language, strive to describe as many words as possible in order to increase the likelihood that the reader will find most of the words he is looking for. Therefore, the larger the regular dictionary, the better. It is not uncommon for dictionaries to contain descriptions of tens or hundreds of thousands of words in one volume.
In addition to ordinary dictionaries, there are dictionaries that do not contain the largest possible number of words, but rather a minimal list of them. Dictionaries of the required minimum vocabulary describe words that are used most often and have the greatest semantic value. Because words are used with different frequencies, some words are much more common than all other words. In 1973, it was found that a minimum dictionary of the 1,000 most common words in the English language describes 80.5% of all word usage in average texts, a 2,000-word dictionary describes approximately 86% of word usage, and a 3,000-word dictionary describes about 90% of word usage.
It is clear that minimum lexical dictionaries are intended for language learning by students, and not at all for translators. With the help of a minimum dictionary it is impossible to learn natural language in its entirety, but you can quickly and effectively learn that part of it that is of greatest value for the practical needs of communication.
Some linguists boldly point to the Old English, Middle English and New English periods, but the language began to exist much earlier. So, today we will find out how, when and under what circumstances the English language appeared.
Let’s not bore readers for long and say that the history of the English language began in the distant 8th century BC. on the territory of modern Great Britain, when the migration of Celtic tribes from the continent to the territory of the British Isles began. The “settlers” were given the name “Britons”, which they inherited from the local tribes of the Picts - Pryden. Interestingly, one theory associated with the Celts about the origin of the name "Britain" is that the Celtic root "brith" means "painted", and past records indicate that Indo-European peoples painted their faces before going into battle. Despite such an ancient period of existence, the Celts had a developed culture. Time passed, and in the 1st century BC. Caesar came to Britain, declaring it part of the Roman Empire. It was in the 1st century BC. Ancient Roman authors have the earliest mention of a term related to the official name of the country Britain (Britannia, Brittania). This name comes from Latin and means "land of the Britons". The migration of the Romans and their communication with the Celts was reflected in the language: thanks to this, words of Latin origin are present in English today. This interaction of peoples continued until the 5th century AD, after which the Germanic tribes of the Saxons, Jutes, Angles and Frisians invaded the territory, bringing with them the local dialect. Thus began a new branch of the development of the English language, which was filled with Germanic words.
Then there was a period of Christianization, which was reflected in the language. Many “settled” words from Latin were mixed with Germanic dialects, as a result of which new vocabulary units appeared. During this period, the language became richer by 600 words.
With the onset of Viking attacks and the arrival of the Danes in the 9th century, Old Icelandic words began to appear in the language, which were mixed with local dialects. This is how words of the Scandinavian group appeared in English, having characteristic combinations “sc”, “sk”.
In connection with the accession of the Norman house in England in the 11th – 16th centuries. were marked by the appearance of French words in English, but Latin and Anglo-Saxon also dominated. It was at this time that the English we speak today was born. The mixing of languages has led to an increase in the number of words. A pronounced division of the language became noticeable between the lower classes (words derived from Germanic) and the upper classes (from French).
The Middle Ages represent the flowering of literature. This was facilitated by the first printed book published in English. Its translation was undertaken by William Caxton, who became a significant figure in the field of linguistics. To translate and publish the book, he needed to choose an adverb that would be understandable to most readers, which contributed to the development of English spelling. As literature began to develop, the foundations of the grammatical structure and changes in the morphological system began to appear: verb endings disappeared, the degree of comparison of adjectives and the first outlines of normative phonetics appeared. London pronunciation came into fashion.
How did English appear? The mass immigration of people from England to North America became the starting point in this direction. By that time, there were already French, Spanish, Italians, Germans and Danes in America. The Spaniards settled in the southern part of the continent, and the French in the northern, but the British were the majority, so it was English that began to spread in these territories, taking on the shape of American English.
And, of course, we cannot fail to mention the great William Shakespeare, thanks to whom the literary English language was formed and strengthened in many aspects. One of the few writers to have a vocabulary of 20,000 words, Shakespeare invented more than 1,700 words that we still use today.