History of the English language

1. The origin of the english language

The English language has a long and eventful history. Its development began in the 5^th century A.D. when groups of West Germanic tribes settled in the British Isles.

But long before the Germanic invasions the British Isles were inhabited: 1^st, by Iberians, who had come from the North of Spain, but about whom no linguistic evidence is preserved. The first people about whose language we have some knowledge are the Celts. They spoke various Celtic languages that can be divided into 2 main groups: the Gallo-Breton and the Gaelic.

The Gallo-Breton group includes:

1. Gallic, which was spoken in Gaul (Mod. France);

2. British, represented by Welsh in Wales, Breton in Brittany, and Cornish in Cornwall (passed out of use in 18^th c.).

The Gaelic group includes:

1. Irish;

2. Scots;

3. Manx (on the Isle-of-Man, between Scotland and Ireland).

1.1 The Roman Conquest. By the time of the Germanic invasion Celtic was not the only language spoken on the English territory. For almost 400 years Britain was a province of the Roman Empire. In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar invaded Britain. But this expedition failed completely and the Roman troops could hardly return to their winter-quarters. The following summer Caesar again invaded the island. This time he succeeded in establishing himself in the South-East. But after a few meetings with the natives he again returned to Gaul. After that Britain was not troubled by the Romans for nearly 100 years.

In 43 A.D. the Emperor Claudius occupied Britain. That part is known now as England. The Romans never penetrated far into the mountains of Wales and Scotland.

The conquest of Britain was followed by its Romanization: it became a Roman province. The Celts in Britain were romanized like the Celts on the Continent, though to a lesser degree. But Latin did not replace the Celtic language. Its use was confined to members of the upper classes and the inhabitants of the towns. The Romans removed their last legion from Britain in 410 A.D. But the independence of the country was very short.

1.2 The Germanic Conquest. About the year 499 A.D. Britain was invaded by some Germanic tribes – the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles. The Britons fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half – till about the year 600.

The Jutes settled in Kent, the Isle-of-Whight and the neighboring part of Hampshire. The Saxons occupied the banks of the Thames and the remaining part of England southward. The Angles occupied most of the territory north of the Thames up to the Firth-of-Forth.

Since the settlement of these tribes in Britain the ties of their language with the continent were broken and its further development went in its own way. It is at this time that the History of the English language begins.

2. Middle english. The influence of scandinavian and norman conquests on the english language.

2.1. Scandinavian invasion and its influence on the English language. The Danes began to raid England as early as the 8^th century. The first expeditions were made for the sake of plundering and no attempts to conquer the country followed until 850. The period after this date is marked by widespread plundering in all parts of the country and by extensive Danish settlements.

The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders belonged to the North Germanic languages and their phonetic and grammatical structure was similar to that of Old English. This made mutual understanding without translation quite possible. The result was blending of Scandinavian and English dialects, especially in the North and East. Scandinavian influence was felt both in vocabulary and morphology.

Scandinavian words that entered the English language at that period are those that satisfy the needs of everyday life. The similarity of Old English and the language of the invaders makes it at times difficult to define a given word as a native one or borrowing. In certain cases, however, there are reliable criteria for recognizing a borrowed word, the principal of which are as follows:

a) the development of the sound combination “sk”;

In Old English it was palatalized to “sh” (written “sc”), while in the Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk sound. Consequently while native words like ship, fish, shine, shield, etc., have “sh” in Modern English, words borrowed from Scandinavians are generally still pronounced with sk: sky, skin, skill, scrape, whisk. Old English scyrte has become “shirt”, while the corresponding Old Norse form skyrta > skirt.

b) in the same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of “k” and “g” in such words as kid, dike, get, give, gild, egg, is an indication of Scandinavian origin.

In the word “gift” not only the initial sound is due to Scandinavian, but also the modern meaning. The Old English word “gift” meant “the price of a wife”, and, hence, in the Plural “marriage”, while the Scandinavian word had the more general sense of “present”.

In some words the old native form has survived, but has adopted the Scandinavian meaning of the corresponding word. Thus “dream” in Old English meant “joy”, but in Middle English the modern meaning of dream was taken over from the Scandinavian “draumr”.

In the areas of the heaviest settlement the Scandinavians outnumbered the Anglo-Saxon population, which is attested by geographical names. In Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, Cumberland – up to 75 % of the place names are Danish or Norwegian. Altogether more than 1.400 English villages and towns bear names of Scandinavian origin (with the element thorp meaning “village”, toft – “a piece of land” and others). E.g.: Woodthorp, Linthorp, Brimtoft, Lowestoft, etc. Probably, in many districts people became bilingual, with either Scandinavian or English prevailing.

Eventually the Scandinavians were absorbed into local population both ethnically and linguistically. They merged with the society around them, but the impact on the linguistic situation and on the further development of the English language was quite profound.

2.2. Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation. The Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history but also the greatest event in the history of the English language.

The Norman conquerors had originally come from Scandinavia (Norman means Northman). About 150 years before they had seized the valley of the Seine and settled in what was then known as Normandy. They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in the 11^th c. came to Britain as French speakers and bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect, which differed from Central, Parisian French.

The written speech was influenced by the language of the invaders most of all. In fact, this very influence caused the following alteration of the whole English language and brought it, generally, to its modern accustomed shape.

As the business of making and copying the documents was entirely in the hands of Norman clerks they, when re-writing English texts, substituted some Old English symbols for their French equivalents. Some sounds which never existed in French were also given new symbols. All these innovations can be divided into three groups:

a) the phoneme [θ-ð], which hadn’t been in French before, was denoted by the rare in OE digraph th:: thick, that. For denoting the hard consonant [χ] (like Russian [х] in the word “хочу”) and the palatalized one [χ’] (“хилый”) the digraph gh was used (thought, night).

2. for denoting dental fricatives, which had not been of great importance in OE,the following French symbols were used:

• sh and sch for [∫]: ship, waschen;

• ch and tch for [t∫]: child, fetch;

• dg and j for [dʒ]: bridge, John.

c) the letter c sounded as [k] in OE. In French it was read as [k] only before the back vowels. According to the rules introduced by the clerks the letter c began to be read as [k] only before the back vowels (cat, cold), and as [s] before the front vowels (city, cell). In English words containing [k] before the front vowels letter k was used (king, Kent).

The words borrowed from French at that period can be divided into several groups:

a) words connected with the life of the royal court: court, servant, guard, prince; but the words king and queen remained English;

b) words connected with war and army: army, regiment, battle, banner, victory, soldier; but the word knight is of English origin;

с) words connected with church: religion, chapel, prayer, confess;

d) words connected with the organization of the state: vassal, govern, government, serf, village;

e) justice: judge, verdict, sentence;

f) city life and organization: city, merchant, butcher, painter, tailor;

The usage of the names of domestic animals and their meat depended on the place where it was pronounced. In the village they were an ox, a cow, a ship, a pig, a swine, a calf, etc. But when their meat was served to the table of a Norman lord, words of French origin were used: beef, mutton, pork, veal, etc.

French words could co-exist with their English equivalents though their meaning was different. Compare: autumn (Fr.) and harvest (meant “autumn” in Old English), Herbst (German). Sometimes the borrowed word ousted the native one: army (F) – here (OE).

Some words extinct from the literary language still remain in several dialects.