The History of English

By: Lars Andreas Bockman

Many of you probably already know some of the history of English. No doubt you have learned about how the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Northern Germany conquered Britain, and brought with them their language. This language was changed and influenced by many other people, Vikings, Normans, Spaniards and Shakespeare, to form what we know as English today. However, the history of English is much longer than that, and to get a full sense of how English was formed, we must look at the very first languages we know of.

The common ancestor of among other languages Hindi, English, Latin, Greek, Persian, German and Punjabi is today known as Proto-Indo-European (from here referred to as PIE). This was spoken by a large number of tribes, known as the Indo-Europeans, who lived in Central Asia. However, about 6000 years ago, these people migrated, of unknown reasons, South, West and East, and eventually came to become the dominating group throughout the middle-east, Europe and India, and brought with them their language. PIE diversified and created many new languages, many of which were unintelligible to each other, and by 1000 BCE the Indo-European languages had become so different that many subcategories of languages had been created, including Germanic, Latin and Indo-Iranian.

One of these languages was proto-Germanic, and the Anglo-Saxons spoke a dialect of this language. Proto-Germanic was the main language of all the German tribes during the Roman period (who of course spoke Latin,) and the Scandinavian peoples also spoke German. Of course, these were all divided into dialect, but we can be fairly certain that all northwestern Europeans could understand each other. At this time in Britain, people were speaking Latin in the roman parts (Brittania) and Celtic in the non-roman parts (Caledonia, Ireland), however, almost all of these languages were gonna give way to the anglo-saxon dialect. Some of these languages are still spoken, f. ex the Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland, and Cymraeg, spoken in Wales.

When the Romans pulled out of Britain in 410 A.D, their place was taken by the earlier mentioned Anglo-Saxons. These were German tribes, who lived in Northern Germany, but migrated into Britain between the early 5^th century and 6^th century. These eventually became the dominant force in Britain and the Anglo-Saxon language became the commonly spoken one. “Old English,” as it is called, is the basis for our modern English language, and 93 of the 100 most commonly used words in English are directly from this.

The next major impact on the English language came in 897 AD when the first Vikings invaded Britain. The Vikings settled Britain and had a couple attempts at conquering the British Isles, such as the Canut the Great’s campaign (Knut den Store in Danish) in 1035 AD, and Harold Hardraada’s (Harald Hardråde in Norwegian) failed invasion in 1060 AD. It is believed that over 600 English words stem from Scandinavian languages, in addition to words that are only used in parts of Britain (such as “dale”, from “dal”). These words include “give” and “take,” “ski” and “cross.” The Vikings also introduced the “æ” letter into English. However, this has been phased out of the English language. Also, If you’re a geek like me, check out http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Headside, which is a wiki written as it would have been if the Normans had never invaded Britain.

Perhaps the biggest shift in the English language took place between 1066 AD and the 13^th century, after the Normans invaded. The Norman kingdom existed in Northern France, and spoke a language very similar to contemporary French. When William the Conqueror conquered Britain in 1066 AD English experienced a large influx of French words. Almost a third of English words are from French (and by extension, Latin), but few of these are very common. As opposed to the Anglo-Saxon language, which is Germanic, French comes from the subfamily of Indo-European called Italic languages, as does Spanish, Latin and Italian The reason for this is that while the nobility and upper class population of Britain was French, the general populace still spoke mainly Anglo-Saxon. This is especially apparent if you look at the words for animals. The main producers of animals were farmers who spoke Anglo-Saxon, so the general words for animals are of Germanic descent, such as “pig” and “cow.” On the other hand, the words for the produce of these animals are of French descent, as the main consumers of meat were nobility. Thus we have the food names “pork” and “beef.” The French invasion also complicated the spelling of English, adding f. ex the silent –e and many other affixes.

Over the 800 years the language wasn’t changed so much by diplomatic and geographical reasons, even though more words were added as the British empire expanded into South-East Asia, the Middle East, America and Africa, as it was by technological and scientific developments, and, believe it or not, Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a very creative writer, and, as it turns out, word creator as he created hundreds of new words by adding affixes to already existing words (like “assassination”), by connecting words that had never been connected before (like “eyeball”) and by even creating completely new words (f. ex I bet you didn’t know that the word “swagger” was first used in “A Midsummernights Dream”). Words like dawn and revenge were added and went into colloquial use, and according to some sources, over 1700 words and phrases were invented by Shakespeare.

Perhaps the biggest influx of words into the English language came with the enlightenment and the following industrial revolution. As scientists and historians developed new theories and inventions they required new words to describe them. The answer was the classical languages of Greek and Latin. These modern Latin/Greek words are called modern Latin or neo-Latin words. Words in this group are often mixes of Latin roots and Greek or Latin affixes (like telephone or homosexual), but can also be Germanic roots with Latin or Greek affixes or even proper nouns with affixes. Most surveys find that about a quarter of English words come directly from Latin, but it is worth noting that very few of these words are used often, and many of them are even almost never used outside of a strictly professional context. In addition, most words of French descent come indirectly from Latin, like “library” which comes from French “libraire” which again stems from Latin “librarium.” Latin also further complicated the spelling of English (to the point where it doesn’t even make any sense anymore.” F. ex in the Latin word “monosaccharide” the “cch” is pronounced like the “k” in “make.” Why? Because English doesn’t make any sense

Finally, as mentioned earlier, English have gained many words from other languages. Languages such as Swahili, Sanskrit, Japanese, Russian and Spanish have all made an impact on English with words such as “voodoo,” “guru,” “sumo, “mammoth” and “buccaneer.” 6 % of English words come from “other” languages, that is, languages other than German, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Norse or French.

To summarize, English has a long and complicated history, longer than the story I’ve told here, as the history of language prior to PIE is unknown. The language has been influenced by the migration of peoples, technological developments, invasions, imperialism and Shakespeare. All these factors have contributed to the modern chaos of a language we today call English.

You might be wondering how this ties into our greater theme of consciousness. Well, the truth is, subconsciously you know a lot of this from before. You may not have known that the word monosaccharid comes from Greek and that “give” and “take” came from Norse, but you will likely have noticed the difference between different words, and divided them into the long complicated ones (that generally are Latin and Greek) and the shorter ones, which come from Norse, Germanic and French. With this knowledge we can navigate our way through the English dictionary. When we see the word monosaccharide, we automatically realize that the “ch” is pronounced like a “k” instead of ch as in chapter. This is because you realize it is one of the long complicated words, and not the short words, so you apply different pronunciation rules to it. Sometimes you of course don’t realize the difference and so mispronounce it anyway, but everyone does that once in a while (except me, I never make a mistake, ever).