The Development of English
Have you ever wondered where our language comes from? Early English may bring to mind images of Shakespeare, his speech peppered with archaic words. However, English really began hundreds of years earlier – in fact, just after the fall of the Roman Empire (“The Anglo-Saxons”). English has developed over hundreds of years, and continues to do so today.
To make things easier for study, the different stages of the English language are organized into Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Old English began developing as a language in the 6th century. Middle English developed from Old English more than four hundred years later and is more intelligible to English speakers now. The period of Modern English began in the late 1400s and continues till this day (“What Are the Origins of the English Language?”).
The Old English period, sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon period, began when German tribes “made their way over to Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire” from the areas of Angeln and Saxony, thus the name (“The Anglo-Saxons”). Instead of speaking the language of the land’s former occupants, the Romans, they used “their own [Germanic] tongue and its runic script,” forming the beginning of English (“Ages of English Timeline”).
During the start of this period, Augustine, a Roman theologian, sent Christian missionaries to Britain, who brought “a huge Latin vocabulary” with them, affecting the German settlers’ speech (“Augustine” and “Ages of English Timeline”). Some hundred years later in the year 787, the Viking invasions began. It was then that “the language of the Danes,” Old Norse, entered English (“Ages of English Timeline” and “Old Norse”). Place names in England that end in suffixes such as -by, -thorpe, and –thwaite exhibit the impact the Vikings left. In addition, names ending with –son and words such as both, same, and give became part of the English language in that era (“Ages of English Timeline”).
Other words from the Old English period, such as and, ðæt (that), æfter (after), and fæs (fast), are still in use today, although the last three words had different spellings in the past. Words such as beran (bear), dyde (did), and hālig (holy) were slightly changed. Works such as “Beowulf” and “The Wanderer” still exist from this period (“Old English Online”). They tell us what the language was like at the time and give clues about how it changed.
When the Viking invasions ended, one lone survivor of the four kingdoms of Britain remained, a place called Wessen, and “England… [was] united under one king Eadred” (“The Anglo-Saxons”). This development, and the start of the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror, marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon period in 1066, and the beginning of the Middle English period.
Now, the “auxiliary verbs” had and shall made their entrance into English (“Ages of English Timeline”). In addition, English was evolving. Instead of being “a ‘synthetic’ language” as in old English, using specific word endings and having “free word order,” specific word structure began to be used (“Old English Online”).
“Norman scribes,” who were French descendants of the Vikings, affected English by using their own spelling variations, as Old English letters such as thorn (þ) and wynn (Ƿ) faded away (“Ages of English Timeline”). Some years later, at the dawn of the 13th century, English became a more dominant language and was used in Parliament, although it continued to be affected by Latin, which was used for education and in church, and started to experience an impact from French, which was used for law (“Ages of English Timeline”). This continued until 1400.
The Modern English period is divided into two parts: Early and Present-Day. It began with the invention of the printing press in 1476. This spread literacy due the cost of printing being less than that of copying manuscripts (“The Printing Press”). Next, “the Great Vowel Shift eventually... [took] place” (“Chronology of Events in the History of the English Language”). The Great Vowel Shift, according to Dr. K. Wheeler of Carson-Newman University, was “a mysterious linguistic phenomena in which, over the course of generations, various vowels slide upwards and backwards in the throats of English speakers” (“The Great Vowel Shift”). In other words, the sounds of different vowels changed. Also, the stability of spelling and grammar increased (“Ages of English Timeline”). Spelling at the time was only slightly different from standard writing now. Grammar was similar, but -eth endings on verbs were still present, and double negatives were used until the 1700s (“Grammar in Early Modern English”).
When the Renaissance commenced in 1500, writers were “ransacking more than 50 languages from around the globe” to create new words for their inventions, such as abbey, chancellor, conversation, grammar, lettuce, portcullis, and prison (“Ages of English Timeline”). Shakespeare wrote during this time. One hundred years later, as the Present-Day Modern English period approached, even more words were borrowed as the result of colonization and immigration, such as cent, cookie, espresso, kosher, lasso, moccasin, and spiel. After another 100 years, in the 1700s, people in both Britain and the new nation of America began making efforts to standardize the language (“Ages of English Timeline”). The Universal Etymological English Dictionary and the Short Introduction to English Grammar were written for that cause, and education reflected those changes (Ages of English Timeline”).
Today, in the 21st century, our language is still evolving. New words to describe technology, discoveries, and ideas are popping up almost constantly. Although this change seems almost insignificant, we never know how it will affect the language of generations to come.