Modern English: The History Of The English Language

As borrowing words are inevitable if speakers of two different languages are in connection even for a shorter period of time, but a powerful and dominant impact is needed to induce grammatical changes. Old English pronouns hie, him and hiera were changed to they, them and their which are used nowadays. At first these were used only in the North but later in the Middle English period, it spread towards the South. Also, some conjunctions like until and though were taken from the Vikings. (Barber, Beal & Shaw, 2009, p. 143) However, these changes that took place in the Old English period were documented only in the Middle English period as the literary tradition was not conventional. (ibid, p.

“The History of the English Language”. http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/. Univ. of Duisburg Essen. April 2013. Web 4 Oct. 2013.

Old English dates back to approximately the year 700. If you go back even farther, Dutch, German and old English can all be traced back to the same source. French had a large impact on the English language during the medieval centuries primarily because England was ruled by the upper class that spoke French. English today has spread across the globe. People around the world will adapt English into their own cultural practices.

Late Modern English, a global language spoken around the world by over 2 billion people can trace its roots to the Germanic language introduced by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the 5th century. Before the arrival of the Anglo Saxons, many parts of Britain were bilingual Celtic-Latin speakers, although very few traces of Celtic remain in the English language – other than in place names, for example Avon and Ouse – which derive from the Celtic word for ‘water’, and words found more in local dialects than mainstream English – for example ‘broc’ for badger.

English is the main language of the Western world. Many English words originated from the Roman language of Latin. Simple English words such as ?architecture?, ?balm?, ?determine? and ?say? have been derived from Latin. Just flip through a dictionary and an endless amount of words have come from Latin. If the Ancient Romans didn?t have and create the language of Latin, we would probably lose half our vocabulary, because of the great role it has played in making the language of English. The

The English language has changed drastically over the years, but are we the reason that is has changed so much?  With the world constantly changing and evolving, the way we speak changes too; Many things such as technology, music, media, and new products have influenced the way that English is spoken today.

The English language has undergone many changes over the course of history. In the Middle Ages some of the major changes to the spoken and written language of the time were influenced by many cultural and industrial events. The biggest cultural event of the time was the Renaissance, the English language came to the forefront at this time finally becoming a widely accepted and used language in the world. In earlier times Latin and French were considered to be the languages of the educated masses, this was the first time that English began to be recognized as a language used by scholars. Another major cultural event was what is commonly referred to as the Golden Age in English Literature. Such famous authors as Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare,

It is made very clear that many things have changed in the English language since Early Modern English. The largest change in the language since then is the vast amount of vocabulary that has been added. Many words have come from the fact that Britain was a world wide empire during the 18th and 19th centuries making it so that words from all over the world naturally became part of the English language. All of the changes in language over time lead up to the English that is spoken by nearly 375 million people all over the world. Starting from the early 500’s, as far as experts could trace back, to now English has spread from one corner of Europe to around the world.

The English language developed over two thousand years and was first by spoken by Danish Vikings who invaded England to blend over

My love affair with Grammar was once an unstable, inconsistent one. It began in 12th grade, my senior year of high school. Mind you, it’s not that I met Grammar in high school; I knew him, well, for most of my life. I began reading at the age of three, and it can be rightly stated that Grammar and I began our relationship at that time. You see, I was a precocious early reader, who cracked the reading code, without formal instruction. I realized that there was a rhythm, cadence, and pattern to language, and as soon as I began writing manuscript letters, I began to practice placing words in their proper order.

English went on a long and vigorous adventure to have become the vast language that we know, speak and read today. In this essay, the differences and similarities between Old English and Modern English will be discussed by referring to an extract of Matthew 2: 4-10 from The Gospel of Saint Matthew in West Saxon: edited from the manuscripts by James Wilson Bright (1910:5-6). In the discussion there will be referred to the differences and similarities in orthography, spelling, vocabulary and syntax. Conclusions will also be made about the nature of these chances as they occurred in the adventure from Old English to Modern English.

In this research paper I will be talking for Old English, Middle English and Modern English Period, I am going to summarize their main characteristics such as: history, vocabulary, grammar and writing system. English literature begins before the fourteenth century. The unity of language consists on the one hand in the insistence of a language which remains from first to last fairly intelligible and on the other hand in the continuity of written records handed down generation to generation. These two conditions were not fulfilled in England until the days of Chaucer. The first contributor is Anglo-Saxon literature and the second is the literature imported from France

English was one of many languages spoken in Britain for four hundred years before it began to be called English. It was a language with no special status and without a special strong identity. In fact, the history of English started with the arrival of Anglo-Saxons in Britain in the 400s when Celtic languages were spoken by the inhabitants of the island. English shows some traces of Celtic, rising from the merge of dialects brought by the Germanic invaders. And after the Norman conquest of 1066, English spelling and vocabulary was affected by French and Latin, especially when French becomes the official language of England. But in the period of renaissance, Shakespeare and the Elizabeth era, the role of the church, of French and Latin turn down and English becomes the language of government and science. And when the first official government documents were written in English, a common sense of a

To learn the history of the English language, we must first go back in time to Great Britain at about 50 BCE. According to Alastair Kane, writer for Communicaid business English courses, people here during this time period spoke in what is known as Celtic, but eventually, Latin also became an influence on their language because of commerce between Great Britain and Rome. Kane also writes that Latin further shaped the language of Great Britain after it was invaded by the Romans under Emperor Claudius.

English can trace its roots back thousands of years, beginning with the emergence of the Germanic language. As the Germanic language involved into Old English and Middle English, it eventually became the modern version of English one knows today. Though, using the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), one can see that some parts of English can be traced to other languages. Languages like Spanish and French have often loaned and influenced English, however, even distant languages like Japanese have left their mark on the growth of English. Within the last two centuries, dozens of words have entered the English language due to the growing interest and trade with Japan. During that time, some of these words have adopted new English meanings, with some even entering slang language. Additionally, the OED lists when exactly these words with introduced into English and their frequency in the language today. By looking at the types of words and the OED, one can see how Japanese has influenced English and the usefulness of the OED at discovering the etymology of words.