How The English Language Began

Athough more people speak Mandarin Chinese than English, our language is used in more countries than any other language in the world.. As an Indo-European language, it is related to most of the languages that are popular in Europe, India, and even Iceland.

The first people in Britain were the Picts – a small, dark people whose language, not having been written down, has largely disappeared, though some of it survives in the Gaelic languages spoken in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

However, Gaelic is mainly a Celtic language – these were the first people to who were not native to Britain to come to live there. The Celts were spread over Germany, France and Spain as well as Britain. Some words which remain are comb (a type of valley) and brock (a black and white striped animal)and many of the names of English towns are still Celtic.

:Celtic Words: Whiskey, ass, bin, flannel, clan, slogan

After The Celts the Anglos Saxons arrived, but there are few obvious traces of their language in English today.

The most important influence on English was the arrival of the Norsemen from countries such as Sweden, Denmark etc. They were known as The Vikings. At first they would invade England in small parties and steal women and livestock, but over time they moved from their own homeland and settled down – in fact in the 11th century England even had a King who was a Norseman and came from Denmark: King Canute. Their speech was Northern Germanic (the Celt’s was Southern Germanic) so there were some similarities.

Viking Words: they, their, them, scatter, scare, scrape, skirt, skin, sky

The 14th of October 1066 is a date all English people know: it was the last time England was invaded. The invader was Duke William of Normandy (Today Normandy is part of France), and the language of England changed rapidly.

Because the Normans ruled the country words to do with Government and Law and good manners are mostly from this source. The French being regarded as the best cooks in the world, it is interesting that this is when we started giving a different name to the meat from an animal than to the animal itself. While the English if they killed a pig to eat would just call it all “pig meat” the Normans came up with words like Pork, ham, bacon - all of which would be prepared and cooked differently.

At this period (known as the Middle Ages), most educated people were trilingual in England and spoke Latin (the language of education), French – the language of law and Government, and English. The peasants spoke only the language spoken in their area which was mainly Anglo Saxon with a few other words mixed in.

. From French: government, nation, parliament, attorney, judge, jury, sue, crime, escape, curfew, saint, pray, mercy, religion
From Latin: convention, animal, bonus, maximum, , exit, scientific, orthography, advantage, debt, violent,

In the 15th and 17th centuries two periods called The Enlightenment and The Renaissance swept all over Europe and England. These two periods were the birth of the scientific age and also changed the philosophy, education, art, music, law and society forever. People began to become interested again in the great writers of the Roman and Greek civilizations and so many new words entered English not only from these sources but from all over Europe

From Italian: opera, sonata, piano, balcony, corridor, ballot
From Dutch: buoy, freight, leak, pump, yacht

During this period England began to expand her trade routes until she eventually became the greatest colonial power in the world. But along with goods from other countries, words were also imported and entered the English language from many different sources.

It was also during this time that The Great Vowel Change happened: - although linguists don’t know exactly why, pronunciation of all vowels changed. This is why today English has no pure vowel sounds: in fact all long vowels are actually dipthongs (that means they have two sounds: A Yee, E Yee, I yee, O wu, U woo).

It is because of The Great Vowel Change and because of the import of so many words that so much of English spelling and grammar is puzzling to-day. This is also the reason that, when we read the works of, for example, Shakespeare, we sometimes think that the poetry doesn't rhyme. It did when he wrote it, but after the way we started to pronounce words changed, sometimes it doesn't today.

From Arabic: alcohol, algebra, assassin, sugar, zero, magazine chess,check

From American Indian: pony, squash, chipmunk, moose, raccoon, skunk, hickory, moccasin, totem,

From Spanish: alligator, cigar, cockroach, guitar, mosquito, , canyon, , patio, ranch