History of the English Language

1. History of the English Language Tracing the development of our (largely stolen) magnificent language! This is a quickie replacement presentation, so I’m afraid it’s really straightforward and not animated. :p

2. The Forms of English The people who decide these things were nice and made it easy to remember! • Old English • Middle English • Modern English • Early Modern English • Modern English

3. Before English • Long, long ago, the native people of the British Isles were sitting around, minding their own business, worshipping their own gods, and only occasionally sacrificing people. All around, they were pretty decent. • They spoke several languages. The most common were Celtic and Gaelic.

4. Before English • THEN, around 55 BC, the Romans arrived! • They kicked everyone’s fannies and took over. Very rude. • The Romans spoke Latin. They expected the locals to learn Latin, too. • So most Britons knew a local language, such as Celtic, but also learned Latin.

5. Old English • Eventually, the Roman Empire fell to a lot of German invaders. This was around 430-470 AD. • They were called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. • This is where we get the word “Anglo-Saxon,” which refers to people of British/Germanic descent. • These Germans came in and took over the Britons.

6. Old English • The Britons and the Angles had a lot more trouble communicating. • Over time, they started to just…squish the local languages and the Old German together. • The “squishing” of Celtic, Gaelic, and Old German created a new language – the language of the Angles, oooorrrr…

7. Old English • ENGLISH! (Angles = Engles = English!) • This early English doesn’t look or sound much like modern English. • For a long time, in fact, no one wrote in English. It was the Roman Catholic church that started to write down English, and made up a lot of the spelling. • People also adopted a lot of Latin words and squished them into English.

8. Old English Examples

9. Old English Letters The letters “K,” “Q,” and “Z” were not used. The letter “C” covered “K” and “Q” because only “S” made the ssss sound.

10. Old English Today • Old English is a dead language – no one speaks it as a first language anymore. • It survives largely as basic English words. • Wulf • Hus • Hors • Treo • Scēp • Modor • Fæder

11. Beowulf • Most of the surviving texts we have in Old English are poems. • The most famous example is the epic poem Beowulf. • An epic poem tells a long, involved story, usually with some action in it. • Beowulf is full of action!

12. Beowulf

13. The Opening of Beowulf • Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,þeodcyninga, þrymgefrunon,huðaæþelingasellenfremedon.Oft ScyldScefingsceaþenaþreatum,monegummægþum, meodosetlaofteah,egsodeeorlas. Syððanærestwearðfeasceaftfunden, he þæsfrofregebad,weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndumþah,oðþæt him æghwylcþaraymbsittendraoferhronradehyranscolde,gombangyldan. þætwæs god cyning!

14. WHAT did I just listen to?! • Listen! We of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore,of those clan-kings, heard of their glory,how those nobles performed courageous deeds.Often Scyld, Scef's son, from enemy hostsfrom many peoples seized mead-benches;and terrorised the fearsome Heruli after first he wasfound helpless and destitute, he then knew recompense for that,he waxed under the clouds, throve in honours,until to him each of the bordering tribesbeyond the whale-road had to submit,and yield tribute. That was a good king!

15. Middle English • Eventually, the Anglo-Saxons were beaten up, too..by a group of Vikings led by “William the Conqueror” in 1066. • William is also known as “William the First” of England, and is considered the first king of most of England. • The Vikings spoke Norman French.

16. Middle English • So now we have people in charge who speak French, and the locals who work for them (called “serfs,” which is a pretty word for “slaves”) who speak Old English. • Eventually, the two languages started to overlap and merge. English adopted a LOT of French vocabulary, but didn’t pronounce the words properly. The Britons pronounced all these new French words like they were German.

17. Middle English • The combining of Old English with Norman French gradually created a new language: Middle English. • Middle English looks a lot more like modern English, but the pronunciation is still deeper in the throat, like German. • We get a lot of our weird spelling from Middle English, because we stopped pronouncing things like the final (and now silent) “e.”

18. Middle English Examples

19. Geoffrey Chaucer • The most famous author in Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer. • Chaucer wrote loads and loads of poems. A lot of them are pretty dirty. *ahem* • His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales. It’s the story of a group of people on a long trip who tell stories to entertain each other. The stories each person tells fits his or her personality soooo…some of them are sweet, some are religious, some funny, etc.

20. The Canterbury Tales

21. The Canterbury Tales • Whan that Aprill with his shouressooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swichlicourOf which vertuengendred is the flour,WhanZephirus eek with his sweetebreethInspired hath in every holt and heethThe tendrecroppes, and the yongesonneHath in the Ram his halve coursyronne,And smalefowelesmakenmelodye,That slepen al the nyght with open ye(so priketh hem Nature in hircorages),Thannelongen folk to goon on pilgrimages,And palmeres for to sekenstraungestrondes,To fernehalwes, kowthe in sondrylondes;And specially from every shires endeOf Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,The hoolyblisfulmartir for to seke,That hem hath holpenwhan that they were seeke.

22. Early Modern English • Around the 15th century (1400s), the way English is pronounced underwent a fairly sudden change. • This is called the “Great Vowel Shift” and took place over two centuries. • In this time, English stopped being pronounced like German. Vowels moved from the throat to the nasal cavity. • Scholars can’t seem to agree on WHY this happened!

23. EME: The Great Vowel Shift • Lyf becomes Life • Five (Feef) becomes Five (five) • Stan becomes Stone • Herte becomes heart • Mine (meen) becomes mine • So even though we can read things like The Canterbury Tales, the pronunciations are completely different than we’d expect!

24. EME: Spelling • During this time, English spelling was not standardized. • You spelled words however they sounded. • So, since vowels were changing, one word could be spelled many different ways. • “Not,” for example, could be spelled “not” or “nat,” and also pronounced both ways.

25. EME: Shakespeare • The most famous author of Early Modern English is William Shakespeare. • He wrote about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and many poems. • He spelled his own last name at least 9 different ways. I told you spelling was just made up! • His writings contain around 34,000 different words.

26. EME: Shakespeare • There are many English words that first appear in Shakespeare. He appears to have just made up a lot of them! • Eyeball, bedroom, leapfrog, monumental, puking, countless, laughable, excellent, fretful, obscure, assassination, hot-blooded, dislocate, aggravate, fragrant, gloomy, lonely, the list goes on.

27. Modern English • This is sometimes called “Late Modern English” and covers the truly modern versions of English. • Modern English began in the 1800s, during the industrial revolution. • Thousands of words related to factories, trains, cars, computers, etc, have been added to the language since that time.

28. Modern English • Some scholars identify different “forms” of Modern English: • British English (spoken in the United Kingdom and former countries of the UK, such as India) • American English (spoken in North America, including the US and Canada) • Australian English (spoken in Australia and New Zealand)

29. Modern English • Today, English is the 2nd most popular “mother tongue” in the world (after Chinese and tied with Spanish). • It is the most common “additional” language in the world, and is a required course in many countries such as China and Japan. • English is the #1 language on the internet. • It is also the #1 business language.

30. Books in English • The following books have sold the most copies in English: • The Bible (led by the King James version) • The collected works of Agatha Christie (a British mystery author) • The collected works of JK Rowling (author of Harry Potter)

31. Where Our Words Come From

32. English Spelling • English spelling rules are a mess! Why? • It is made up of many different languages • We stopped pronouncing final e’s on words, but didn’t stop writing them. • The Great Vowel Shift led to vowels being pronounced in many different ways. • Until the 1800s, spelling was more or less made up.

33. Some Examples • Silent B: comb, tomb, climb • Silent G: gnome, gnaw, sign • Silent K: knight, knife, know • Silent N: column, hymn • Silent L: palm, salmon, yolk • Silent H: hour, honor, honest • Homophones: (our, hour), (right, write, rite, wright), etc. • Ough: tough, cough, plough, dough

34. More Examples! • Weird plurals: feet, moose, mice, women, men, geese, octopi • English vs. American spelling: (honour, honor), (colour, color), (theatre, theater), (advise, advice) • English vs. American vocabulary: (jumper, sweater), (cell, mobile), (flat, apartment), (ground floor, first floor/first floor, second floor)