A language descended from Old German and Latin, as well as a hodge-podge of other languages. Has the largest vocabulary of any human language. Written using the Roman alphabet. Known for inconsistent spelling, pronunciation, and verb conjugations, all of which are due to its mongrel origins.

Spoken in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, among other places. Many places have widely divergent dialects of English.

The English Language

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
When couldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot - would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
If the singular is this and plural is these,
Why shouldn't the plural of kiss be nicknamed kese?

Then one may be that, and three may be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose;
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So our English, I think you will all agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead; it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose
-- Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language?
Man alive, I'd learned to speak it when I was five,

And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'till the day I die.
-unknown
While all languages naturally change over time, and English is no exception, some dramatic changes have been induced or encouraged by major historical events as well. The following table presents some of the major influences and developments in the history of English. The first section presents some of the major influences and developments in the external history of English- that is, factors such as conquest of English speakers by speakers of other languages; intellectual attitudes towards languages; social, religious, and political changes, and so on, which affect how a language changes. English has been influence by other languages throughout its development and has borrowed a great many vocabulary items, samples of which are listed in parentheses following the events that started the new wave of borrowing. The secone section mentions some of the major landmarks in the internal history of English- that is, the actual changes in the language itself which have been influenced by outside events.


EXTERNAL HISTORY

Pre English Stage:

Dates: ??? B.C.
Events: Settlement of British Isles by Celts
Language Influence: Celtic--In London, Dover, Avon, Cornwall

Dates: 55 B.C.
Events: Beginning of Roman Raids
Language Influence: Latin

Dates: 43 A.D.
Events: Roman occupation of 'Brittania'
Language influence: Latin

Dates: Early 5th century
Events: Romans leave British Isles

Dates: 449 A.D.
Events: Germanic tribes defeat the Celts
Language Influence: Germanic

Dates: ca. 600 A.D.
Events: England is converted to Christianity. (borrowings: abbot, altar, cap, chalice, hymn, relic, sock, beet, pear, cook, rue, school, verse.)
Language Influence: Latin


Old English Stage (450-1100)

Dates: ca. 750 A.D.
Events: Beowulf writings were composed. (only extant manuscript written ca. 1000)

Dates: 9th-11th century
Events: Invasions by Scandinavians (borrowings: birth, sky, trust, take, skirt, disk, dike; simplified pronoun system)
Language Influence: Scandinavian

Date: 1066 A.D.
Events: Battle of Hastings- Norman Conquest (borrowings: court, battle, nation, enemy, crime, justice, beef, pork, veal, mutton, charity, miracle.)
Language Influence: French


Middle English Stage (1100-1450)

Dates: ca. 1200 A.D.
Events: Normandy and England are separated

Dates: 13th-14th centuries
Events: Growing sense of Englishness

Dates: 1340-1450
Events: Chaucer

Dates: 1337-1450
Events: Hundred Year's War


Early Modern English Stage (1450-1700)

Dates: 1476
Events: First English book is published; spelling is eventually standardized

Dates: 1564-1616
Events: Shakespeare (borrowings: anachronism, allusion, atmosphere, capsule, dexterity, halo, agile, external, insane, adapt, erupt, exist, extinguish)
Language Influence: Latin and Greek


Modern English (1700-present)

Dates: 16th-19th centuries
Events: Imperialism Language Influence: Various Languages (Indian, Native American, African, etc.)

Dates: 19th-20th centuries
Events: Development of American English. Scientific and Industrial Revolution
Language Influence: Technical Vocabularies



INTERNAL HISTORY

Era: Proto-European to Germanic
Events: Grimm's Law

Era: Old English to Middle English
Events: Loss of /X/, Adoption of /zh/, Allophonic variants {f}/{v}, {th}/{ð}, {s}/{z}, {ng}/{n} become phonemic
Vowel reduction and subsequent loss of final schwa in unstressed syllable lead to loss of case endings, more rigid word order, greater use of prepositions.

Era: Middle English to Early Modern English (1300-1600)
Events: Great Vowel Shift, Simplification of some initial consonant sequences: /kn/ > /n/ (knee), /hl/ > /l/ (hlaf > loaf); /hr/ > /r/ (hring > ring); /wr/ > /r/ ( wrong).



From The Language Files from the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University.

The story of English began in the British Isles, which were inhabited by the Celtic peoples, whose language was Gaelic. Their island was rich in arable land and natural mineral resources, so as a result they found themselves the target of frequent invasions. 55 B.C. saw the Celts get invaded by the Romans under Gaius Julius Caesar, and as a result, a few Roman words entered into their language.

When the Roman invaders finally left in 410 A.D., the Celts were immediately besieged by an exodus of Germanic peoples, who had begun moving westward into the British Isles and north to Scandinavia. These tribes included the Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and Frisians, whose arrival prompted many Celts to flee even further westward into the area dubbed the “Celtic fringe”. While the Angles, native to the German state now known as Schleswig-Holstein, were the most obscure of all these tribes, the word “English” is derived from “Anglish”, which in turn comes from the Angles.

In 597 A.D., St. Augustine transformed the language and its influence when he converted King Ethelbert of Kent to Christianity. This resulted in the spread of literacy and foreign ideas in English society, along with the introduction of several Latin words, phrases, and concepts into the language, as well as some Hebrew and Greek. 750 A.D. saw a new series of invasions, this time by the Vikings, whose advances were eventually halted in 878 with the creation of the Danelaw. This line divided England between the Danes in the north and the English in the south, an arrangement which led to the peaceful co-habitation of the two groups for several generations. Their harmony was greatly assisted by the fact that their lanagues were very similar to one another, since they had both descended from the influx of Germanic tribes in 410 A.D.

There were some differences, though, and after many generations the two languages amalgamated as a matter of convenience. Evidence of this Scandinavian influence on English can be seen in pronouns such as “them” and “they”, which are of Scandinavian origin.

The next invasion came in 1066 by the Normans, who were of Scandinavian lineage, but spoke a rural dialect of French. These Normans constitued the upper-class minority of English society, and their language became the working language of English institutions, such as the government, and the legal system. Over 10 000 English words were absorbed from the Normans, mostly government words like “parliament” or “bureaucracy”, as well as words for items favoured by the wealthy, including foods such as “mutton” or “bacon”. Although French enjoyed the advantage of being the language of the privileged class, this was precisely why the language failed to gain a strong following in England: English was already well-established among the far greater number of people. In addition, the Normans themselves catalysed their adoption of English by intermarrying almost immediately upon their arrival. Eventually, the Normans grew tired of being mocked by Parisians for their rural—and thus inferior—dialect of French, and assimilated themselves into English culture. By this time, only around 4 500 original Anglo-Saxon words remained in the language, but these were very important and common words, like “he”, “love”, and “or”.

Throughout the course of these invasions, the language had been transformed from an obscure Germanic dialect, enriched by Latin, Danish, and French, into a language which very closely resembles the English spoken throughout the world today. As a result of its mixed heritage, English is one of the richest languages in use today: the English language contains over 300,000 words, while its German predecessor has only 185,000 words, and French has less than 100,000—including franglais slang such as “le tank top”.

When English first arrived in the British Isles via the immigration of a number of obscure Germanic tribes, its chances of becoming a world language were a million to one. English is the primary language of futuristic endeavours such as the technology sector, and it is spoken by hundreds of millions of people as a second language. English has transformed the world, yet it has also been transformed by the world, as demonstrated by the evolution of a Germanic dialect to Old and then Middle English, which spread through the world as a result of a favourable social climate to become the world’s foremost language and the lexicon for the future.

Aneurin sighs. I am not a linguist but I do know some history. Unfortunately baritalia's account above is well, just plain wrong in certain respects and skates over some of the more curious features of the origins of the English language.

On the nature of the language spoken by the inhabitants of Britain

The Celtic inhabitants of the Britain Isles spoke Insular Celtic of which there are two variants, the Goidelic and the Brythonic. Scholars still debate which one came first, and how and when the Insular Celtic split into its two components but of one thing we can be certain; the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain did not speak 'Gaelic', (which in any case is the name given to the language that developed from Goidelic in the post-Roman period), they spoke Brythonic.

Gaius Julius Caesar's expeditions to Britain in 54 and 55 BC were of the nature of exploratory raids (no matter what he himself claimed); this brought Britain into contact with Rome, but the real deal began with the actual Roman conquest of Britain which was the work of the emperor Claudius in the year 43 AD a century later.

On how the English first came to Britain

Britain was not 'immediately assaulted' by Germanic insurgents after the year 410. After defeating a 'Saxon' attack in 408 a generation passed before Germanic attacks on Britain re-commenced in the mid fifth century. The problems which the British had at the beginning of the fifth century were caused by Pictish and 'Scottish' (i.e Irish) raids which is why they hired the Germanic mercenaries in the first place. It was the revolt of these mercenaries that kicked off the actual 'English settlement' of Britain. (See Sub-Roman Britain and in particular the Revolt of the Saxon Federates)

It is also worth noting that there is clear evidence of Germanic settlement within Britain before 410, since the use of Germanic troops within the Roman Army became exceedingly common in the fourth century. There were certainly Germanic settlers in the Thames Valley (see Gewissae) and hence early forms of 'English' may well have been spoken in Britain long before the fifth century began.

On the nature of the English settlement

The Angles were of course not necessarily any more or less obscure than any other Germanic tribe that was moving into the Western Roman Empire; they just moved into a more peripheral part of the Empire. More importantly, unlike other tribes such as the Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals they were pagan and illiterate and comparatively un-Romanized. Whereas the Franks and Ostrogoths saw themselves as re-creating and defending the virtues of a Roman civilisation undermined by weak and incompetent rulers, the Angles were basically piratical raiders after loot and land.

This is important because whereas the Franks (for example) merged into the Gallo-Roman culture they ruled and ended up speaking a Latin based language that became known as French, the Angles remained essentially aloof from Roman culture and retained their Germanic language.

On the conversion of the English to Christianity

Firstly the Augustine mission to England was only really successful in converting Kent and East Anglia. (And Raedwald of East Anglia rather hedged his bets by retaining pagan worship as well.) The Augustinian mission to Northumbria failed when Edwin was killed before Christianity could take root. Most of the north of what later became England was evangelized from Ireland via Iona and thus developed a slightly different brand of Christianity and developed what has sometimes been described as a 'Hiberno-Saxon' culture.

For a second thing the conversion of England to Christianity was a long drawn out affair and it is not until the end of the seventh century that England could really be described as 'Christian'. (See the Foundation of the English Church for further details.)

Regarding Latin loanwords and their adoption into English

In total approximately 450 Old English words were borrowed from Latin but very few of these arose as a result of the adoption of Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons or English if you prefer, were of Germanic origin, and the Germanic tribes had been in close contact with the Roman Empire since the first century AD. There was an active trading relationship between the Roman Empire and the various tribes of Germania and in the later empire much of the Imperial Roman Army was made up of Germanic recruits and mercenaries.

Unsurprisingly therefore Germanic languages incorporated a number of Latin derived loanwords which were later adopted into Old English. Or to put it another way, Old English already included a number of Latin loanwords well before they had even heard of Augustine the Lesser; examples are words such as cealc for chalk, from Latin calx meaning lime ,win for wine, from the Latin vinum.

The actual Latin/Greek imports that arose as a result of Christianity were limited to a very few words of specifically religious significance such as apostol (apostle) and munuc (monk). Indeed one of the defining characteristics of Old English is how little Latin was borrowed, as the English appear to have preferred to construct their own new words (for example tungolcræft, literally 'star-craft' for astronomy, and rimcræft or 'number-craft', for arithmetic) rather than adopt a Latin loanword.

The major impact of Christianity on the English language was that it brought with it literacy, at least for the select few, and the Latin alphabet. Which of course meant that Old English could now become a written as well as a spoken language.

On the nature of Old English

And of course it should be pointed out that there were clear and distinct Mercian, West Saxon and Northumbrian dialects of Old English. It is the so called 'West Saxon' dialect which predominates and is most commonly treated as being Old English, because of the late ninth century political dominance of the kingdom of Wessex. Partly due to the efforts of Alfred the Great the West Saxon dialect became the accepted standard for prose writing and is what largely survives to this day.

Old English is of course almost completely unintelligible to the modern English speaker, and is effectively a foreign language, it apparently differs far more from Modern English than does Ancient Greek from modern Greek. Its existence was largely ignored for centuries and it wasn't until the mid 1900s that any serious study of the language began and people began translating Old English works into Modern English and actually took notice of the fact that there was actually an English culture that predated the Normans.

On the relationship between the Danish and the English

The first recorded Viking contact with Britain was in the 790s not the 750s when they struck Lindisfarne; widespread Viking settlement within England did not really start until the arrival of the Viking 'Great Army' led by Ivarr the Boneless in 846. Now Ivarr the Boneless and his ilk were seen by the native English as the manifestation of the devil himself. (Which of course, rather ironically is exactly how the English themselves had earlier been viewed by the native British.) They were a bunch of well-organised and aggressive thugs bent on plunder and worse and English ecceslesiasts in particular viewed their presence in England with horror.

Whereas a temporary respite was established after the Treaty of Wedmore in 878, the Danes later returned with a vengeance in the late tenth century. Thus king Aethelred ordered the killing of every Dane in England in the St. Brice's day Massacre in 1002 and the Danish king Swein Forkbeard retaliated in kind by slaughtering the inhabitants of various towns that he happened across. It would therefore be better to regard the Danes and English as mortal enemies that were forced by circumstances to live in close proximity. It is entirely possible that completely separate Danish and English kingdoms might have developed within Britain (since nothing is inevitable in history) although as we know events conspired to produce a different result.

As it is the presence of two different but mutually intelligible Germanic languages in close proximity that appears to have been the cause of the 'great grammar shift', when the English language ceased to use inflection to convey meaning. No one quite knows why this happened but it is suggested that English made itself simpler in order to be understood by the Danes, with whom the English were obliged to trade and consort with due to their close proximity.

On the transformation that took place as a result of the Norman Conquest

The one thing that did unite the respective Danish and English populations of Britain was their mutual opposition to the idea of being ruled by the French speaking Normans. (Indeed it is worth noting that it was in the more Danish areas of England that the new Norman masters of England experienced the strongest challenge to their rule.)

The Normans to state the obvious, spoke French and in common with most conquerors viewed the conquered population of England with a certain amount of disdain. They took very little interest in the culture of the conquered English, which is the main reason why so little Anglo-Saxon cultural material survives. Apart from Boewulf, which is really an Old English version of a Scandinavian poem in any case, and the work of Caedmon (who was British) there isn't really a great deal left. (Incidentally it is this general lack of any genuine Old English mythic material that prompted a certain JRR Tolkien (a professor of Anglo-Saxon) to write the Lord of the Rings in the first place, and thus provide the English with their missing corpus of myth.)

The new Norman ruling class of England tended to marry each other, or nice French speaking girls from the other side of the channel; there was very little if any intermarriage with the natives. (Stories of Norman barons marrying 'Saxon heiresses' are 18th and 19th century myths, invented at a time when it became fashionable for the aristocracy to flaunt imagined 'German' origins. (The kings of the House of Hanover were most certainly German you see.)

On the status of the English Language after the Norman Conquest

It has been forgotten by many, most notably the English themselves, that for three centuries after the Norman Conquest, England was ruled by a ruling class that spoke French. As Matthew of Paris, writing in the mid thirteenth century, explained "Whoever was unable to speak French was considered a vile and contemptible person by the common people". Or as the chronicler Robert of Gloucester wrote in around the year 1300, (in French naturally) that "unless a man knows French, he is thought little of", adding that "I reckon that there are no countries in the whole world that do not keep to their own speech, except England only".

In the 1320s, Ranulph Higden a monk from St Werburgh's Abbey in Chester, wrote a Latin universal history under the title of Polychronicon and included a passage on the state of contemporary education in England, stating that;

children in school, contrary to the usage and custom of all other nations, are compelled to abandon their own language and carry on their lessons and their affairs in French, and have done so since the Normans first came to England. Also the children of gentlemen are taught to speak French from the time they are rocked in their cradle and learn to speak and play with a child's trinket, and rustic men will make themselves like gentlemen and seek with great industry to speak French to be more highly thought of.

Thus by the early fourteenth century the English language appeared to be on the verge of irrelevance if not extinction. However in the 1370s a John of Trevisa from Cornwall, translated Higden's Polychronicon into the English of his time, and added the remark that;

in the year of our lord one thousand three hundred and eighty-five .... children in all the grammar schools of England are leaving French, and are construing and learning in English. Similarly, noble men have now largely abandoned teaching their children French.

(Note that this is actually a translation of John's text into Modern English; which is preferable since otherwise the modern reader would be struggling with words like 'habbeþ' and 'yleft'.)

This change of heart by the nobility of England occurred sometime around the middle of the century at the time of the Black Plague, and probably had something to do with changes in social attitudes brought about by the Hundred Years War. Since members of the English ruling class now habitually spent a significant proportion of their life killing Frenchmen, it perhaps seemed somewhat inappropriate to continue to embrace their linguistic culture.

In any event, in the year 1363, and for the first time in history, a Lord Chancellor stood up and announced the opening of a parliamentary session in English, although we have to wait until the year 1399 when Henry IV assumed the throne to find the first truly English speaking king (Henry's speech in front of parliament in which he claimed the throne was rendered in English).

The Lancastrian kings of the early fifteenth century were the first to use English for official court documents, thus giving rise to what is known as Chancery English. And since most of the clerks employed in the Chancery came from London and the East Midlands it is these dialects that became 'standard English' and developed into what we now think of as the English language.

On the domination of the English Language

There is nothing really surprising about the domination of the English Language. Linguistic dominance generally follows political dominance; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the British Empire spread itself across the globe into every continent. One particular set of English speaking colonists in North America invented their own nation and came to regard themselves as more English than the English themselves and the true guardians of linguistic purity. (Which is why so many 'Americanisms' are really just anachronistic survivals of 18th century linguistic usage.)

Since this United States of America now drives the most powerful cultural dissemination machine ever seen on this planet it is not surprising that the English language is now seen as the lingua franca even though there are more native Mandarin and Hindi speakers around.

If the French or Spanish had been quicker off the mark in North America this article would likely have been written in a different language.


SOURCES

  • Edward Moore The Influence of Latin on Old English http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/1001Moore.htm
  • The sources of English words http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/2262/Vocab/D.htm
  • The English Language http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/1122/OEHIST.htm
  • Melvyn Bragg The Adventure of English (Sceptre, 2004)
  • Robert McCrum, William Cran, Robert MacNeil The Story of English (Guild Publishing London, 1987)

English is a barbarian language

I remember me and my sister would take turns abusing the wild animal (dog) that was kept hostage in our house. We did this because we saw mom and dad do this. Thus my sister and I concluded this is what we must do to survive. When I did something wrong my parents hit me. As a result at an early age I learned violence. Now when someone wrongs me I hit them. Because that is how I was programed to respond to disagreeable circumstance.

There is a science that takes place when one hits a child. To understand that science one has to understand mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are specific parts of the human brain that allow humans to mimic the functions of their environment. This is how humans learn. Mirror neurons cannot be shut off. Human are constantly mimicking everything around them. So when one hits a child one programs said child to hit things. What happens when one hits a child is one programs a barbarian.

Part Two

Americans are barbarians.  English is a barbarian language. Americans specialize in hitting things. “Let’s hit the road is said”, or “let’s hit the club”. Americans enslave themselves. When referring to members of their own body Americans say things like “my hand” when in other languages such as Spanish it is said “the hand”. Island native when referring to members of their own body say what is the English equivalent “our hand”.  Not surprising Americans speak this way belonging to a nation built on slavery. Slavery is a barbarian tool. If I think of humans as computers and English as a computer programing language, English is an outdated programing language that no one should ever use. Consider the phrase “ fuck you”. This phrase is so ambiguous that no one should ever use it. Despite this it remains a very common phrase (this is symbolic of Americans (failure to evolve). It is common place to say this as an insult or a joke. However no matter the intended meaning somewhere in the subconscious mind this is translated as I want to have sex with you. Because the word fuck is equivocal, one of Its meanings being sex. Now consider the phrase “hit him up”. It is common place to say this when communication is needed betwixt persons. However no matter what the intended meaning somewhere in the subconscious mind this phrase is translated literally as hit him, or beat him up. Because the word hit is equivocal, one of its meanings being destructive physical contact. Its ambiguous phrases such as these that contribute to a hyper sexual, hyper violent group of people. Hyper sexuality and hyper violence are barbarian traits.

Ask yourself what kind of “civilization” do I live in where the act of fallatio is publicly glorified? Fallatio is a barbarian activity. To glorify fallatio is to glorify barbarianism. By the way, men, that white stuff coming out of your dick is brain matter, spinal fluid and blood. It takes months to replace that. It’s a wonder why there is an education problem in the states when pornography is on public display everywhere and American males learn to blow their brains out at ages as early as eight years old. Ask yourself, what kind of “civilization” do I live in where rape is a normal occurrence. A woman should be able to walk around naked and any male that’s around her not have any thoughts of raping her or fornicating with her. Americans cannot do this (hell your average American male can’t even do this with a woman’s clothes on). This is because Americans shun the human condition. This is reflected in the fact that there are no nude beaches in America and the great lengths taken to separate males from females.

America is a clan of barbarians. What is the point of having a civilization if the people can’t act civil. It is not the nature of humans to be barbarians. Like swichfoot’s “meant to live” humans are meant to live for so much more. Americans are barbarians because they are programed to be so at birth. That programing being the English language its self! It’s a catch 22 because English is the only language the overwhelming majority of Americans know how to speak. The solution I offer to cure Americans Barbarian problem is simple, stop speaking English.

Some other notes

Did you know that In Hebrew there are no curse words? If you wanted to tell somebody to go fuck themselves, the English Hebrew equivalent the phrase would be go ride a donkey. Now think about how the English language specializes in putting people down.

I was beat as kid growing up. I was told this was to somehow discipline me and keep me out of trouble. I have been arrested multiple times and I am the most mischievous person I know. So tell me what did all those ass whooping do?

Some other other notes

I edited this node to fix spelling errors. Also it has been brought to my attention that there are curese words in Hebrew, and there are nude beaches in America. Excuse the misinformation.

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