History of the English Language

A Brief Overview
 Old English
 Circa 410 – 1100 A.D.
 Middle English
 1100A.D. – 1500 A.D.
 Early Modern English
 15oo A.D. – 1650 A.D.
 Modern English
 1650 A.D. - present
The Celts and The Romans
 Largest tribe = Brythons, hence Britain.
 Religion = Animism (pagan): saw spirit in all things;
priests were called Druids.
 Very little of their Celtic language influenced the
development of English, though place names
remained visible: -ton (farmstead, hamlet); -ham
(homestead, meadow); -ley (wood); -worth
(enclosure); -feld (open country); -ing (people of).
 Julius Caesar's invasion/occupation begins 55 A.D.
 Roman occupation brings peace and infrastructure to
clannish island
 Celts in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland maintain
resistance.
 Latin language becomes standard during period.
 Christianity is introduced, though will take centuries
of fits and starts to dominate.
410 A.D – 1100 A.D.
 Romano-Celts resisted Anglo Saxon invaders (One
king, Artur, won a key battle at Mont Badon in 450 and
entered into legend). Celts = OE wealh, or foreigners.
 Saint Augustine converts King Aethelbert (Kent) to
Christianity in 597, becomes first Archbishop of
Canterbury.
 Anglo Saxon England eventually forms into seven
dominant kingdoms, the Heptarchy: Northumbria,
Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Kent.
 Anglo Saxons came to be called the Engles, or German
tribes, becomes the English.
 Vikings were sea-faring (explorers, traders, and warriors)
Scandinavians, most active during the 8th through 11th centuries.
 Oddly enough, the Anglo-Saxon (and Jute) heritage was not
much different from the Vikings’: they, too, were Northern
Germanic invaders.
 However, when the Viking raids began around 787, the AngloSaxons were different culturally from the Viking invaders
 The Anglo Saxon “Heroic Code” develops at this time.
 The Old English Language of this time features many
dialects competing for dominance (Wessex dialect
becomes “literary standard”).
 Alfred the Great (ruled from approx. 871-899 A.D.) was one
of the first Anglo-Saxon kings to push Vikings back; in fact,
he was one of the first kings to begin consolidating power,
unifying several of the separate Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and
establishing the “Danelaw,” a truce with the Vikings.
 By @ 950 Britain is unified under a single king, Edgar.
 Caedmon’s Hymn, from the 7th century, is the oldest
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surviving OE literary work.
Dream of the Rood, among earliest Christian poems in
English, inscriptions found on Ruthwell Cross , 7th century.
Beowulf is, of course, best known example: composed
orally in 8th century and set in manuscript @1000 A.D.
Majority of Old English ms are historical records, such as
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which was updated from the
10th through the 12th centuries.
In all, there are only 400 mss comprising perhaps a total of
1000 pages of OE text in existence.
 Old English language looks more like German than
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English.
Remnants of Old English remain in the “glue” of Modern
English language, our prepositions and pronouns.
Fundamental concept words hold deep OE influence: hus
(house), wif (wife), cild (child), etan (eat), drincan (drink),
and fater (father).
Compounding of nouns was introduced during OE period:
woroldcyning (world-king), doegred (day-red, dawn),
huswiffen (house-wife).
Of 1,000 most commonly used English words, 70% of OE
origin.
1100 A.D. – 1500 A.D.
 Middle English is not so much a singular language but rather a
transition between Old English and Modern English
 Norman Conquest of 1066 put French Kings on throne of
England for 200 years; further, French becomes the language of
London and the court until Henry V declares English the
language of the court in 1415.
 During the late 13th and in the 14th century, English was making a
comeback. The mood towards France was becoming more and
more hostile: it wasn’t seen as a mother country, but as a
dangerous rival. Although French and Latin were still languages
of prestige, English was becoming the language of
communication, even among the nobility.
 The Hundred Years’ War with France (mid-14th – mid-15th
cent.) marked the definite decline of French and the rise of
English as a chief language.
 Geoffrey Chaucer - Chooses to compose the Canterbury Tales “in the
vernacular,” ie. English.
 John Wycliffe – translation of the New Testament into English.
 William Langland – The Vision of Piers Ploughman, a long
alliterative verse narrative of Christian virtue.
 Sir Thomas Malory – ‘Morte D’Arthur’ (=Arthur’s Death), 8 tales of
Arthur and his knights (mid-15th cent.). This work is important because
8 tales are structurally connected and reminiscent of a novel.
 “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is also from this time period.
 The Middle English (ME) period saw the introduction
of over 9,000 French words into the English language
(But new pronunciations didn’t necessarily bring new
spellings, witness ghoti, or “fish”).
 Word order in sentences (s – v – o) standardized
during this period.
 This period of borrowing gave English its distinctive
(and maddening) flexibility.
1500 A.D. – 1650 A.D.
 Between the ages of Chaucer to the end of the age of
Shakespeare, two significant changes occurred. First,
inflected endings were dropped; second, the pronunciation
of English long vowels changed, the “Great Vowel Shift.” To
our ears, the people of the Early Modern English period
would be mispronouncing words.
 A rough guide to the shift:
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A ah > ay
E ay > ee
I ee > eye
O oo > oh
U ou > you
Baht the hook / Bait the hook
Lunch mate / Lunch meat
Dogs beet / Dogs bite
Atlanta Boot Show / Atlanta Boat Show
Toothpaste toub / Toothpaste tube
 More than any other invention,
the Printing Press (invented in
c.1440 by Johannes Gutenberg)
substantively changed the
English language.
 William Caxton brought a
printing press to London in
1476 and printed his first book,
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
 The printing press
simultaneously accelerated the
growth of literacy and
necessitated the
standardization of spelling and
grammar.
1650 A.D. - present
 It is your responsibility to engage in battle with any
who would deny your privilege of merrymaking.
 The masses observe
the circumlocution
of my conveyance,
and myself astride.
They express disdain.

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