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    The Subject of The History of English

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    violetta
    This document provides an overview of the history and development of the English language from its earliest roots through the present day. It discusses the Indo-European origins of English and its evolution through periods such as Old English, Middle English, and Modern English as languages and cultures mixed on the British Isles.

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    The Subject of The History of English

    Uploaded by

    violetta
    8 views2 pages
    This document provides an overview of the history and development of the English language from its earliest roots through the present day. It discusses the Indo-European origins of English and its evolution through periods such as Old English, Middle English, and Modern English as languages and cultures mixed on the British Isles.

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    This document provides an overview of the history and development of the English language from its earliest roots through the present day. It discusses the Indo-European origins of English and its evolution through periods such as Old English, Middle English, and Modern English as languages and cultures mixed on the British Isles.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    8 views2 pages

    The Subject of The History of English

    Uploaded by

    violetta
    This document provides an overview of the history and development of the English language from its earliest roots through the present day. It discusses the Indo-European origins of English and its evolution through periods such as Old English, Middle English, and Modern English as languages and cultures mixed on the British Isles.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    1

    THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH: INTRODUCTION

    The subject of the history of English

    Whatever your thoughts on the matter, English remains the single most
    important and influential language in today’s world. It has also proved itself the
    most flexible of languages, remarkable for its ability to adopt and absorb
    vocabulary from other cultures.

    This figure shows the timeline of the history of the English language. The
    earliest known residents of the British Isles were the Celts, who spoke Celtic
    languages. Over the centuries the British Isles were invaded and conquered by
    various peoples, who brought their languages and customs with them as they
    settled in their new lives. There is now very little Celtic influence left in English.
    The earliest time when we can say that English was spoken was in the 5th century
    CE (Common Era—a politically correct term used to replace AD - Latin, ‘in the
    year of the Lord’).

    So the History of English studies the process and the peculiarities of the English
    language development from the pre-English period up to present. It is traditionally
    divided into the following periods: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English
    and Modern English (New English)

    The English language, and indeed most European languages, traces its
    original roots back to a Neolithic (late Stone Age) people known as the Indo-
    Europeans, who lived in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from some time after
    5000 BC. We do not know exactly what the original Indo-European language was
    like, as no writings exist from that time, so our knowledge of it is necessarily based
    on hypothesis and reconstruction.

    By around 1000 BC, the original Indo-European language had split into a


    dozen or more major language groups or families, which in their turn divided into
    scores of new languages.
    2

    Using the “comparative method”, modern linguists have been able to partially
    reconstruct the original language from common elements in its daughter languages.
    It is thought by many scholars that modern Lithuanian may be the closest to (i.e.
    the least changed from) the ancient Indo-European language.

    The common ancestry of these diverse languages can sometimes be seen quite
    clearly in the existence of cognates (similar words in different languages),
    Examples are:

     father in English, Vater in German, pater in Latin and Greek, fadir in Old


    Norse and pitr in ancient Vedic Sanskrit.
     three in English, tres in Latin, tris in Greek, drei in German, twee in
    Dutch, trн in Sanskrit.
     is in English, est in Latin, esti in Greek, ist in Gothic, asti in Sanskrit.
     me in English, mich or mir in German, mik or mis in Gothic, me in
    Latin, eme in Greek, mam in Sanskrit.
     mouse in English, Maus in German, muis in Dutch, mus in Latin, mus in
    Sanskrit.

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