The history of the language can be traced back to the arrival of three Germanic tribes
to Britain during the 5th century. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the Red sea from
what is today Denmark and Northern Germany.
The inhabitants of Britain were Celts and spoke Celtic language. This was quickly
displaced most of the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and
Brittany in France. The Angles were named from Engle (their land of Origin). Their language
was English from which the word English derives. The languages of the three tribes were
very closely related.
During the next few centuries, four dialects of English developed from the three
tribes:-
i. North Humbrian
ii. Mercian
iii. West Saxon
iv. Kentish
During the 7th and 8th century, North Humbrian’s culture and language dominated
Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th century brought this domination to an end a long with
the destruction of Mercia. By the 10th century, the West Saxon’s dialect became the official
language of Britain; written Old English is mainly known from this period. The writing of an
alphabet called Runic came from the Scandinavian languages.
The Latin alphabet was brought over by Christian missionaries and it replaced the
Runic alphabet and has remained the writing system of English to the Present day.
At this time the vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo-Saxon basic with
borrowed words from Scandinavian languages (Danish + Norse) and Latin. Latin gave
English words e.g. street, Kitchen, kettle, cup, wine, candle. The Vikings Scandinavian added
Norse words e.g. ‘sky egg, cake, skin, raise, die, they and them’. Celtic words also survived
and mainly place and river names e.g. Deven, Kent, Thames etc.
Many parts of English and Norse words co-existed giving us words with the same or
slightly different meanings:
Norse English
Anger Wrath
Nay No
Ill Sick
Skill Craft
Skin hide
RISE OF MIDDLE ENGLISH
In 1066, the Normans conquered Britain; French therefore became the language of
Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English more pairs of similar words arose:
French English
Close shut
Reply answer
Odor Smell
Annual year
Because the English under-class cooked for the Norman upper –class the words for
most domestic English e.g. Ox, cow, sheep, swine deer etc.
While the words of meat derived from them are French (beef, Mutton, pork, bacon)
The Germanic form of plurals add “en” at the end:
House – housen
child – children
Shoe – shoen
mouse –mouser
The Germanic plurals were eventually displaced by the French method of making
plurals, where we add ‘-s’:
Man - Men
Woman –women
Ox –oxen
French also affected spelling:
Germanic French
Cween queen
It wasn’t until the 14th century that English became dominant in Britain. By the end of
14th century the dialect of Landon had emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call: -
middle English.
MODERN ENGLISH
It began around the 16th century. And like all languages, it is still changing. Many
words have entered the language either directly or indirectly; since the 16th century because
of the contact that the British had from the many people from around the world.
Languages that have contribution words to English include German, Arabic, Latin, Hindi,
Italian, Greek, Malay, Dutch, Farsi, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Kiswahili
Titany answered the question on May 11, 2022 at 09:21