A History of
English
Some Highlights
Early Influences
• Celtic borrowings: A few
Celtic words, such as crag,
entered what would become
the English language.
• Latin loans: Roman soldiers
and priests came to the
British Isles before the
massive invasions of
Northern Europeans.
Northern Invasions
Angles, Jutes, Saxons Frisians,
Danes, and Norwegians
brought new languages.
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes
“Germanic invaders called the native Celts
wealas (‘foreigners’), from which the
name Welsh is derived. The Celts called
the invaders ‘Saxons,’ regardless of their
tribe, and and this practice was followed
by the early Latin writers…References to
the name of the country as Engaland
(‘land of the Angles’), from which came
England, do not appear until c. 1000”
(Crystal 7).
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• Although most European
chronicles of the era
appeared in Latin or
French, these were written
in Old English.
• These manuscripts make
up multiple chronicles.
• The chronicles cover the
period from around the
birth of Christ to the twelfth
century.
Beowulf
manuscript copy from the oral tradition, ca. 1000
Question
In 1066, what event took place that changed the
course of the English language?
Answer
The Battle of Hastings
According to legend, King Harold plucked
an arrow out of his eye.
Domesday Book
In 1086, King William (Guillaume) ordered a
survey of English lands, written in Latin.
Which Witch is Which
How did we end up
with such weird
spellings?
The Story of Ye
How do you
pronounce the
word ‘ye’?
It all goes back to a thorn
What now looks like the letter ‘y’ was a
thorn, a letter sounding like the
contemporary ‘th.’ Over time, readers
sounded this out with a ‘y’ sound.
U
need
to
see a
V
Many
manuscripts
used a v at
the beginning
of a word and
a u within the
word.
A New Look for Old English
Scribes added letters to make words
look more like Latin or French,
languages considered more cultivated
than English; for example, det
became debt and iland became
island.
British Bilingualism
French held its place as the
language of government,
law, literature, and, along
with Latin, in the church.
English remained the language of
household staffs and other socalled common people.
Sometimes upper-class employers
learned English in order to talk
with their servants.
French words in English
• Baron, count, courtier, duchess, duke,
marchioness, marquis, noble, peer
• Appetite, beef, biscuit, confection, plate,
raisin, supper, treacle, veal, vinegar
• Ambush, army, battle, enemy, garrison,
lieutenant, moat, peace, sergeant
• By heart, come to a head, have mercy on
hold one’s peace, take leave
English-French Pairs
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sheep-mutton
Calf-veal
Deer-venison
Pig-pork
Begin-commence
Child-infant
Doom-judgment
Freedom-liberty
• Happiness-felicity
• Hearty-cordial
• Help-aid
• Hide-conceal
• Holy-saintly
• Meal-repast
• Stench-aroma
• Wish-desire
Words from Other Languages
• Latin: Alias, homicide, diocese, mediator,
scripture, lucrative, tolerance
• Netherlands: poll, skipper
• Spanish: cork, savvy
• Portuguese: marmalade
• Arabic: saffron, admiral, mattress, algebra,
alkali, zenith
• Persian: chess, rook, checkmate
Middle English
“The period we call Middle English runs
from the beginning of the 12th century
until the middle of the 15th” (Crystal 30).
Language Standardization
William Caxton brought the printing press to
England in 1476. “In 1041, movable clay
type was first invented in
China…Johannes Gutenberg invented
the printing press with
replaceable/moveable wooden or
metal letters in 1436 (completed by
1440)” (About.com)
Caxton’s Concerns
• Should he replace foreign words?
• Which regional varieties should
he use?
• Should he edit local writers to
make their more works more
widely understood?
• Scribes wrote with many
variations. Which spellings and
punctuations should he use?
Dictionaries
• Grammar books appeared, recording and
prescribing language use.
• Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English
Language, published in 1755, further
standardized English usage.
Middle English Literature
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
a story from Arthurian legend, written in
English but showing the influence of the
French courtly tradition. Late 14th
century
• The Canterbury Tales,
written by Geoffrey Chaucer
(ca. 1345-1400)
E-Mod
Early Modern English (1400-1800)
•
•
•
•
•
The Renaissance
Shakespeare
Protestant Reformation
Printing Presses
First English colonization of America: tobacco,
potato, and other words enter the language
Bible Translations
John Wycliffe risked his life by translating the Bible in
the fourteenth century. Although he survived,
opponents burned his bones after his death.
How did the Protestant Reformation change English?
King James Bible 1611
This translation
became one of the
most commonly
used Christian
bibles in the world.
English in Education
Shakespeare read Cervantes
at a time when scholars
considered Spanish a more
important language than
English.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Latin still
served as the tongue spoken by educated Europeans.
By the end of the 1700s, scholars had begun to
consider English a language appropriate for academia.
Shakespeare’s Neologisms
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Shakespeare’s plays and poems introduced
accommodation, assassination, barefaced, countless,
courtship, dislocate, dwindle, eventful, fancy-free,
lack-lustre, laughable, premeditated, puppi-dogs, and
submerged.
Not all of his words remained in the language.
Neologisms that failed to survive include abruption,
appertainment, cadent, exsufflicate, persistive,
protractive, questrist, soilure, tortive, ungenitured,
unplausive, and vastidity.
Vocabulary
• According to some linguists, English
contains some 500,000 words.
• Shakespeare employed about 30,000.
• The King James Bible contains about
12,000.
• Generally, speakers with well-developed
vocabularies employ 30,000
• That leaves the most articulate among us
about 470,000 words short.
English Today
Modern English came into being during the
eighteenth century.
Even so, authors such as Jane Austen (17751817) use formulations that seem odd to our
ears and words, such as ‘direction’ as an
address, that now convey different meanings.
English Outside of England
An American Dictionary of the English
Language, published in 1828
Noah Webster (1758-1843)
The Use of English has Spread
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1.Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
2.English (330 million)
3.Spanish (300 million)
4.Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
5.Arabic (200 million)
6.Bengali (185 million)
7.Portuguese (160 million)
8.Russian (160 million)
9.Japanese (125 million)
10.German (100 million)
11.Punjabi (90 million)
12.Javanese (80 million)
13.French (75 million)
Estimates of
language use
varies. George
Weber’s articleTop
Languages: The
World’s 10 Most
Influential
Languages” in
Language Today
(Vol. 2, Dec 1997).
English in a Global Context
“More than 40 countries around the world consider English
their primary language” (University of Texas at Austin website).
Antigua, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Barbuda, Belize, Botswana, Cameroon, Canada, Dominica, Ghana,
Grenada, Guyana, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Micronesia,
New Zealand, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Africa, St.
Lucia, St.Vincent, Swaziland, The Grenadines, The Philippines, Trinidad & Tobago, Uganda, United
Kingdom, United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
English in a Global Context
Many other countries, such as India and Nigeria, recognize
English as one of their official languages
The United States federal government does
not recognize English as an official language.
Language Change Will
Continue
• Words enter from other countries, especially as
their authors contribute to contemporary
English literature.
• Neologisms arise from mixtures of English with
Hindi, Yoruba, and Spanish.
• Technology contributes to language formation
with new terms and altered spellings.
Works Cited
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English
Language. Cambridge: U of Cambridge, 1997.
English Department, University of Texas at Austen.
<http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/english/>. Accessed 10
Sept. 2008.
“English in the World.” <http://www.about.com>. New York: New
York Times, 2008. Accessed 10 Sept. 2008.
Knowles, Gerry. A Cultural History of the English Language.
London: Arnold, 1999.