Universidad Autónoma

Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
History of the English Language
Alejandra Cham Salivie
Marcela Fernández de Castro Arriola
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California
Abstract
Have you ever wondered what the word English means? As teachers or learners of the
English language one can benefit immensely from knowing how this language developed.
This presentation will give you a glimpse of the origins and the fascinating historical
background behind the English language. The historical background of the English
language is a rich blend of cultures and peoples. We can trace these cultures and its
heritage as far back as Neolithic times with the Celtic establishments in Britain. Thus, the
Roman influence can be palpable with the conversion to Christianity giving some of the
Latin loan words. After the Romans left the British Isles, the Germanic tribes; Saxons,
Angles and Jutes invaded Britain and so began the great story of English.
If somebody were to ask you what the word ―English‖ means…What would you answer? You
might be surprised to find out that the word itself carries its own historical background. This
word combines the root ―angle‖ and the suffix ―ish‖ which together means ―belonging to the
Angles‖. Now the question is: Who were the Angles? Where did they come from? And why
would a language that is currently spoken by nearly a quarter of the world‘s population be
attributed to them?
1. Background
The history of the English language begins with the migration of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons
from Germany and Denmark to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their Anglo-Saxon language
is known as Old English. The formation of separate kingdoms in Britain to some extent coincided
with the development of the Old English dialects of Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and
Kentish. Northumbrian was in a position of cultural superiority until the destructive Viking raids
of the 9th century caused cultural leadership to pass to the West Saxon kingdom of Wessex.
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
The Norman Conquest of 1066 set in motion the transition to Middle English. For the first
century after the Conquest, a vast number of loanwords entered the English language from the
dialects of northern France. The Conquest also served to place all four Old English dialects on the
same cultural level and to allow them to develop independently.
Among highlights in the history of the English language, the following stand out most clearly: the
settlement in Britain of Jutes, Saxons, and Angles in the 5th and 6th centuries;(See appendix 1) the
arrival of St. Augustine in 597 and the subsequent conversion of England to Latin Christianity;
the Viking invasions of the 9th century; the Norman Conquest of 1066; the Statute of Pleading in
1362 (this required that court proceedings be conducted in English); the setting up of Caxton's
printing press at Westminster in 1476; the full flowering of the Renaissance in the 16th century;
the publishing of the King James Bible in 1611; the completion of Johnson's Dictionary of 1755;
and the expansion to North America and South Africa in the 17th century and to India, Australia,
and New Zealand in the 18th.
2. Old English
The Germanic languages displaced the indigenous Brythonic languages of what became England.
The original Celtic languages remained in parts of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall where Cornish
was spoken into the 19th century. As explained by David Crystal ―…An Anglo-Saxon victory
would mean the total displacement of the British…‖ (Pg. 24). The dialects spoken by the AngloSaxons formed what is now called Old English. The most famous surviving work from the Old
English period is the epic poem "Beowulf" composed by an unknown poet.
Old English did not sound or look like the Standard English of today. Almost any native English
speaker of today would find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a separate language.
Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English
roots. The words be, strong and water, cheese, butter, bishop, kettle for example, derive from Old
English. Of the words in the American College Dictionary only 14 percent are native.
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
Later, English was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the
Vikings who invaded and settled mainly in the north-east of England. In contrast to Modern
English, Old English had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) in the noun and adjective,
and nouns, pronouns, and adjectives were inflected for case. Noun and adjective paradigms
contained four cases--nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative--while pronouns also had
forms for the instrumental case. Old English had a greater proportion of strong verbs (sometimes
called irregular verbs in contemporary grammars) than does Modern English. Many verbs that
were strong in Old English are weak (regular) verbs in Modern English (e.g. Old English helpan,
present infinitive of the verb help; healp, past singular; hulpon, past plural; holpen, past participle
versus Modern English help, helped, helped, helped, respectively).
3. Middle English
In 1066, a dynastic quarrel over the throne of England ended in victory for William, Duke of
Normandy at the Battle of Hastings (See Appendix 2). William became King William I of
England and his Norman companions (Normans were originally Norsemen who had conquered
Northern France) became the feudal overlords of the Anglo-Saxon population. There was never a
great amount of Norman immigration into England. Instead there was a grafting of a great
superstructure of economic, political, religious and military power onto a population that
remained largely English in ethnicity and language.
The history of Middle English is often divided into three periods, starting with the Early Middle
English, from about 1100 to about 1250, during which the Old English system of writing was still
in use. Then, the Central Middle English period from about 1250 to about 1400, which was
marked by the gradual formation of literary dialects, the use of an orthography greatly influenced
by the Anglo-Norman writing system, the loss of pronunciation of final unaccented -e, and the
borrowing of large numbers of Anglo-Norman words; the period was especially marked by the
rise of the London dialect, in the hands of writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, who ―…managed to
capture so vividly the intriguing characters of the speakers, and to reflect so naturally the
colloquial features of their speech.‖ (Pg.38). And the Late Middle English, from about 1400 to
about 1500, which was marked by the spread of the London literary dialect and the gradual
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
cleavage between the Scottish dialect and the other northern dialects. During this period the basic
lines of inflection as they appear in Modern English were first established. Among the chief
characteristic differences between Old and Middle English were the substitution of natural gender
in Middle English for grammatical gender and the loss of the old system of declensions in the
noun and adjective and, largely, in the pronoun.
The dialects of Middle English are usually divided into three large groups: (1) Southern
(subdivided into Southeastern, or Kentish, and Southwestern), chiefly in the counties south of the
River Thames; (2) Midland (corresponding roughly to the Mercian dialect area of Old English
times) in the area from the Thames to southern South Yorkshire and northern Lancashire; and (3)
Northern, in the Scottish Lowlands, Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, northern Lancashire,
and most of Humberside and West and North Yorkshire.
England in the late 1000s, the 1100s, and 1200s became a bilingual country. Norman French was
the prestige language, English the language of everyday folk. Few Normans learned English in
this early Middle English period. ―Though French had the social and cultural prestige, Latin
remained the principal language of religion and learning. The English vernacular language
survived as the common speech…‖
4. Early Modern English
The transition from Middle to Modern English started at the beginning of the 15th century. This
century witnessed three important developments: the rise of London English, the invention of
printing, and the spread of new learning. Another striking change that occurred during such
transition was the elimination of a vowel sound in certain unstressed positions. For example, the
words name, stone, wine, dance, laughed, seemed, stored were pronounced as two syllables by
Chaucer. The ―e‖ in these words became silent, but it wasn‘t silent for Chaucer (See Appendix 3).
The following is an excerpt of The Canterbury Tales or as said in Middle English; The Tales of
Canterbury (in Middle English every vowel had a strong and flat sound, each one was
pronounced):
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
Middle English
Modern English
Whan that Aprille with the shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath percéd to the rote
And bathéd ev‘ry vein of swich licour
Of which vertu engend‘red is the flour;
Whan Zephyrs eke with his sweete breth
Inspired hath in ev‘ry holte and heathe
The tendre croppes, and the younge sonne
Hath in his path his always cours yronne;
…Than pricketh hem nature in hir courages
Than longen folk to go on pilgrimages
When April, with its sweet showers,
Has pierced March‘s drought to the root
And bathed every vein with that liquid
From which, in truth, the flower is born;
When the sweet breath of Zephyrs has
Also breathed life into the tender buds
In every holt and heath; and the young sun
Has run halfway in his annual path
… Then nature stirs their hearts
and people long to go on pilgrimages.
As you can see, there were considerable sound changes between Early Modern English and the
English of today. Shakespearean actors putting on a play speak the words properly enough, but it
is very doubtful that Shakespeare himself would understand them, for example the word reason
was pronounced like raisin.
The Renaissance in England produced many more scholars who were knowledgeable in foreign
languages, especially Greek and Classical Latin. Thousands of words from the classical
languages poured in. Pedestrian, bonus, contradict, climax, dictionary, benefit, exist, paragraph,
inspire. Probably the average educated American today has more words from French in his
vocabulary than from Native English, and more from Latin than from French.
The language was subsequently standardized through the work of grammarians and the
publication of dictionaries, and its vocabulary underwent another vast expansion in the 19th and
20th centuries to accommodate developments in the sciences and technology. One example of the
standardization was Johnson‘s dictionary; A Dictionary of the English Language, published in
1755. ―It was not until it‘s completion that the lexicon received its first authoritative treatment‖
The most important force on the development of the modern period has been the tremendous
expansion of English speaking people. In 1500 English was a minor language. Now it‘s spoken
natively by over a quarter of a billion people and as a second language by many millions more.
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
5. Conclusion
To sum up briefly, English has undergone many grammatical, lexical and sound changes
throughout its development. All these significant changes occurred as McCRum,Cran and
McNeil mention in their book “the language was brought to Britain by Germanic tribes, the
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, influenced by Latin and Greek when St Augustine converted England
to Christianity, enriched by the Danes, and finally transformed by the French-speaking
Normans” English is indeed a language that arouse from such a diverse blending of dialects and
tongues that were spoken by groups and tribes whose background, beliefs and customs differed
greatly from each other.
The Anglo-Saxon speakers, if brought back in a time machine, would have a very difficult time
understanding what they hear. At most, they could pick out one or two words in a complete
conversation. Medieval speakers of English could have a brief interaction and could get their
meaning conveyed, but some word pronunciation would interfere. Even some Shakespearean
actors, whose language has today‘s structure and sounds, would have problems with meanings.
What is more, there is no phase beyond the Modern English in the History of English Language
Development, however, we have witnessed that this language has continued to change and
expand all over the world. Now the language is widely spoken on six continents. It is the primary
language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand,
and various small island nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is also an official
language of India, the Philippines, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South
Africa.
Altogether, mainly due to the constant/unstoppable technological advance, globalization and the
way in which population worldwide can be now electronically linked at all times, English has
taken a giant leap since Shakespeare and we can no longer share the same phase. It is surprising
that linguists have not proposed to establish a new stage in history, since the language has
certainly experienced a linguistic boom that could even be compared to the Big Bang.
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
Bibliography
Crystal, David. 1997. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.
Cambridge
Crystal, David. 2004. The Stories of English. Overlook
Glynnis Chantrell et. al 2002 The Oxford Disctionary of Word Histories. Oxford
McCrum, R., Cran, W., & MacNeail, R., (1992) The Story of English. Faber & Faber
Stevenson, Victor. 1999. The World of Words. Sterling/Chapelle
On-line Sources

Encarta Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia Britanica

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language, 02/17/10
The authors
Marcela Fernández de Castro tiene 19 años de experiencia en el área de docencia del idioma ingles;
trabajando en la Facultad de Idiomas de la UABC y en el sector privado. Obtuvo mérito académico de la
Universidad de Exeter en la licenciatura en Docencia de Inglés. Tiene la especialidad en docencia de la
Universidad de Cambridge, la especialidad en educación a distancia del Consejo Británico y actualmente
cursa el doctorado en traducción de la Universidad de Granada, España. Su desempeño académico ha sido
versátil. Se ha desempeñado como responsable de varias áreas como; evaluación y certificación, desarrollo
de planes y programas, ha sido responsable de la licenciatura en docencia y del centro de medios de
autoacceso. Actualmente es responsable de prácticas profesionales de los programas formales de su
facultad.
Alejandra Cham Salivie es egresada de la carrera de Lic. en Traducción del Idioma Inglés de la
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. Actualmente, se desempeña como traductor independiente y es
perito traductor certificado por el Consejo de la Judicatura del Estado de Baja California. Tiene 15 años de
experiencia en la enseñanza del idioma inglés y forma parte del cuerpo docente de los Programas de
Licenciatura en Traducción y Docencia de Idiomas que ofrece la UABC. Hoy en día se encuentra
elaborando su proyecto de tesis como alumna del Doctorado en Estudios Avanzados en Traducción e
Interpretación impartido por la Universidad de Granada.
Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala –Facultad de Filosofía y Letras | 76
Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
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Memorias del XI Encuentro Nacional de Estudios en Lenguas (2010)
ISBN: 978-607-7698-32-6
Appendix 3
Las autoras
La maestra Marcela Fernández de Castro tiene 19 años de experiencia en el área de docencia del idioma
ingles; trabajando en la Facultad de Idiomas de la UABC y en el sector privado. Obtuvo mérito académico
de la Universidad de Exeter en la licenciatura en Docencia de Inglés. Tiene la especialidad en docencia de
la Universidad de Cambridge, la especialidad en educación a distancia del Consejo Británico y
actualmente cursa el doctorado en traducción de la Universidad de Granada, España. Su desempeño
académico ha sido versátil. Se ha desempeñado como responsable de varias áreas como; evaluación y
certificación, desarrollo de planes y programas, ha sido responsable de la licenciatura en docencia y del
centro de medios de autoacceso. Actualmente es responsable de prácticas profesionales de los programas
formales de su facultad.
Alejandra Cham Salivie es egresada de la carrera de Lic. en Traducción del Idioma Inglés de la
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. Actualmente, se desempeña como traductor independiente y es
perito traductor certificado por el Consejo de la Judicatura del Estado de Baja California. Tiene 15 años de
experiencia en la enseñanza del idioma inglés y forma parte del cuerpo docente de los Programas de
Licenciatura en Traducción y Docencia de Idiomas que ofrece la UABC. Hoy en día se encuentra
elaborando su proyecto de tesis como alumna del Doctorado en Estudios Avanzados en Traducción e
Interpretación impartido por la Universidad de Granada.
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