The History Of The English Language

BY- JAYA CHOUDHARY

After many revolutions and invasions, today many languages are being spoken across the world as the medium of communication. Out of these languages, English is one of the finest languages that stand in common for people to communicate. In the grand scheme of things, the English language has only been around for a little over 1,500 years, which is a blip in the history of human language and an even smaller blip in the history of humanity.

Like other languages, English has developed through generations of speakers, experiencing significant changes over time. We may trace the language's origins back to its ancient roots by undoing these changes. Though modern English and Latin-derived Romance languages share several common words, most of those words were not originally part of it. Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England in 1066.

When the Normans invaded England and became its ruling class, they brought their language with them, introducing a large amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language that had previously been spoken. That dialect is now known as Old English. It does not seem to be very familiar, but it contains traces of German since Old English is a member of the Germanic language family. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were the first to bring it to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries. Invaders from the 8th to 11th centuries introduced more Old Norse borrowings to the mix.

However, how did the language get its name?

The word English is pronounced as 'Englisc' in the olden age of English because it is linked to the Anglo Tribes place of Engle, which is the root of the Angle Germanic Tribe. Old English was used until the arrival of the Duke of Normandy in the 10th century when they invaded England. Due to the supremacy of French in the early 11th century, upper-class people conversed in French while the lower class spoke English. This was named the Middle English period.

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However, in the 14th century, the English reasserted their dominance in the United Kingdom. Following this dominating era, the birth of Modern English in the 15th century resulted in the emergence of new words, phrases, and grammar, as well as the standardization of the London dialect. Then in 1604 was written the first single-language English dictionary. . The vocabulary is the only distinction between Early Modern English (1500-1800) and Late Modern English (l800-present). From a dialect of Germanic settlers in the 5th century to a global lingo in the 21st century, it has evolved.