english history

How English Goes from an Uncultivated Tongue (an Ugly duckling) to a De’facto World Language( a Beautiful Swan)

【摘要】英语属于印欧语系的日耳曼语族下的西日耳曼语支。在经历了古英语(450-1150年)、中古英语(1150-1450年)到现代英语(1450年以后)三个时期1500多年的演变与发展之后,现已成为一种国际性语言。本文紧扣“国际化”,疏通英语从古英语、中古英语到现代英语在使用范围以及词汇来源等方面所表现出的国际化发展历程。

【Abstract】English belongs to West Germanic languages branch of Germanic languages group of Indo-European languages family. After being experienced through Old English, Middle English to Modern English of more than 1500 years? evolut ion and development, now it becomes an international language. This thesis focuses on “Internationalization”, threads up the development of English from old period to modern.

【关键词】英语国际化；古英语；中古英语；现代英语；英语文化；

【Key words】English Internationalization；Old English；Middle English；

Modern English；English Culture；

The sentence "English is the global language." must have appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines in recent years. Both the politicians and ordinary people believe it, because now there are eighty five countries use English as native language or part of a country’s chief institutions and more than one hundred nations treat English as a foreign language which is taught at school. In most international organizations, English is mainly used for communication or work. And English also plays a very important role in economy, science and technology, culture and some other aspects. English has been the commonly used language in international communication. As English just was a branch of Germanic languages group of Indo-European languages family , how could English goes from …an Ugly duckling? to …a Beautiful Swan??

1. The Origin and background of English

The history of English can be traced to the colonization of people from a family of languages which spread throughout Europe and southern Asia in the fourth millennium BC, (185). It is thought that a seminomadic population living in the steppe region to the north of the Black Sea moved west to Europe and east to Iran and India, spreading their culture and languages (186). According to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, the European languages and Sanskrit, the oldest language of the Indian sub-continent, were tied to a common source. When a systematic resemblance was discovered in both roots and verbs and in grammar forms, by comparing similar features of the European languages and Sanskrit, a common source language was reconstructed named Proto-Indo-European (298).

The Proto-Indo-European language is thought to have been spoken before 3,000 BC, and to have split up into different languages during the following millennium (298). The languages families include Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Indo-Iranian, Tocharian, Armenian, Anatolian, Albanian, Greek, Balto-Slavic, and Slavic languages. Yiddish, German, Afrikaans, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English make up the West Germanic subgroup of the Germanic Branch (Crystal 186).

The Proto-Indo-European, the Indo-European, and specifically the Germanic language, of which English is a derivative, influenced the early history of the English Language. The early history of the English language began in Britain and with several groups of people. At first people migrated to the placed now called England. Several invading groups joined the original settlers of England, bringing with them their language and culture. English

became a mixture of languages that adapted to the circumstances and the needs of the people. England eventually commanded an empire, thus, spreading the language around the world. When the empire, diminished the Americas continued to spread the English language because of their political power and wealth. The history of the English language is fascinating and follows as events and language changes are pointed out.

2.The history process of English

The history of English is conventionally divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English.

2.1 Old English (500-1100 AD)

West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began to settle in the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian, the language of the northeastern region of the Netherlands that is called Old English.

2.1.1 The Celts

The Celts were the first Indo-European people to spread across Europe, according The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (304). They emerged from south central Europe and spread throughout most of Europe, reaching the Black Sea and Asia Minor. They migrated to south-west Spain, central Italy, and throughout Britain in a series of wave-like migrations. Their culture was named after a Swiss archaeological site called La Tene.The first group of Celts went to Ireland in the 4th century and later reached Scotland and the Isle of Man. The second group went into southern England and Wales, and later to Brittany, producing a type of Celtic know as British.

2.1.2 The Roman

During the greatest days of the Roman Empire, their law ruled all men from Britain to Egypt, from Spain to the Black Sea, according to A History of Knowledge, (67). The Romans had a fierce respect and love of the law. Everywhere the Romans governed, they took their laws and administered them over the peoples they ruled. In fact, Roman law continues to this day to be an influence upon almost all legal systems in the Western world. The Romans adopted the Greek alphabet, Greek ideas, images and world views. They copied the Macedonian order of battle and Spartan steel weapons and armor. They conquered everywhere they went, building roads, establishing cities, trading, and sharing

their culture. The Romans build a transportation network with hundreds of miles of roadway. The roads the Romans built still exist today, after twenty centuries of continuous use.

Britain was acquired as a province of the Roman Empire during the century after 14 AD, following the death of Augustus. Words from Latin and Greek languages were adopted into the language. The Greek alphabet, with a few minor changes, is used in the English language today (25). Eventually, the Romans also brought Christianity to Britain. English became a distinct tongue about 449 AD when Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who spoke Germanic dialects, arrived in Celtic-speaking Britain. Groups of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to aid the Romanized Britons who were besieged by Picts and Scots after the Roman military withdrew in 410 AD (Bright 410).

2.1.3The West Saxons

The West Saxons were the most powerful of the new kingdoms, and the only one able to withstand the Viking invasion in the 9th century AD. It was also in Wessex or the West Saxon kingdom that a written language first flourished.

2.1.4 Characteristics of the Old English language

Old English was a highly inflected language. There were suffixes on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives. It had an elaborate system of personal interrogative and relative pronouns. The four dialects during the Old English period were Kentish in the southeast, West Saxon in the south and southwest, Mercian in the Midlands, and Northumbrian above the Humber River. West Saxon was the written standard during the reign of Alfred the Great from 871 to 899 AD.

2.2 Middle English (1066 - 1500 CE)

2.2.1 The Norman Conquest

The period of Middle English begins with the Norman invasion of 1066 CE. King Edward the Confessor had died without heirs, and William, Duke of Normandy, believed that he would become the next king. However, upon learning that Harold was crowned king, William invaded England, killed Harold and crowned himself king during the famous Battle of Hastings. Yet William spoke only French. As a result, the upper class in England began to speak French while the lower classes spoke English. But by 1250 CE, French began to lose its prestige. King John had lost Normandy to the French in 1204 CE, and after him, King Edward I spoke only English. At this time, many foreigners entered

England which made the nobility feel more "English" and so encouraged more use of the English language. The upper class tried to learn English, but they did still use French words sometimes, which was considered somewhat snobbish. French still maintained its prestige elsewhere, and the upper class did not want to lose it completely. Nevertheless, the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453 CE) intensified hatred of all things French. The Black Death also played a role in increasing English use with the emergence of the middle class. Several of the workers had been killed by the plague, which increased the status of the peasants, who only spoke English. By 1362 CE, the Statute of Pleading (although written in French) declared English as the official spoken language of the courts. By 1385 CE, English was the language of instruction in schools. 1350 to 1400 CE is known as the Period of Great Individual Writers (most famously, Chaucer), but their works included an apology for writing in English.

Although the popularity of French was decreasing, several words (around 10,000) were borrowed into English between 1250 and 1500 CE (though most of these words were Parisian rather than Norman French). Many of the words were related to government (sovereign, empire), law (judge, jury, justice, attorney, felony, larceny), social life (fashion, embroidery, cuisine, appetite) and learning (poet, logic, physician). Furthermore, the legal system retained parts of French word order (the adjective following the noun) in such terms as fee simple, attorney general and accounts payable.

2.2.2 Characteristics of Middle English

Many new words added to Middle English during this period came from Norman French, Parisian French, and Scandinavian. The mixture of the English and French languages came to be known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Unlike Old English, Middle English can be read, albeit with difficulty, by modern English-speaking people.

2.3Modern English (1500 CE----- Present)

2.3.1Early Modern English ( 1500-1800 )

During this period, English became more organized and began to resemble the modern version of English. Although the word order and sentence construction was still slightly different, Early Modern English was at least recognizable to the Early Modern English speaker. For example, the Old English "To us pleases sailing" became "We like sailing."

Classical elements, from Greek and Latin, profoundly influenced work creation and origin. From Greek, Early Modern English received grammar, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Also, the "tele-" prefix meaning "far" later used to develop telephone and television was taken.

During the Renaissance, The revival of classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language. These borrowings were deliberate and many bemoaned the adoption of these "inkhorn" terms, but many survive to this day. Shakespeare's character Holofernes in Loves Labor Lost is a satire of an overenthusiastic schoolmaster who is too fond of Latinisms.

2.3.2 Late-Modern English (1800-Present)

The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth's surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own.

The industrial and scientific revolutions created a need for neologisms to describe the new creations and discoveries. For this, English relied heavily on Latin and Greek. Words like oxygen, protein, nuclear, and vaccine did not exist in the classical languages, but they were created from Latin and Greek roots. Such neologisms were not exclusively created from classical roots though, English roots were used for such terms as horsepower, airplane, and typewriter.

The military influence on the language during the latter half of twentieth century was significant. Before the Great War, military service for English-speaking persons was rare，both Britain and the United States maintained small, volunteer militaries. Military slang existed, but with the exception of nautical terms, rarely influenced standard English. During the mid-20th century, however, a large number of British and American men served in the military. And consequently military slang entered the language like never

before. Blockbuster, nose dive, camouflage, radar, roadblock, spearhead, and landing strip are all military terms that made their way into standard English.

2.3.3 American English

Immigrants from Southeastern England began arriving on the North American continent in the early 1600's. By the mid-1800's, 3.5 million immigrants left the British Isles for the United States. The American English language is characterized by archaisms (words that changed meaning in Britain, but remained in the colonies) and innovations in vocabulary (borrowing from the French and Spanish who were also settling in North America). Noah Webster was the most vocal about the need for an American national identity with regards to the American English language.

Dialects in the United States resulted from different waves of immigration of English speakers, contact with other languages, and the slave trade, which had a profound impact on African American English. A dialectal study was done in 1920 and the findings are published in the Linguistics Atlas of the U.S. and Canada.

3. The present situation of English

English has now inarguably achieved global status. Whenever we turn on the news to find out what's happening in East Asia, or the Balkans, or Africa, or South America, or practically anywhere, local people are being interviewed and telling us about it in English. To illustrate the point when Pope John Paul II arrived in the Middle East recently to retrace Christ's footsteps and addressed Christians, Muslims and Jews, the pontiff spoke not Latin, not Arabic, not Italian, not Hebrew, not his native Polish. He spoke in English.

Indeed, if one looks at some of the facts about the amazing reach of the English language many would be surprised. English is used in over 90 countries as an official or semi-official language. English is the working language of the Asian trade group ASEAN. It is the de? facto working language of 98 percent of international research physicists and research chemists. It is the official language of the European Central Bank, even though the bank is in Frankfurt and neither Britain nor any other predominantly English-speaking country is a member of the European Monetary Union. It is the language in which Indian parents and black parents in South Africa overwhelmingly wish their children to be

educated. It is believed that over one billion people worldwide are currently learning English.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the spread of English around the world has been the extent to which Europeans are adopting it as their internal lingua franca. English is spreading from northern Europe to the south and is now firmly entrenched as a second language in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. Although not an official language in any of these countries if one visits any of them it would seem that almost everyone there can communicate with ease in English. Indeed, if one switches on a television in Holland one would find as many channels in English (albeit subtitled), as there are in Dutch.

In addition, English has without a doubt become the global language. It likes a beautiful swan flying in the language world with its elegant temperament.

Bibliography:

1. Crystal, David. An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Language and Languages. USA:

Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 121-122, 134, 185-186.

2. Mallory, J. P (2005). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Thames & Hudson.

ISBN 0-500-27616-1

3. Van Doren, Charles. A History of Knowledge Past, Present, and Future. New York:

Ballantine Books, 1992. 154.

4. Fourth edition Albert C. Baugh Thomas Cable. A history of the English language.

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