Overview of History of English Language

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English as a Global Language

    By history of English Language we mean retelling of those incidents from the past which are connected with the development of this language. By an overview of the incidents it is found that the history of English language is both external and internal. Considering external history, it is the record of political, social and economic events that befall the speakers of a language; whereas, the internal history is the effect of those events on the sounds, the vocabulary and the structure of the English language.

Perhaps, the history of language is the history of people; as such in making of English some events that can be figured out are:

• ·  The migration of three Germanic tribes- Jutes, Saxons and Angles to the present England in the 5^th and 6^th century.
• ·   St. Augustine’s arrival to the place in 597 and the conversion of the people to Christianity.
• ·   Scandinavians invaded the place in 8^th, 9^th and 10^th century.
• ·   The Norman Conquest in the 11^th century.
• ·   In the 16^th century, the revival of learning, Renaissance.
• ·  Geographic expansion and settlement of America, Australia and South Africa by English speaking people, besides the colonization of Asia and Africa.

    However, the name ‘English’ means the speech of the Anglii (Anglii is the German name of the Angles, one of the tribes that settled there). Angli became Engle in Old English and after 1000 CE the place came to be known as Englaland.

The history of English language is broadly divided into three periods- Old, Middle and Modern English.

    The Old English Period (450-1100) is a multilingual period. The three tribes brought with them Germanic dialects. Having Celts as their neighbours, there was influence of Celti language but not so strong. Christian missionaries brought with them Latin which had a powerful influence on English. The next influence was the Scandinavian influence. The Old English is a period of full inflections as the endings of nouns, adjectives and verbs remained unchanged. The capacity for forming new words by combining the existing ones and by means of prefixes and suffixes made the Old English very resourceful and the literature as being distinguished in poetry. Eg: Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburg, The Battle of Maldon etc.

    In the Middle English Period (1100-1500) the Norman Conquest in 1066 served as the greatest factor of influencing language. With William becoming the king of England, the English nobility was replaced by French language. However, English remained the language of the uncultivated people. It was only after the decline of Norman rule, English became the official language and revived in the school education. Also, the language came to be adapted in writing. The inflections which had started breaking down towards the end of Old English period became greatly reduced during the Middle English period. As such, it came to be known as the period of levelled inflections. There was change in structure of language from synthetic to analytic. Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Piers Plowman and John Wycliffe belong to this period.

    The Modern English Period (1500-present) is marked by Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, migration and settlement in the new lands and the colonisation of Asia and Africa. It is the period of lost inflections as the old inflectional system disappears to a great extent. English language settled down as an analytical language and became a fit medium for formation of poetry, prose, science, media etc. Shakespeare’s contribution to the language is outstanding. During this period the English speakers changed the way they pronounced long and short vowels irrespective of the spellings. This phenomenon is widely viewed as a disconnection between the written and spoken language. However, the language developed continuously and finally standardised in the Modern Period.