The English Language

[winsome]

The English Language (mostly taken from Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue")

English is so universal now that it is easy to forget that this is a relatively recent phenomena. English as a language remained the language of peasants in a small island off the north west of Europe until the 15/16 century when England started to colonise America. It only became a world language when England became a world power in the 19th century.

That great scientist Sir Isaac Newton wrote, and published, his major work (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica) in 1687 in Latin so that it could be read by scholars throughout Europe. It wasn't until the third edition in 1726 that it was translated into English (source Wikipedia).

After Rome withdrew it's armies in 410, England was gradually invaded by Angles, Jutes & Saxons from Northern Europe who intermarried with or drove out the Celtic tribes to Scotland, Wales and Cornwall and gradually settled in the land bringing a number of related dialects of Germanic origin.

They were functionally illiterate, having only runes for an alphabet. Literacy came with the coming of St. Augustine and his missionaries in 597.  According to Bill Bryson they adopted the Roman alphabet but kept three letters from the runic alphabet for three sounds that were not available in the Roman one.

Even so the English language (what we now call Old English) was always changing. It looks unintelligible to us now. Nouns had three genders (masculine feminine and neuter), seven classes of verbs and a single adjective up to eleven forms.

Then there were two waves of Viking invasions bringing more changes to the language.

Nor was it universally spoken. Edward the Confessor, the last Saxon king before Harold, spoke French as his first language. Then came the Normans who spoke a rural dialect of French which became Anglo-French and donated some 10,000 words to the language. According to Bill Bryson under the Norman scribes two of the runic letters were phased out and two new letters added (z and g). Also many spellings were changed for example qu for cw. Without the Norman invasion of 1066 we would be spelling queen as cwene

A big change came in the first half of the 12th century. Because of turmoil in the country the Peterborough Chronicles, an account of life in Anglo Saxon England, written in English by monks in Peterborough ceased for 23 years from 1131 to 1154. When resumed the writing is very different. Previous to 1131 it was in Old English, but after 1154 many changes had occurred and it began to look more like modern English. This was Middle English.

The Norman rulers did not speak English as a first language. Indeed the first king for whom English was his mother tongue was Henry IV in 1399.

English was not a single unified language. Bill Bryson notes "As C.L. Barber notes: 'Early Middle English texts give the impression of a chaos of dialects, without many common conventions in pronunciation or spelling, and with wide divergences in grammar and vocabulary.'"

French remained the language of Parliament until 1362, and for official purposes in the courts for longer.

New words were added to the language and old ones lost. It is estimated that "about 85% of the 30,000 Anglo-Saxons words died out under the influence of the Danes and Normans".

William Caxton who was the first person to print a book in English related, in his preface to Eneydos (1490), how a group of London sailors headed down the Thames for Holland, and finding themselves becalmed went ashore and asked a local farmer's woman "for mete  and specially he axed for eggys. Shee looked at them blankly and answered that 'she coude speake no frenshe'". They had travelled only about 50 miles.

Caxton, born around 1415~1422, himself noted "And certainly our language now used varyeth ferre [far] from that which was used and spoken when I was borne.".

A century later from Eneydos the poet George Puttenham said that the English of London stretched not much more than 60 miles from the city. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written at the end of the 14th century, was written in the London dialect and is recognisable as English today – because of course in the end the London dialect prevailed over the others. But here is something written on the Kentish dialect of Chaucer's time:
"And vorlet ous oure yeldinges: ase and we vorletep oure yelderes, and neo us led nazt, in-to vondinge, ac vri ous vram quaede."

Recognise it? It the last sentence of the Lord's prayer beginning "And forgive us our trespasses....." (and I had to substitute two letters for the nearest equivalent in our modern alphabet).


If you found this interesting I recommend Mother Tongue. It's very readable and full of fascinating information about the development of the English language. Bill Bryson is an American born in Des Moines but has spent a lot of time in England.

[k-pappy]

This is very interesting!  Thanks for sharing, winsome!

[Advena]

BTW, if you are ever helping a foreigner study English, the information provided above is also the answer to why English is such a confusing language with so many contradictions.

[winsome]

Just thought I would add a couple of gems that show how confusing English is.

1. The addition of the prefix "in" generally makes a word the opposite. For example a vertebrate is an animal with a backbone and an invertebrate is an animal with no backbone & animate means alive whilst inanimate mean not alive.

On the other hand whilst flammable means easily set on fire, inflammable means.... easily set on fire.

2. Cleave can mean to separate (as to cleave in two) or to join (as in "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh").

[Advena]

If you like questions like this, you should read some of Richard Lederer's stuff (www.verbivore.com). Here's a sample:

In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?
In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play?
Why is it that when we transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it's called cargo?
Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess?
Why -- in our crazy language -- can your nose run and your feet smell?
Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus?
And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it?

English is crazy.

[DaveW]

2. Cleave can mean to separate (as to cleave in two) or to join (as in "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh").

The "join" definition is definitely obsolete.  Even the first one is not really in common usage; at least not in the US dialect of the language.

[hearjesus]

The English Language (mostly taken from Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue")

English is so universal now that it is easy to forget that this is a relatively recent phenomena. English as a language remained the language of peasants in a small island off the north west of Europe until the 15/16 century when England started to colonise America. It only became a world language when England became a world power in the 19th century.

That great scientist Sir Isaac Newton wrote, and published, his major work (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica) in 1687 in Latin so that it could be read by scholars throughout Europe. It wasn't until the third edition in 1726 that it was translated into English (source Wikipedia).

After Rome withdrew it's armies in 410, England was gradually invaded by Angles, Jutes & Saxons from Northern Europe who intermarried with or drove out the Celtic tribes to Scotland, Wales and Cornwall and gradually settled in the land bringing a number of related dialects of Germanic origin.

They were functionally illiterate, having only runes for an alphabet. Literacy came with the coming of St. Augustine and his missionaries in 597.  According to Bill Bryson they adopted the Roman alphabet but kept three letters from the runic alphabet for three sounds that were not available in the Roman one.

Even so the English language (what we now call Old English) was always changing. It looks unintelligible to us now. Nouns had three genders (masculine feminine and neuter), seven classes of verbs and a single adjective up to eleven forms.

Then there were two waves of Viking invasions bringing more changes to the language.

Nor was it universally spoken. Edward the Confessor, the last Saxon king before Harold, spoke French as his first language. Then came the Normans who spoke a rural dialect of French which became Anglo-French and donated some 10,000 words to the language. According to Bill Bryson under the Norman scribes two of the runic letters were phased out and two new letters added (z and g). Also many spellings were changed for example qu for cw. Without the Norman invasion of 1066 we would be spelling queen as cwene

A big change came in the first half of the 12th century. Because of turmoil in the country the Peterborough Chronicles, an account of life in Anglo Saxon England, written in English by monks in Peterborough ceased for 23 years from 1131 to 1154. When resumed the writing is very different. Previous to 1131 it was in Old English, but after 1154 many changes had occurred and it began to look more like modern English. This was Middle English.

The Norman rulers did not speak English as a first language. Indeed the first king for whom English was his mother tongue was Henry IV in 1399.

English was not a single unified language. Bill Bryson notes "As C.L. Barber notes: 'Early Middle English texts give the impression of a chaos of dialects, without many common conventions in pronunciation or spelling, and with wide divergences in grammar and vocabulary.'"

French remained the language of Parliament until 1362, and for official purposes in the courts for longer.

New words were added to the language and old ones lost. It is estimated that "about 85% of the 30,000 Anglo-Saxons words died out under the influence of the Danes and Normans".

William Caxton who was the first person to print a book in English related, in his preface to Eneydos (1490), how a group of London sailors headed down the Thames for Holland, and finding themselves becalmed went ashore and asked a local farmer's woman "for mete  and specially he axed for eggys. Shee looked at them blankly and answered that 'she coude speake no frenshe'". They had travelled only about 50 miles.

Caxton, born around 1415~1422, himself noted "And certainly our language now used varyeth ferre [far] from that which was used and spoken when I was borne.".

A century later from Eneydos the poet George Puttenham said that the English of London stretched not much more than 60 miles from the city. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, written at the end of the 14th century, was written in the London dialect and is recognisable as English today – because of course in the end the London dialect prevailed over the others. But here is something written on the Kentish dialect of Chaucer's time:
"And vorlet ous oure yeldinges: ase and we vorletep oure yelderes, and neo us led nazt, in-to vondinge, ac vri ous vram quaede."

Recognise it? It the last sentence of the Lord's prayer beginning "And forgive us our trespasses....." (and I had to substitute two letters for the nearest equivalent in our modern alphabet).


If you found this interesting I recommend Mother Tongue. It's very readable and full of fascinating information about the development of the English language. Bill Bryson is an American born in Des Moines but has spent a lot of time in England.

All thumbs up! English is originally the language of the Angles. This is my best read so far in this forum. Thank you!

[hearjesus]

BTW, if you are ever helping a foreigner study English, the information provided above is also the answer to why English is such a confusing language with so many contradictions.

Yes, I concur.

[pljames]

I wonder what was the first language between God and Adam and Eve also at Babel? Paul