A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow.

BRAIN TEASER

 If someone were to walk up to you and ask, “Hwaet waes paet sweg?” what would your reaction be?

If it were to happen today, you would probably assume the person was a foreigner and direct him to the nearest Information Centre! But if you were living in the England of the year AD 1000, you would have pointed to the closest tree and answered politely that the ‘sweg’ (noise) was made by the

‘fugelas’ (birds).

 Look at the opening lines of the Lord’s Prayer below:

“Faeder ure thu/pu the/pe eart on heofonum Si thin nama gehalgod.”

“Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

“Our Father in heaven, May your name be held holy.”

Can you explain the changes?

 Do you think similar changes might occur in future? Motivate your answer.

A brief history of the English language

Language is a living thing that changes constantly and throughout the ages English too has changed considerably: - words have changed their meanings, for example, “naughty” which means wicked or to annoy somebody, originally meant to injure or harm; - pronunciation has also changed: today neither the “k” nor the “gh” in “knight” are pronounced, but in earlier centuries these sounds were pronounced and the word sounded like “knicht” (the Afrikaans word, “kneg” comes from the same origin); - some words became obsolete (old-fashioned, no longer used) and disappeared from the language, while many others were borrowed from foreign languages e.g.

• Italian: pizza, Madonna, spaghetti, solo, operetta, sonata • French: omelette, restaurant, boutique, menu, chauffeur • Arabic: sultan, sherbet, coffee, sorbet • Spanish: potato, mosquito, sombrero, chilli • Afrikaans: veld, spoor, trek, padkos

The history of English can be divided into three important periods ‒ Old English (6th to 13th century); Middle English (14th to 16th century) and Modern English (17th century onwards).

The following is an extract from the introduction to The South African Oxford School Dictionary: Invasions and conquests complicated the process (of changes in the English language). The earliest form of English, now called Old English, arose out of AngloSaxon and Old Norse and bears little resemblance to the English we know today.” (See the first example of the Lord’s Prayer). Because of Viking invasions, many Scandinavian words were assimilated into Old English.

In 1066, England was invaded by William the Conqueror and his Norman knights, who spoke French. French became the language of the royal court and the government.

The ordinary people of England, however, continued to speak English. As the years passed, English ladies married the Norman knights and made sure that their children learned their mother tongue, and in so doing ensuring the survival of English in England. With a little practise, we can now fairly easily read and understand the language of that time. These lines, for example, were written about 1390: This carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf, which that he lovede moore than his lyf. The language of this period (spoken between 1100 and 1500) was called Middle English and was strongly influenced by French.

From about 1500 onwards, the English language continued to grow and develop. It adopted words from other languages with which people came into contact through trade and travel and it was exported to other lands when English-speaking people travelled abroad. In the early 17th century, colonies began to be established, first in North America and in India, then in the West Indies and later in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Africa. To each country the English settlers took the English language of their own time, and in each country it changed, little by little, until it differed in various ways, not only from the English of other settlements, but from its parent form in Britain too.

This development of the English language since 1500 is known as Modern English, a fact that confuses many students who study Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and think that they will never understand the language.

The future of English as a world language looks bright. Modern English today continues to develop as it acquires words from other cultures, and other languages through films, radio and television programmes, and computer services such as the Internet. One can only imagine all the other factors that will influence the language – an alien invasion might change its sounds forever, with future generations speaking a mixture between English and *%##*&@!