English Is a West Germanic Language

23 History of the English Language English is a West Germanic language. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic language family, who conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility, resulting in an enormous and varied vocabulary.

Old English The invaders' Germanic language displaced the indigenous Brythonic languages of what became England. The original Celtic languages remained in parts of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. The dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons formed what is now called Old English. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who invaded and settled mainly in the north-east of England. The new and the earlier settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distinct, including the prefix, suffix and inflection patterns for many words. The Germanic language of these Old English-speaking inhabitants was influenced by contact with Norse invaders, which might have been responsible for some of the morphological simplification of Old English, including the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (with the notable exception of the pronouns). The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is a fragment of the epic poem "Beowulf" composed by an unknown poet; it is thought to have been substantially modified, probably by Christian clerics long after its composition.

The introduction of Christianity added another wave of Latin and some Greek words. The Old English period formally ended with the Norman conquest, when the language was influenced to an even greater extent by the Norman-speaking Normans.

Middle English For about 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and their high nobility spoke only Anglo-Norman, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. French remaine the prestige language of government and law. French- derived words have more formal connotations: most modern English speakers would consider a "cordial reception" (from French) to be more formal than a "hearty welcome" (Germanic). Another example is the very unusual construction of the words for animals being separate from the words for their food products e.g. beef and pork (from the French bœuf and porc) being the products of the Germanically named animals 'cow' and 'pig'.

English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds being spelled th rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn) and ð (eth), which did not exist in Norman. The most famous writer from the Middle English period was Geoffrey Chaucer and of his works, The Canterbury Tales is the best known.

English literature started to reappear around 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, were the first English government document to be published in the English language since the Conquest. Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English when he did so in 1362. By the end of that century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language.

Early Modern English Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English. Examples: Middle English á - Modern English ei (make) è - í (beak) é - í (feet) í - ai (mice)

English was further transformed by the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardising effect of printing. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th century), the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English.

English has continuously adopted foreign words, especially from Latin and Greek, since the Renaissance.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first significant English dictionary, his Dictionary of the English Language. Early Modern Egnlish lacked uniformity in spelling, but Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was influential in establishing a standard form of spelling. Noah Webster did the same in America, publishing his dictionary in 1828.

Public education increased literacy, and more people had access to books (and therefore to a standard language) with the spread of public libraries in the 19th century. Many words entered English from other languages as a result of contact with other cultures through trade and settlement and from the migration of large numbers of people to the United States from other countries. World War I and World War II threw together people from different backgrounds, and the greater social mobility afterwards helped to lessen the differences between social accens, at least in the UK. The developlment of radio broadcasting in the early 20th century familiarised the population with accents and vocabulary from outside their own localities, often for the first time, and this phenomenon continued with film and television. Modern English has a large number of dialects spoken in diverse countries throughout the world. Most of these, however, are mutually intelligible. This icludes American English, Australian English, British English, Canadian English, Caribbean English, Hibern-English, Indo-Pakistani English, New Zealand English, Philippine English, Singaporean English, and South African English.

There are over 508 million speakers of English as a first or second language (as of 1999). English is spoken in a vast number of territories including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan and Southern Africa. Its large number of speakers, plus its worldwide presence, have made English a common language for use in such diverse applications as controlling airplanes, developing software, conducting international diplomacy, and business relations.