A Brief History of the English Language

A Brief History of the English Language

Match

Match the following years to their categories from the history of the English language.

• c. 650 to 1066

• c. 1066 to 1500

• c. 1500 to 1800

• c. 1800 to present

Old English

Middle English

Early Modern English

Late Modern English

• Old English

• Middle English

• Early Modern English

• Late Modern English

Match

Match the following examples from the history of the English language to their categories.

• On þyssum geare man halgode þet mynster...

• Whan that aprill with his shoures soote...

• I will send that which used to cure me...

• In my younger and more vulnerable years...

Old English

Middle English

Early Modern English

Late Modern English

• Old English

• Middle English

• Early Modern English

• Late Modern English

Multiple Choice

Shakespeare wrote in...

• Old English

• Middle English

• Early Modern English

• Late Modern English

​According to linguist David Crystal, only 5 to 10% of Shakespeare's English is different from our own. However, even that amount can confuse students and make the plays and poems seem quite inaccessible.

Why is it so confusing?

Shakespeare is vital to understanding the past and present of English language and literature. He is the culmination of what could be achieved in English literature during the Early Modern era, and he influences everything that comes after it.

Why should we bother?

Part 1:
Before English

• Before 100 BC, Britain was populated by a mixture of tribes, including the Celts, Picts, Irish and Cornish.

• They all spoke a variety of Celtic languages.

Early beginnings

The origins of English

• In the 5th century AD, settlers from west Germany crossed over to Britain.

• These tribes were called Saxons, Jutes and Angles, and set up kingdoms called 'East Anglia', 'West Saxon', 'East Saxon', etc.

• They spoke dialects of the West Germanic language.

Labelling

The settlements of the Saxons and Angles can still be seen in some of the place names later used throughout English history.

Drag labels to their correct position on the image

Norfolk

Wessex

Suffolk

Essex

Middlesex

Sussex

Hotspot

Which region of Europe does the English language descend from?

Part 2:
Old English

Old English (c. 650-1066)

• The language spoken by the Germanic settlers developed differently to the forms found in what is now known as Germany.

• This early variant of English is known as 'Old English'.

Multiple Select

Which of the following words originate from Old English?

Select all the answers you think are correct.

• waist

• ladder

• charcoal

• needle

One of the oldest surviving texts written in Old English is Beowulf. If you think you've read it before, there's a good chance you've actually read a translation or an adaptation written in Late Modern English. Here, on the right, is an example of the original text. See if you can read any of it!

Beowulf

Watch the video on the next slide of a J. A. Jackson, a Professor of English at Hillsdale College, reading the opening section of Beowulf in its original Old English.

How does Old English sound?

Match

Lets do this again: Match the following examples from the history

of the English language to their categories.

• On þyssum geare man halgode þet mynster...

• Whan that aprill with his shoures soote...

• I will send that which used to cure me...

• In my younger and more vulnerable years...

Old English

Middle English

Early Modern English

Late Modern English

• Old English

• Middle English

• Early Modern English

• Late Modern English

Influences on Old English

• Viking invaders started arriving in north east England in the 8th century.

• Parts of their Old Norse language, including words describing family and animals, spread through northern England.

• These Old Norse words were integrated into Old English.

Hotspot

Which region of Europe did the

Viking invaders come from?

Multiple Choice

What language did the Viking invaders use (which ended up

introducing new loanwords into Old English)?

• West Germanic

• Old Norse
• Latin

• Scandinavian

Multiple Select

Which of the following words originate from Old Norse?

Select all the answers you think are correct.

• attack

• wing

• box

• Thursday

Part 3:
Middle English

Middle English (c. 1066-1500)

• When the Normans invaded in 1066, French became the dominant language (of the court, church and nobility) while the rest of the country spoke versions of English.

• English never completely fell out of use, however, and it became more widely used by the educated upper classes over time. By 1425, English was used universally again in speech and writing.

Hotspot

Which region of Europe did the

Norman invaders come from?

Multiple Choice

What was the name of this region at the time?

• France

• Brittany

• Normandy

• Norway

Middle English (c. 1066-1500)

• However, the use of Norman French had influenced the English language so much that it had changed completely since the Old English. This new type of English became known as Middle English.

Features of Middle English

• Grammar became much simpler, reflecting the way that the Germanic grammar of Old English and the Romance grammar of Norman French had to co-exist.

• Inflections disappeared, which meant that all plural words now ended in -en, -es, or -s.

Features of Middle English

• The language was heavily influenced by a lexis of French words, especially legal, religious and administrative terms, such as justice, jury, govern and sovereign.

• Thousands of Latin words, found in French, replaced Old English terms.

• An estimated 85% of Old English words fell out of use.

Multiple Select

Which of the following words are from Middle English? Select all the answers you think are correct.

• goat

• weight

• religion

• needle

Multiple Select

Which languages had influenced English by the time of Middle English?

• West Germanic

• Old Norse

• Norman French

• Latin

• Greek

A key example of Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Unlike Beowulf, it is still often read in its original form, although it still presents some challenges in terms of the unusual spellings. Here, on the right, is a manuscript of the text. See if you can read any of it!

The Canterbury Tales

Watch the video on the next slide of someone reading the opening section of The Canterbury Tales in its original Middle English.

How does Middle English sound?

Match

Match the text to the type of English that it was written in.

• Old English

• Middle English

• Early Modern English

• Late Modern English

Beowulf

The Canterbury Tales

Hamlet

Great Expectations

• Beowulf

• The Canterbury Tales

• Hamlet

• Great Expectations

Orthography (i.e. Spelling)

• There was no standard system of spelling for Middle English - people would come up with spellings based on how the words sounded.

• As a result, Middle English texts help to give us some sense of how words were pronounced. For example, a word like "sweete" would be pronounced "sway-ter", since an "e" on the end of a word usually produced a short vowel sound.

The Great Vowel Shift

• At the same time, pronunciation was changing in general, with vowels becoming shorter. For example, leef became life and teem became time.

• This change in pronunciation is known as the Great Vowel Shift. To this day, linguistic historians cannot agree on why it happened . . .

The Great Vowel Shift

• The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the 15th to 18th centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth.

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Open Ended

What happened during the Great Vowel Shift?

A written book from the 1400s

19th century English

• Industrialisation extended the spread of English across the world.

• As new words were needed to describe new ways of living, the English language began to take in loanwords from every continent,

• Under the influence of reforming and simplifying the language, American English began to turn into a distinct variety of English, with its own rules and spelling.

1. Write down an English word for each of the following:
   noun, verb, adjective, adverb, determiner, preposition, coordinator, subordinator, interjection.

2. Look up the etymology of each word

Task

Part 4:
Early Modern English

Middle English (c. 1066-1500)

• When the Normans invaded in 1066, French became the dominant language (of the court, church and nobility) while the rest of the country spoke versions of English.

• English never completely fell out of use, however, and it became more widely used by the educated upper classes over time. By 1425, English was used universally again in speech and writing.

Early Modern English (c. 1500-1800)

• In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to Britain.

• Many texts could now be mass-produced, which meant that there was a move towards standardisation in how they were printed.

• Caxton chose the Southeast dialects (London, Oxford, Cambridge) to print works in, so this soon became the prestige form of English.

An illuminated manuscript from the 1400s

A book made using a printing press and woodcuts from the 1600s

Open Ended

Why might the introduction of printing

have changed the English language?

Features of Early Modern English

• During the European Renaissance, many Greek, Latin and French texts were translated into English, adding a large number of loanwords for new concepts like psychology.

• Global exploration also brought in new words from African, Asian and American languages.

• Shakespeare, among other writers, coined new words.

Multiple Select

Which of the following words are from Early Modern English?

Select all the answers you think are correct.

• submerged

• headshake

• laughable

• dislocate

Influence of Latin

• More than half of our modern English vocabulary is Latinate (of Latin origin). For example: colossal, dignified, emotion and history.

• Most of our affixes come from Latin, such as anti-, post- pre-, -al, -ate, and -ic.

Multiple Choice

By the Early Modern era, many languages had influenced the development of English. Which of the following languages was NOT an influence on English?

• Greek

• Latin

• French

• German

• Norman French

Part 5:
Late Modern English

Late Modern English (c. 1800-present)

• In 1762, Robert Lowth published the first English grammar, which laid out some of the fundamental rules for how to use English.

• From this point onwards, English became more standardised.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson finished the first Dictionary of English. Many writers had attempted this before, but his version was the most comprehensive to date.

Johnson's Dictionary

Prescriptivists and standardisation

• As people attempted to define the lexicon and grammar of English, it led to the view that some nonstandard varieties of English were inferior. People who take this view are known as prescriptivists.

• Latin was upheld as the ideal language and used as the model for English grammar, even though it had a very different structure.

19th century English

• Industrialisation extended the spread of English across the world.

• As new words were needed to describe new ways of living, the English language began to take in loanwords from every continent,

• Under the influence of reforming and simplifying the language, American English began to turn into a distinct variety of English, with its own rules and spelling.

Modern developments

• English is now the primary world language of communication (known as a lingua franca).

• Electronic media such as mobile phones and the Internet have radically changed how we communicate with each other.

• Since the United States dominates the tech industry, American English influences how people use English worldwide.