Five Events that Shaped the History of English
Philip Durkin, Principal Etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary, chooses five events that shaped the English Language.
1. The Anglo-Saxon Settlement
It's never easy to pinpoint exactly when a specific language began,
but in the case of English we can at least say that there is little
sense in speaking of the English language as a separate entity before
the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. Little is known of this period with
any certainty, but we do know that Germanic invaders came and settled in
Britain from the north-western coastline of continental Europe in the
fifth and sixth centuries. The invaders all spoke a language that was
Germanic (related to what emerged as Dutch, Frisian, German and the
Scandinavian languages, and to Gothic), but we'll probably never know
how different their speech was from that of their continental
neighbours. However it is fairly certain that many of the settlers would
have spoken in exactly the same way as some of their north European
neighbours, and that not all of the settlers would have spoken in the
same way.
2. The Scandinavian Settlements
The next invaders were the Norsemen. From the middle of the ninth
century large numbers of Norse invaders settled in Britain, particularly
in northern and eastern areas, and in the eleventh century the whole of
England had a Danish king, Canute. The distinct North Germanic speech
of the Norsemen had great influence on English, most obviously seen in
the words that English has borrowed from this source. These include some
very basic words such as take and even grammatical words such as they.
The common Germanic base of the two languages meant that there were
still many similarities between Old English and the language of the
invaders. Some words, for example give, perhaps show a kind of hybridization with some spellings going back to Old English and others being Norse in origin.
3. 1066 and after
The centuries after the Norman Conquest witnessed enormous changes in
the English language. In the course of what is called the Middle
English period, the fairly rich inflectional system of Old English broke
down. It was replaced by what is broadly speaking, the same system
English has today, which unlike Old English makes very little use of
distinctive word endings in the grammar of the language. The vocabulary
of English also changed enormously, with tremendous numbers of
borrowings from French and Latin, in addition to the Scandinavian
loanwords already mentioned, which were slowly starting to appear in the
written language.
4. Standardization
The late medieval and early modern periods saw a fairly steady
process of standardization in English south of the Scottish border. The
written and spoken language of London continued to evolve and gradually
began to have a greater influence in the country at large. For most of
the Middle English period a dialect was simply what was spoken in a
particular area, which would normally be more or less represented in
writing - although where and from whom the writer had learnt how to
write were also important. It was only when the broadly London standard
began to dominate, especially through the new technology of printing,
that the other regional varieties of the language began to be seen as
different in kind. As the London standard became used more widely,
especially in more formal contexts and particularly amongst the more
elevated members of society, the other regional varieties came to be
stigmatized, as lacking social prestige and indicating a lack of
education.
5. Colonization and Globalization
During the medieval and early modern periods the influence of English
spread throughout the British Isles, and from the early seventeenth
century onwards its influence began to be felt throughout the world. The
complex processes of exploration, colonization and overseas trade that
characterized Britain’s external relations for several centuries led to
significant change in English. Words were absorbed from all over the
world, often via the languages of other trading and imperial nations
such as Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. At the same time, new
varieties of English emerged, each with their own nuances of vocabulary
and grammar and their own distinct pronunciations. More recently still,
English has become a lingua franca, a global language,
regularly used and understood by many nations for whom English is not
their first language. The eventual effects on the English language of
both of these developments can only be guessed at today, but there can
be little doubt that they will be as important as anything that has
happened to English in the past sixteen hundred years.
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