When we talk about the English Language, we often think that it is a language but only, on the other hand, we see millions of people can communicate through this popular languages, they can greet, they can feel, they can think in the same language, but anyone thought?
What do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries along with those million people around the world have in common, Or how primitive is the language?
Or when and by whom it was founded or does that have any relation with the writings of Chaucer and how they are related to the strange words in Beowulf?
We will try to explore all the unknown facts about the entire history of the English language in this article.
On to the perspective, English has evolved through generations of different speakers and undergone innumerable evolution over time, changing the paths of language and culture simultaneously, and we know it too, only by undoing these changes we can trace the language and reach to its ancient roots to know it better and figure out what are those influences that this language undergone over time and what lot, it has to offer more.
As everyone knows, Modern English shares many words derived from Latin itself, we use in our daily lives, and also, the Romance languages like French and Spanish, descended from the ancestors which was Latin, but those things were not originally part of it. They are the result of the Norman invasion of England in 1066.
When the French-speaking Normans, conquered England and became its ruling class they brought their speech with them, adding a massive amount of vocabulary to the language spoken in England, previously. As time passed they held the prior parts of the accents and dialects that they spoke.
Today we call that language ‘ Old English ‘ – the language of ‘Beowulf’.This is the time when the English language truly starts its journey with the first-ever book written in Old English, though the writer of this ancient book remains unknown, it is quite evident as confirmed by many of the linguists, through the ages.
It probably doesn’t look familiar, but it will be more recognisable if you know German, that’s because ‘Old English‘ belongs to the Germanic language family first brought to the British Isles with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany.
But most of the proto Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders – mainly what is Wales, Scotland and Ireland today.
One important question that comes to mind-
What language did the British communicate in, before the English language came into existence?
Contents
Well before these tribes came and settled, the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Proto (i.e original or primitive ) Celtic language, which was the Brittonic, Brythonic or British Celtic languages(Welsh: ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; Cornish: yethow brythonek/predennek; Breton: yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic.
The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Celtic Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The name Brittonic derives ultimately from the native Brittonic word for the island or its people.
Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. For the early language’s information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names.
This language marks its existence in history from 6th Century BC. Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion at least in the majority of Great Britain south of the rivers Forth and Clyde, though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language.
Influences- Forming the English language
Roman Influences on the English language
To understand the actual events or circumstances that lead to the influences that formed the English Language that we speak today, we need to look at the timeline and reconstructing pieces of history. That will help us deduce all the important factors that are related to the formation of this wonderful language.
To start with, we go back to 54 and 55 B.C.E, when Julius Caeser invaded Britain twice, in the course of his Gallic Wars, conquering the coast of Kent, Middlesex and crossed the Thames forcing the British warlord Cassivelaunus to surrender as the tributary to the capital of Italy and setting up Mandubracius and Trinovantes as the client king.
As Caeser played the key role in raising the Roman Empire, this invasion had major effects, as they came, captured and stayed for some time, they brought their culture and their ‘Proto Latin Language‘ with them.
The Proto Latin is the language that has many influences on lots of other languages, predominant ..especially in Southern Europe. Languages like Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French they all come from Latin and English had also undergone several influences and changes with the help of this Proto Language.
In course of time, how they settled, influencing the inhabitants of England, as everyone spoke to each other and in there dialects too, it was evident that the natives began to learn Latin words and it became integrated into the language.
Few examples of the Latin words that are used till date
ex: Human, Animal, Dental, Decimal, Digital, Factory, Library, Lunar, Solar, Military, Science etc.
Not only when Julius Ceaser, invaded this place called England!
…but Latin continued to come back and influence this language with the other relatable yet significant events, one after another- ‘In 6th century Christianity’ when Roman Emperor Justinian launched a military campaign to reclaim the western provinces from the Germans, starting with North Africa and proceeding to Italy.
Though he was temporarily successful in recapturing much of the western Mediterranean, he destroyed the urban centres and permanently ruined the economies in much of the West. but that’s a different issue altogether, what we have to acknowledge is the immense contribution they had left, through their culture, their dialects on the language.
Another notable event in this period, when St. Augustin came and started converting people to Christianity, it also paved the way for Latin influence on the language as well.
The German Influence on the English language
As we have already discussed the Germanic tribes, Angles, Saxons and Jutes who migrated from west Germany and settled at England, during the 5th century, it is when it started the journey for Anglo Saxon Language or “Old English” the language in which Beowulf was written clearly shows the impact of the German on English.
Latin and German are the two languages that had helped and had contributed immensely in shaping the road for far many other languages to make their existence including English. well, Latin got its origin from the Romans but questions still remain about the German Language origin.
French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish, these languages and other various Romance languages are descended from Latin.
Likewise, English, Swedish and German and many other languages descended from their common ancestors ‘ The Proto-Germanic Language ‘ spoken around in 500 B.C.E, because this historical language is never been written down we only can reconstruct it by comparing it to its descendants- the language called ‘Proto Indo-European’ spoken around 4500 BC to 2500 BC as a single language on the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Russia.
Which other languages had German influence?
Many languages that come from German influences, include Old English, Middle English, Old Norse and Dutch.
Which English words are derived from German?
Few examples of English words that are derived from German are:
ex: Above, Again, And, Apple, Cake, Eat, Drink, Bread, Eye, Feet, Arm, Boy and Girl.
Not only Latin and German, but there are other languages also which had a significant influence on the language includes Greek, French, Hebrew.
Let’s see some of the Greek words that are used in the English language
Ex: Academic, Android, Basic, Climate, Cinema, Democracy, Economy, Geography, History, Ideas, Politics, Technology.
Statistical analysis of the languages that influenced the English
The Vikings influence on the English language
There have been speculations for some time by the historians that there was an overpopulation problem in Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th century. Something like this could have lead to a lack of fertile land and therefore forced the leaders of their local societies to use an ancient custom to resolve this problem, the drawing of lots.
This ancient custom was widespread in Scandinavia during the Viking age, and this method of drawing lots, to prevent famine in Scandinavia has been documented in books such as in the saga from Gotland, the Gutasaga.
The losers in these drawings were forced to leave their homeland with all their belongings and were condemned to live abroad. They might have had no other option than to fight people on the British Isles, to get a hold on some of that precious fertile land, so they could feed their families.
Vikings migrated to England because of the lack of land in Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th-century, tens of thousands of people from Norway and Denmark crossed the sea and sailed to the British Isles to settle in England.
It is estimated that from Denmark alone 35.000 people immigrated to England, it might sound like a very low number, but at the time it was around the same number of people who lived in London.
Vikings changed the English Language because of the immigration from Scandinavia, the language the newcomers spoke had a big influence on the English language. It is difficult to say if it was the Danes or Norwegians who affected the English language the most because the two languages are so similar.
And of course, neither the Danes nor the Norwegians speak the same language as they did 1000 years ago in Scandinavia. The language the Vikings spoke was called ‘old Nordisk’ or directly translated into English Old Nordic, or as it is mostly referred to, Old Norse.
But something is for certain the Viking legacy is still very much alive in the British Isles and many towns in England still has the Nordic word for town, which is the word ”by”. For instance, the town Helperby in northern Yorkshire originates from two Nordic words put together. Helper which comes from the female name Hjalp and the Nordic word for a town which was ”by”.
Towns and places like Thornby, Denaby, Aby, Crosby, Earby, Thornaby, Kirby Cross, Hemsby are all probably founded by either the Danes or the Norwegians, so if your family has lived in these towns for many generations, you might be a descendant of the Vikings. But there are many more towns founded by the Vikings, in fact, the number is somewhere in the thousands, and that is just in England.
VIKING TOWNS ARE IN THE DOMESDAY BOOK But we have to keep in mind that we cannot be 100% certain which towns that were founded by the Vikings. Since most places in England was not regis- tered before the year 1086, when King William the Conqueror, ordered that all the owners of all the land in England and parts of Wales had to be written down for taxation purpose. All this information was put together in what would be known as the Domesday book.
But it was not just towns, roads and places that have names that originate from the Vikings. As I said earlier the English language has had a big influence on it from the Vikings. In fact, the words you use on daily basis, when you speak English, are full of old Norse words.
English words such as sister come from the word “systir” in old Norse, the word for window comes from vindauga, and even common words such as ”take” comes from the old Norse word vanta. There are many many more words in the English language that originates from Old Norse, so I made a shortlist below for you to check out.
ex: Arm: Arm, Bag: Baggi, Cake: Kaka, Child: Bairn, Club: Klubba, Die: Deyja, Egg: Eir/Egg, Fellow: Félagi, Freckle: Freknur, Guest: Gestr, Husband: Húsbóndi, Knife: Knifr, Knot: Knutr, Lad: Ladd, Law: Lagu, Loose: Lauss, Mistake: Mistaka, Outlaw: Utlagi, Plow: Plogr, Race: Rás, Raise: Reisa, Rot: Rót etc.
What is Proto-Germanic?
Proto-Germanic is the ancestor of all Germanic languages, old as well as modern. It is a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It was spoken in northern mainland Europe and southern Scandinavia, more or less during the time of the Roman Republic and also in dialectal form during the early period of the Roman Empire (up till about the 1st century CE).
No written records of Proto-Germanic exist except for the disputed word ‘harja’ in the Vimose inscription from 160 AD (likely too late to be considered Proto-Germanic), but the words and grammar of the language have been reconstructed by linguists.
Being an unattested language, Proto-Germanic is not included in the main namespace. If a form is not attested in a language, but it can be reconstructed based on a form appearing in a descendant of that language (for example when Old English is unattested, but Middle English is attested), then its reconstructed form(s) may be provided with an asterisk * as is usual for unattested terms.
If a certain descendant does not exist, do not reconstruct it if it does not itself have a descendant: for example, don’t reconstruct Old English if no Middle English or Modern English descendant exists. Most of the time, Gothic should not be reconstructed at all as it has no direct descendants, although borrowings (if the Gothic donor term can be ascertained) may serve as a rare basis for reconstruction.
As a special exception, it’s preferred not to include Frankish reconstructions unless a language other than Dutch has a term derived from it (for example French or Medieval Latin).
When descended in the usual, linear fashion, descendants are always listed in the following order, just for the sake of consistency.
The Germanic Language Family Hierarchy
So, when someone asks, what was the first language used on earth? OR what is the mother of all languages?
The answer is ‘The Proto Indo-European Language'(PIE) is the theorized common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Some oldest languages typically mentioned are – Tamil, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek and Arabic.
Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is by far the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The vast majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter proto-languages (such as Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-Iranian), and most of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result.
PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has also provided insight into the culture and religion of its speakers.
As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged from each other, as each dialect underwent different shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary.
Thus these dialects slowly but eventually transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages.
Today, the descendant languages, or daughter languages, of PIE with the most native speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Marathi, Italian, and Gujarati.
PIE is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English life, lives, life’s, lives’) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, for example, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung) and accent.
PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension, and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed.
Asterisks are used as a conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as *wódr̥, *ḱwṓ, or *tréyes; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water, hound, and three, respectively.
Language family tree to understand it better
What is the origin of the Names “England” and “English”?
The Celts called their Germanic conquerors Saxons indiscriminately, probably because they had had their first contact with the Germanic peoples through the Saxon raids on the coast.
Early Latin writers, following Celtic usage, generally call the Germanic inhabitants of England Saxones and the land Saxonia. But soon the terms Angli and Anglia occur beside Saxones and refer not to the Angles individually but to the West Germanic tribes generally.
Æthelbert, king of Kent, is styled rex Anglorum by Pope Gregory in 601, and a century later, Bede called his history the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. In time Angli and Anglia become the usual terms in Latin texts. From the beginning, however, writers in the vernacular never call their language anything but Englisc (English).
The word is derived from the name of the Angles (OE Engle) but is used without distinction for the language of all the invading tribes. In like manner, the land and its people are early called Angelcynn (Angle-kin or race of the Angles), and this is the common name until after the Danish period. From about the year 1000 Englaland (land of the Angles) begins to take its place.
The name English is thus older than the name England. It is not easy to say why England should have taken its name from the Angles. Possibly a desire to avoid confusion with the Saxons who remained on the continent and the early supremacy of the Anglian kingdoms were the predominant factors in determining usage.
