The English language as we know it today represents the culmination of over two millennia of conquest, invasion and cultural assimilation. Unlike many of the world's other languages, which have developed their distinctions from parent languages through geographic isolation and institutional codification, English has been transplanted all over the world, allowed to grow and change and be expropriated by other peoples and cultures with little or no restrictions on its use. That is a good part of the reason why English continues to dominate today as an international language - its ownership is by no means fiercely guarded by English speakers. Anyone can learn to speak English and still incorporate words and even entire phrases from their native tongue, and be fairly certain that their neologisms will be accepted by other like-minded English speakers.
The entire first period of the development of the language is referred to as "Old English," and covers everything from ancient times up until the year 1066. Old English has its roots in the native Britons who inhabited England from pre-historic times, Germanic tribes such as the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes who emigrated from continental Europe, the Romans, who first arrived to conquer and colonize the island in 53 BCE, and the Vikings, who first plundered and then settled the north of England after the Roman pull-out.
Old English is unintelligible to a modern reader, and a moder listener would not understand someone speaking it. It was a spoken language, rather than a written one. Travelling bards, or "scops" were the keepers of Old English literature, and they had a repertoire of epic stories and poems that they could perform in Mead Halls, at court, or anywhere else they could secure a paying audience. Some of the these stories were later recorded, and thus we have works like "Caedmon's Hymn" and "Beowulf." Old English even had humor, as we can see from the "Anglo-Saxon Riddles," a series of verses describing (often in an oblique or sexually-suggestive manner) people, animals and inanimate objects, then pressing the reader to guess what they are.
In 1066 William of Normandy successfully invaded England to become William I. The Norman Conquest left England with French-speaking nobles and an English-speaking peasantry. But instead of French becoming dominant many of its words were absorbed into the native tongue, and the new language that emerged out of this period is known as Middle English.
Middle English is more or less intelligible to a modern reader, and with a little practice a modern speaker can even read Middle English verses aloud. We have much more surviving literature from Middle English than we do from Old English, the bulk of it belonging to Geoffrey Chaucer, undoubtedly the era's greatest author. Chaucer's major work, The Canterbury Tales, forms one of the most complete and colourful depictions of the lives of everyday people in Medieval England that we have.
Middle English verse made extensive use of alliteration (a left over from Old English), most notably in works such as "Piers Plowman," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Drama also began to be written outside of the church during this period, though the playwrights were almost certainly clerics (we don't know because they didn't sign their works). Morality plays like "Everyman" and the pageant plays of York, Chester and other towns all point to a burgeoning English drama well before the age of Shakespeare.
Around 1500 the period known as "Modern English" began. This change was marked by several developments. There was "the great vowel shift" when for some reason (presumably the natural evolution of our vocal cords) English speakers started pronouncing words more with the tip of their tongues than the back of their throats. Presumably this would have made the language less clunky and guttural. Around this time William Caxton also introduced the printing press to England, which began a process of codifying spelling and grammar, replacing local conventions with one Pan-English standard. The Renaissance was in full swing by 1500, so words from the Greco-Roman texts now being used to teach young people were working their way into the language. England's grand colonial experiment was also just beginning, and the process of assimilating words from other cultures was already underway.
Since 1500 the English language has undergone many more changes. The British Empire stretched around the world at its height, and native peoples from the Americas, the Carribean, the Middle East, Africa, India, Australia, Oceania, and even The Orient have all shaped what today's English language looks and sounds like. At the same time English people have emigrated and settled all over the world, giving rise to American English, Canadian English, Australian English, South African English and many, many others.
As time goes on the English language will undoubtedly continue to grow and change and be expropriated by other cultures - that is the secret to its longevity and durability. In another few hundred years it's entirely possible that the language as we know it today will be completely different, and equally possible that by that time it will have become so prevalent that it will have become the de facto language of the human race.Read more…
Ottawa International Poets and Writers for human Rights (OIPWHR)
