The English language as we know it has enjoyed quite the ride as its travelled through time to become what it is today.
Let’s take a look at it, right from the very beginning and trace its roots through to the modern version we know now.
English, as with most other European languages, began with what’s recognised as the period of the Indo-Europeans or Proto-Indo-Europeans – this was during the late Stone Age, around 5000BC. There’s very little information about the construction of the language as written records don’t exist but research by modern linguists suggests that it was most similar to modern Lithuanian. Indo-European is by far the most influential of the language families from which modern day languages descend with almost half of all the languages around the globe tracing their origins to it.
For the next 2000-3000 years Indo-European began to split into various branches, and English can trace its roots specifically to the Germanic branch within the split.
Along came the Celts who occupied Britain from around 800BC. Interestingly their language had very little long term impact on English – neither did the Romans who permanently occupied Britain from 43AD. After they withdrew in 436AD, the legacy of old Latin was all but lost, and we see more of a fusion of Angle, Saxon and languages of subsequent invaders.
It was the invasion of the Germanic tribes from 500AD which then grew organically over the next few hundred years that saw the Celts pushed further north and west, and the Anglo-Saxon era was born. This is where we see literacy start to come alive – initially with the alphabet of runes that was then taken over by an easier to read Roman alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries. It’s from this point that English literature and the evolution of the English language starts to leap forward. “Old English” as it’s known and it’s within this period that we see the oldest surviving English literature text, which is “Cædmon’s Hymn”, composed some time between 658 and 680.
Old English was incredibly complicated. Nouns had 3 genders – male, female and neuter. There were no silent letters in spelling and where the vowels were long, a length mark or ‘diacritic’ was used to show it – for example, god ‘God’ and gōd ‘good’.
Next we see the emergence of Middle English where the language became influenced by French words following the Norman invasion. It made the language more refined with more precision but the Norman dominance meant that English as a language deteriorated into having official status and no regulation. In fact it remarkably become the third language in its own country!
With the founding of Oxford and Cambridge universities in 1167 and 1209 we see education taking a leap forward, and with it, literacy continues to increase. Whilst there were a number of dialects around the country, this time period saw the East Midlands and London dominate in the commercial world, and soon they also became the dominant dialects. English became much more recognisable to the language we now today – by the 14th century we see Chaucer in action, and whilst it may be difficult to read for us in the modern day, it’s very much a recognisable form of English. Noun genders almost disappeared and the subject-verb-object word order that we see in modern English became more commonly used. This period was known as the Great Vowel Shift where all Middle English long vowels changed their pronunciation and some consonant sounds also changed, most notably those that became silent.
The English renaissance from the 14th century is often referred to as the Age of Shakespeare. Latin still dominated scholars and education, and any new words that emerged in the period were generally not as a result of invasions as we’d seen previously, but were borrowed deliberately. The single biggest influence that was the final factor in the development of English into what we know today was the invention of the printing press. This reduced the cost of producing books, which made them more accessible to the masses and as a result, literacy boomed.
One thing’s for sure, the English language we know today is a rich tapestry that takes elements from the past, is influenced by a wide range of languages and our colonial aspirations. No matter the incredible journey that the English language has undergone, it steadfastly remains the most influential language across the globe.