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The emergence of English
The Rise of English
The emergence of English
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The history of the English language started small and is now one of the most common languages used today. It started with Old English(Anglo- Saxon), then Middle English, and now is Modern English! It went from having small words and not being very known to 375 million people speaking it as their first language. English has evolved our technology, sciences, and even the books we read. Most People only know the root is mostly latin but there is much more to this language than that. It evolved from many places and many important people.
The English language starts in about 450 AD. when the Anglos and Saxons ( Anglo- Saxons) invade Britain. The Anglos and the Saxons combined were estimated to only be about 3,000 men. They were a small group but started a large chain reaction that would help create the english language. They brought us everyday words like loaf, house, women and even named 4 days of the week of of anglo gods. Most of the gods were people named off of things in nature.
Around 597 AD. Christian Missionaries started to come and brought us some words like martyr and bishop. The Christian Missionaries came in and started to change what the Anglo-Saxons believed in. They were led by St. Augustine during this time. They then started to teach us about the Latin language and start to put them into our English language.
Not much later after this time Vikings started to come in. They brought violent words like thrust and die but also brought us words like take and give. They would rule and control most if not all of Eastern England for quite a while(hundreds of years). The Vikings started to help devolop a
Later around the time of 1066 a man named William the conqueror invaded Britain. He brought some concepts of the French la...
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...d take 70 years to be mad and was finished in 1928. The dictionaries today contain 220,000 words and are still revised to this day.
When the british first got to America we got our words like racoon and moosed! These words traveled the world when the british were traveling back. During this time cities and towns would start to civilize and come together. We started to get skyscrapers, and highways, and businesses would start to be built in small towns and civilizations.
Then we started to get into technology! Around the time of 1972 the very first email was sent. Internet was becoming more popular and less people were starting to handwrite and more were now using the cool new technology to email. This brought us our abbreviations like BTW, FYI and FAQ. This would make english more easy to communicate and help people around the world to communicate to each other.
Kapelle, W.E. ‘The Norman conquest of the North:The region and its transformation 1000-1135’ (Croom Helm 1979)
There have been many influential influences to the English culture throughout its hundreds of years of existence, but there was one man who arguably was one of the most important figures to have ever changed the course of English culture forever. This man was no inventor who sparked a new age, nor an artist who introduced a romantic theme. Shockingly, this man was not even of English descent, but rather a conqueror from a foreign land. He is most well known as William the Conqueror and the date 1066, is remembered as the year of his arrival to Anglo-Saxon England when he began the famous Norman invasion. This alien invader to the British island was a Duke in the northern region of France. To be more specific, he was the Duke of Normandy, a province of France whose culture was descended from the Norse influence of Vikings. In a series of tactfully genius military battles, William the Conqueror captured the English throne. Few figures in history can boast of conquering an entire nation and even less can claim that they kept control and influenced their new lands. After his invasion and being crowned king of England, William began to dig into England like a tick and his Norman culture spread. William had pulled off an amazing feat through his invasion in England and as well as his earlier life when he rose to power in Normandy which allowed him to embark on such rigorous campaign.
In 793 A.D., a small tidal island off the northeast coast of England known as Lindisfarne was home to the first Viking raid in history. The monastery on the island was a well-known holy place at the time. Its priests were slaughtered and the monastery was plundered of all its treasures. Shortly after the attack, leading Christian figure Alcuin deemed it the worst atrocity Britain had ever witnessed by the pagans. He did not know that this raid would become the first of many and would indicate the beginning of a time known as the Viking Age. In his book The Vikings: A History, Robert Ferguson discusses this age in great detail and analyzes its importance to Western Civilization.
800 to 1100 AD. This name may be derived from the old Norse vik(bay or
One of the many permutations that language has made is into what is collectively known as English. This particular tongue was brought to the British Isles in the Sixth Century CE by Northern Europeans or “Germanic” people. (Kemmer) It followed English colonists around the world, including areas in North America, which will be the subject of this essay.
Before the period of the middle ages, the British Isles mostly lay dormant in local disputes and settlements of small tribes. Up until the late 900’s, the Anglos and the Saxons laid their claim to the land of Britain. However, this all soon changed. An ambitions individual with hero-like characteristics set foot and conquered the Anglo-Saxons and started Britain on its journey to modernism. Thus, the tide was set in motion for a new government and a civilized race. A monarchy was established, and the Middle ages began in roughly 975 AD (Vinogradoff, p 18).
As we mentioned above, one of influences that has made changes in English language over time is foreign
In Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Johnson argues the importance of preserving language. Other dialects had a produced their own dictionaries, such as the French and Italians. Various writers of the eighteenth century were alarmed at the fact that there was no standard for the English language, since there was no standard it could easily become extinct. Johnson explored many points, such as how and why languages change as well as how many words are formed.
The Angles were a Germanic tribe that occupied the region which is now Scleswig-Holstein, Germany. With their fellow ethnic groups, they formed the people who came to be known as the English. The Saxons were a Germanic people who first appeared in the beginning of the Christian era. The Saxons were said to have lived in the south Jutland Peninsula in the north of what is now Germany, but the fact has not been proven. They attacked and raided areas in the North Sea throughout the third and fourth centuries. By the end of the sixth century, the Saxons had taken all of the Roman territory within north-west Germany, as far as the Elbe River. The Angles joined the Saxons in the invasion of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. British resistance to the 'Anglo Saxon' invaders in the second half of the fifth century ended with the Anglo Saxon’s victory at the battle of Mount Badon. After the British were defeated, though, the Angles and the Saxons continued to fight over their religion for many years (Irvin, Vacca, Probst, Beers, p.46).
The Middle Ages encompass one of the most turbulent periods in English History. Starting with the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest. When Duke William of Normandy, better known as William the Conqueror effectively took all of the lands from the Saxon English and gave them to French nobles. there were some points that took my attention the
The English language arose from the early Anglo Saxon inhabitants in ancient England and spread to Scotland and other European countries via the British Empire and later to the United States through colonial political and economical influences. It later dispersed to other parts of the world through these same influences to become one of the leading languages of the world. It has over the years developed by adopting different dialects to create a language, which is the standard lingual Franca in many countries. The rapid growth of the English language and its adoption by different cultures across the globe is sufficient ground to make it the global language.
... language. The earliest forms of French was called Old French and lasted until the fifteenth century. Modern day French was developed from the dominant dialect in the twelfth and thirteenth century in central France, around Paris. Norman French, located in northern France, spread to England in the eleventh century and became known as Anglo-Norman as it developed in England but English eventually dominated and wiped it out. Occitan was spoken in the South and developed greatly during the Middle Ages until the North overtook them in the early thirteenth century. Occitan can still be found in southern France today (Fortson 258). Spanish
Standardization of the English Language There are several important events before 1500 that, when listed together, show a series of steps in the struggle for English language supremacy. These steps are mainly governmental, legal and official events that pushed English usage. In 1356 The Sheriff's Court in London and Middlesex were conducted in English for the first time. When Parliament opened in 1362 the Statute of Pleading was issued declaring English as a language of the courts as well as of Parliament, but it was not until 1413 that English became the official language of the courts everywhere. Thirteen years later in 1423, Parliament records start being written in English.
Old English (450-1100 AD), which is also referred to as Anglo-Saxon, is thought historically to be the earliest form of the English language. Originating with the arrival of three West Germanic tribes, who encroached
Before the English came to America, they all lived in England. There were no major varieties in England because the English people lived in the same place and pretty much talked the same. They were all going along their merry way until...