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The History / Origins of the English Language


  • Introduction
  • The Romans
  • Germanic Tribes
  • Latin
  • The Viking’s
  • Scandinavians
  • King Edward
  • Westminster
  • The Norman’s
  • Twelfth Century
  • The French Language
  • Fourteenth Century
  • Plague
  • Language of Business
  • Poetry and Stories
  • John Wycliffe
  • William Langland
  • The Parliament and English
  • Grammar
  • William Tyndale
  • Coverdale Bible and the King James Version
  • William Shakespeare
  • Classic English Literature
  • The British Empire and the expansion of English
  • Industrial Revolution
  • Britain, the Nazis and the BBC
  • World War Two and the American’s
  • Communication Revolution and the Entertainment Industry
  • The Internet
  • English helps spread the gospel!
  • The Non Rhyming English Words









































    • The History / Origins of the English Language

    Britain was first inhabited around 4000BC after God confused the people’s languages at Babel and the people were scattered all over the earth. The Hallstatt, Celts and the Beaker people all arrived bringing parts of their culture and various languages with them (Genesis 11:7-9).

    Various branches of Indo-European people arrived over the centuries from about 1000BC. Probably the wealth of the land, wild animals for food, relative protection on an island and the opportunity for one to have a kingdom brought people to Britain.

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    The Romans

    The Romans came to Britain in 55BC and left about 400AD, but in many ways they had very little influence on the people.

    Germanic Tribes

    In the fifth century the Germanic tribes of lowland Europe came to Britain in search of new lands. The language spoken then would have been similar to Friesland in Holland today. By the sixth century they were in control of half of mainland Britain and the country was divided into kingdoms, which were ruled by their own King, Prince, Lord, or Earl each of whom spoke his own dialect; from which came Old English or Anglo-Saxon.

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    Latin

    The kingdoms were named after their ruler. There was Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, Northumbria, Mercia (Midlands) and East Anglia from which we get the word England. In 597 Augustine was sent from Rome to Kent.

    Irish monks landed in the North. By the 6th century churches were being built. With these Christian missionary scholars came Latin, the language of Christianity and scholarship. Latin Root words were being introduced into the language and Old English was written down for the first time using Latin letters.

    A monk called Bede started to write the history of the English-speaking people. Bede lived in a monastery in Lindisfarne (Holy Island), which, in 793, was burnt to the ground by the Danish Vikings. All the treasure of the written language was destroyed. The invasions/pillaging carried on for another seventy years and Latin faced extinction.

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    The Viking’s

    In 865 the Vikings sent a massive army to conquer the land. After five years all but Wessex, which was ruled by King Alfred, had succumbed to the invaders. Alfred was known as the defender of the English Language. He made guerrilla attacks against the Vikings. In 878 he mustered 4000 men to fight against 5000 Vikings on the Western edge of Salisbury plain.

    A peace treaty was signed, the Viking leader got baptised and a border was set up to keep the two groups of people apart; the exception being for trade. Danish words started to filter into the English Language. After his victory Alfred allowed the Danes to keep their conquests in Mercia and East Anglia provided that Guthrum their King was converted to Christianity. Alfred built a navy of warships to defend the south coast against further Danish invasions and protected Wessex with a chain of fortifications. He took London in 886, thus gaining control of all England except the Danish areas.

    By 850 the scholarly traditions had fallen away. Alfred who had his capital at Winchester wanted to teach the people the language that they spoke. He got some monks to translate five books, which were distributed to twelve Bishops who taught other people the wisdom that they could read and understand.

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    Scandinavians

    There was a time in the Old English period when the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) and English were mutually understandable. Scandinavians can still pretty much understand each other's dialects.

    The strong influence of Latin, mostly through the church and scholars, and the Norman invasion of England brought about significant changes in the language. By the Tenth Century many Scandinavian words entered the language; English even borrows pronouns like them, their and they.

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    King Edward

    In 1042 King Edward the Confessor became King. He had spent many years in Normandy and was like a brother to William (The Conqueror) Duke of Normandy. Nearing his imminent death in 1066, he made Harold swear allegiance to William whilst in Normandy. When Edward died having no children, Harold ascended the throne, which incensed William. In 1066 a battle ensued near Hastings. Legend has it that Harold was shot in the eye with an arrow and died.

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    Westminster

    Edward's greatest achievement was the construction of a new cathedral, where virtually all-English monarchs from William the Conqueror onward would be crowned. It was determined that the Cathedral should not be built in London, and so a place was found to the West of the City (hence "Westminster"). The new church was consecrated at Christmas, 1065. Edward could not attend due to illness.

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    The Norman’s

    William Duke of Normandy took power. For the next three centuries there would be no English speaking King. William spoke French, and French and Latin were the languages of the State, church, law and history. English writing became rare.

    The Normans brought not only their army but also their architecture. They built the White Tower that is on the banks of the River Thames, a symbol of their authority. William’s men took over all power within the State and the church. A Monk wrote that no Englishman was an Earl, Bishop or an Abbot. The English (Anglo-Saxon) Chronicles which had been recorded for the last 650 years declined one by one from 1066 onwards; there was nothing like them in main- land Europe. The Peterborough Chronicle was the last one written.

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    Twelfth Century

    By the twelfth century 90% of the people spoke English, from the South coast to the uplands of Southern Scotland. West Wales and the North of Scotland’s language and culture were still Celtic. Grammar was now being simplified and more plurals were added where as a plural in times gone by was another word. E.g. naman, (old English for names) became names. Prepositions were being used more than the old word endings and the word order was becoming more fixed.

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    The French Language

    In 1154 Henry II became king. The French introduced to us the language of cavalier and chivalry, words like damsel and jousts. With their poetry and songs, we heard about courtly love, pain and joy, which had been unheard of in English composition. Svner ir lamen Im = summer is coming; part of a song from 1225 in old English written using the Latin letters (as best as can be done on a qwerty keyboard!).

    The common folk lived on the land and laboured, while the French rulers lived in castles and feasted. The local people served their masters so the noble’s language of French filtered in to daily usage. About 10,000 French words were added to English vocabulary. The wool trade made many ‘common’ folk rich, and much of the money was used to build large churches. The services were still held in Latin. In the thirteenth century the population of London had doubled. The fashion was to take French names, like Richard or William, so many old English names are preserved only in writing.

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    The French Language Continued

    In 1204 Normandy was taken over by France. As the land of the French nobility had been taken over, their language and culture started to lose its hold in England. With their identities lost, and the lack of connection with their old country, the nobles started to marry English women. By the 13th century the majority of the children were brought up bilingual, with English as their first language, which was spoken by their Mums and Nannies.

    French was still the language of trade and from the East came Arabic words such as Saffron and Syrup. Shades of differences enriched the English language, words like freedom and liberty, room and chamber; words that are interchangeable yet have their own distinct meaning.

    By the end of the thirteenth century, Latin had become the business of trade. In 1295 the French King Phillipe threatened invasion. King Edward of England rallied the people of the land using the English language as a medium and made it a symbol of the country, but Latin and French were still the languages of State affairs. The invasion never came.

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    Fourteenth Century

    By the fourteenth century, wherever you were, young or old, educated or not, all knew English. The French songs were translated into written English and more poets emerged. Moral Christian analogies, written in English, were emerging, based on the ways animals and birds performed. This example is from the late 13th century: Dis Deuel is mikel wil = The devil is like (the) whale.

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    Plague

    In 1348 rats from the Continent arrived on a ship carrying the Black Death (Bubonic plague) and docked near Weymouth. The plague travelled east and then north.

    It is estimated that between one quarter and one third of the population died, out of the four million inhabitants. Whole communities were wiped out and there became a shortage of workers.

    Those that were left demanded higher wages and some broke away from their feudal past and became powerful and educated. Half of the Latin-speaking clergy died, as many lived in close quarters in monasteries and attended their dying parishioners. Semi-literate laymen replaced these clergy and English services became widespread.

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    Language of Business

    In 1362 English became the language of business. By 1385 English had taken over from French in the schoolroom and books were in high demand. English was now finding a place in Law and State as most of the French lawyers had died in the plague.

    In Medieval Britain church attendance was compulsory. There was only the Roman Church (Catholic) and all services were in Latin. Most of the people only understood a handful of words. In 1376 plays were being performed based on the Bible stories, a bit like a soap opera or a modern day nativity play, and they are still performed today in Chaucer's English in York.

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    Poetry and Stories

    In 1387 Jeffery Chaucer an English poet and writer firmly established English as the language for stories and poetry as medieval literature blossomed. One of his books was the Canterbury Tales.

    Chaucer himself added words into our vocabulary via his stories; the noun hard became difficult and unconning became ignorant. Old discarded words, from the eleventh century were reintroduced; frendli became friendly and willingli became willingly. Through his writings came the standard form for English. The London dialect for the first time begins to be recognised as the Standard. Other dialects were relegated to a less prestigious position, even those that earlier served as standards like the Wessex dialect of southwest England.

    Chaucer 1343-1400. This is a passage from the prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour.

    The Bishop of Gloucester asked 311 clergy from his diocese about the Ten Commandments. 168 of the clergy could not repeat them, 31 did not know where they were from and 40 of them were unable to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. The clergy were also lazy and corrupt. Many were uneducated and ignorant in Latin.

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    John Wycliffe

    John Wycliffe was a charismatic scholar, theologian, and philosopher and was fluent in Latin. In 1380 he started at Oxford, England to translate the Bible from Latin into English so that all people could read and understand for themselves the Word of God.

    Wycliffe wanted everyone to understand God’s word and was opposed to the church’s extreme wealth at the cost of her flock. This work was unauthorised and illegal. Wycliffe and his workers worked ceaselessly writing each page by hand on a production line. By 1382 it was an instant best seller; embraced by the lay people but condemned by the church. Seventy original Bibles still remain intact today.

    With this translation came new words into the English vocabulary, such as: birthday, crime, humanity, madness, pollute and zeal. About 1000 Latin words were also added such as: justice, angle and glory. The only problem with the translation was that the English had been copied word for word from the Latin and was written in the Latin word order. ‘Lord go from me for I am a man sinner.’

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    John Wycliffe Continued

    Genesis 1:1 ‘In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth for so earth was idle and void.’

    Genefis 1:1 ‘in ye begynnyng god made of noint heuene and euye fouove veeuye ye euyo was idel.’

    Wycliffe trained and sent out itinerant preachers throughout the country to preach to the people in English and to condemn the ungodly and anti- biblical practices of the Church of Rome. These followers were called ‘Lollards’.

    In 1382 at Blackfriars, London, the church denounced the translation as heresy along with any adherents to it such as the Lollards. Many were martyred. A parliamentary ban was enforced so no translation into English could be legally produced, punishable by death.

    Wycliffe died of an illness in 1390. But the ball had started to roll.

    In 1414 Wycliffe was condemned as a heretic. In 1428 his bones were exhumed from holy ground and burnt. The ashes were thrown into a tributary of the River Avon. A Lollard prophesied: "The Avon to the Severn runs, the Severn to the sea, and Wycliffe’s dust shall spread abroad as wide as the water be."

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    William Langland

    In 1390 a poet called William Langland wrote ‘Piers Ploughman’ which he had received in a series of dreams. It was the first Christian poem written in English. It was an analogy of the Christian life and the corruption within the church. This was written before ‘Pilgrims Progress’.

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    The Parliament and English

    In 1399 Henry, Duke of Lancaster, became Henry IV and Parliament was opened for the first time in English. In 1417 Henry V wrote court documents in English. A standard form of English was needed but the problem was that there were lots of different dialects and spellings. E.g. the word church was spelt six different ways in the North and eight different ways in the South.

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    Grammar

    The Chancellery (civil servants) set about this task, but they made grave errors. E.g. goose singular, geese plural; mouse singular, mice plural. It could have been gooses and mouses but this is not correct English.

    This is why we always have exceptions to our grammar rules e.g. ‘I before e except after c’; piece and receive are both spelt correctly. Within one hundred years vowel were pronounced differently which caused different spelling for various words, which were not used in official documents. Even today we have different pronunciations of words, some of which are spelt the same e.g. getting close to God, close the door. By the end of the fifteenth century Caxton introduced the Gutenburg printing press from Mentz onto English soil. This helped with the standardising of spelling throughout the country. Chaucer’s books were best sellers.

    Here is an extract of a letter published against Martin Luther of Germany (Reformation) by the Pope Leo X on the 12 May 1521.

    The xii daye of Maye in the yeare of our Lord 1521 and in the thirteenth yeare of the raigne of our souerainge Lord King Henry the eighthe of that name the Lord Thomas Wolcey by the grace of god…came vnto Saint Paules Church of London…

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    William Tyndale

    Henry VIII helped the Pope to burn all heretical books. William Tyndale 1496-1536 had more influence on the way we speak today except for Shakespeare. In 1524 Tyndale left the English shore, never to return, for the sole ambition of translating the Bible in the safety of Cologne, France. By 1526 he had translated from the original Greek and Hebrew into English, and 6000 Bibles were smuggled into England by sympathetic merchants. However due to a tip-off, Britain was put on alert. The Bishop of London bought most of them, and then publicly burnt them.

    In 1533 two assassins kidnapped Tyndale and took him to a castle and imprisoned him. But he had already finished a pocket-sized edition of the Bible that was easily smuggled in to Britain. In 1536 in the Netherlands (now Belgium) he was found guilty of heresy, strangled and then burnt at the stake.

    Tyndale’s last words were, "Lord open the King of England’s eyes". Within one year a Bible was ordered to be placed in every church by Henry VIII. King Henry wanted to marry again, because his wife could not give him a male heir. The Pope refused a divorce. Henry got the marriage annulled and three months later was excommunicated from the Church of Rome.

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    Coverdale Bible and the King James Version

    Coverdale translated the Bible from German into English in 1535 and it was the first authorised translation. The Great Bible was produced in 1539.

    In 1604 King James ordered a retranslation and the King James Version/Authorised was produced in 1611. 85% of Tyndale’s work was incorporated into the 1611 version, even though eighty years had elapsed and the English language was still changing. The old English of ye, thou, spake etc. was deliberately kept to make the ‘language of God’ to look old.

    Here are some comparisons in the English language from the gospel of Luke 2:1.

    Old English: Soþlice on þam dagum wæs geworden gebod fram þam casereAugusto, þæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod.

    Middle English: a translation by John Wycliffe, 1382. And it was don in tho daies, a maundement wente out fro the emperour August, thatal the world schulde be discryued.

    King James Version 1611: And it came to passe in those dayes, that there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

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    William Shakespeare

    Both Spenser and William Shakespeare lived around the same time but there are differences, due to the different dialects. There were many different dialects using different kinds of English. So what we are left with in the examples below is Spenser's conservative dialect, and Shakespeare's London dialect. The London dialect later became the ‘standard’ of British English.

    Edmund Spenser 1552-1599. An eclogue from Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar. Goe little booke: thy selfe present, As child whose parent is unkent: To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chevalree, And if that Envie barke at thee, As sure it will, for succoure flee Under the shadow of his wing,

    William Shakespeare 1564-1616. Shakespeare's Sonnet number 106. When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

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    Classic English Literature

    The seventeenth century was the classical period for English literature. The fashion was for borrowing Latin and Greek words, and coining new words with Latin and Greek. The writings of Samuel Johnson were popular. There was the rise of English purists like Jonathan Swift, who decried the 'degeneration' of English and who sought to 'purify' it and fix it forever in unchanging form.

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    The British Empire and the expansion of English

    Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries the British Empire advanced and sought out more land and trade routes with various countries. Once again words were borrowed from languages around the world. English was established in Australia, South Africa, and India, among other British colonial outposts.

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    Industrial Revolution

    From the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the scientific and industrial revolutions brought the development of new technical vocabulary. New words were added as inventors designed various products and machinery. These were named after the inventor or given the name of their choice: like trains, cogs, pulleys, engine, track, combustion, telephone, electricity, camera etc. In 1878 British inventor Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Now we say, "I will give you a bell later" Expressions and phrases increased along with more idioms.

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    Britain, the Nazis and the BBC

    In the early twentieth century the European Empires began to understand that the world would need one common language. The French, the Germans and the English were all battling for the number one spot. Though Spanish was an important language - the demise of its own Empire meant it would never be the world language.

    The British government began to sponsor English language lectures all over the Empire and elsewhere, especially within the Middle East.

    As the world moved towards WW2, the German's, French or English seemed to be the main contenders for the world language. The German's pumped out a message of unity under the Nazi flag, whilst the British taught the world how to find their way around London!

    The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) became an important tool in the British government’s hand to spread the English language via the airways.

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    World War Two and the Americans

    The defeat of France very early in World War Two, left the French language out in the cold. The defeat of Germany, meant that the German language could never be forced on the world. The British and the Americans however shared one great thing - a common language. English had become the most powerful of all the languages, yet the battle was not over.

    The American government joined the British in their belief that English should be the world’s common language. Together they worked to bring the English language to the world.

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    Communication Revolution and the Entertainment Industry (Twentieth - Twenty First Century)

    With the broadcast of English media worldwide, that language became more accessible to more people around the globe. Satellites brought English-speaking TV programmes and films to the world.

    Hollywood has also helped young people learn English with ‘an American’ accent!

    The English language also became dominant within the worldwide music industry. The world’s greatest solo artist ‘Elvis’, and the world’s greatest band ‘The Beatles’, began an unconscious campaign that continues today, teaching young people all over the world English words.

    Words like computer, Internet, the web, digital, modem, scanner, mobile phones etc. sprang into being. Today, even all the pilots on international flights identify themselves in English, regardless of their country of origin.

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    The Internet

    The Internet grew and became at first predominantly English. America and Britain soon had more websites than any other countries in the world.

    With the spread of Internet cafes, the world began to log on and they logged on to the English language. The largest and most expensive search-engines, directories, Christian websites etc were all in English.

    As the years went by, the web has become more international and regional. In 2002 Afghanistan’s first website went online. One day there may be more Chinese language websites than any other.

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    English helps spread the gospel!

    English had gone from an island tongue, to a world language.

    In the days of the Apostles, the Romans ruled most of the known world. They had exported their culture and the Greek language to the world. Having one common language made spreading the gospel easy, and very soon the whole known world had heard the message.

    Today English is the world’s language. This makes is much easier for mass media gospel presentations, travel and of course missionary activity.

    The English language has definitely become the greatest export England has ever given to the world. It has made the gospel accessible in one common tongue to the whole world.

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    The Non-Rhyming English Words

    There are several words in the English language which do not rhyme with any other words, such as diamond, silver, purple, month, skeleton, limited, ninth, and poem!

    A good example is ‘pint’ which, although there are more than 160 words in the English language ending with the same three letters ‘int’, such as point and faint, does not have a rhyming word.

    There are roughly thirty words which end with ‘ange’, such as strange, range and change but none rhyme with orange. It is a case of different pronunciation yet using the same letters. Some words that sound similar and could possibly be accepted as rhyming, might be hinge, mange, or lozenge, but most would disagree.

    Did you know?

    ‘Almost’ is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

    E is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet and Q is the least used.

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