History of the English Language

History of the English Language


OLD ENGLISH

Every letter was pronounced and words were spelled as they were pronounced. Each dialect had its own spelling.

Old English had European vowel sounds: Ah, Eh, Ee, Oh, Oo.

Old English vocabulary was deeply influenced by Norse (Scandinavian words). Some Norse words survived along with their English counterparts. For example:

Ship [OE] = Skip [N] (today: a skipper pilots a ship)
Shirt [OE]= Skirt [N] (today: both are a piece of clothing)
Church [OE]= Kirk [N] (today: both are a place of worship in Scotland)

Old English was fully inflected and had case endings, verb tense endings, and gender forms much like German has today. Some of this is fossilized in the King James Bible:

For example: dost, doth, etc. (inflections of the verb “to do”).

Old English also had both 2nd person singular and plural pronouns: Thou and You. Using the second person plural “you” was the polite way to address a single person, while the singular form “thou” was the informal way to address someone. The King James Bible fossilized the use of “Thou” and “Thee” and “Thine” in reference to God since the informal form of address was always used for God in all European languages. Thus, what sounds very formal to us today was actually the informal and intimate way to address someone. By the seventeenth century the second person singular pronoun (thou, etc.) had dropped out and the second person plural pronoun (you) did double duty.

Old English verbs were strong verbs (the vowel changed to indicate tense): sing, sang, sung. However, all new verbs are weak verbs (add “–ed” and “have” to indicate tense): walk, walked, have walked. All new verbs being coined today (since the fifteenth century) are weak verbs.


MIDDLE ENGLISH

The Norman Conquest of 1066 dramatically changed the English language. The northern French dialect of the Norman rulers affected the development of the English language for 300 years.

The was a massive influx of French words into the English vocabulary. As with the Norse words, many of the English words survived along with the French words. For example:

Chalet = Castle
Chapeau = Cap
Chattle = Cattle
Guardian = Warden
Guarantee = Warranty
Gauge = Wage
Salon = Saloon

French also had a strong influence on English vocabulary for food. In Old English, the same word used for animal was also used for the name of the dish. After the eleventh century, however, French words were used for the dishes and not the English animal words. For example:

Pig = Pork
Cow = Beef
Calf = Veal
Lamb = Mutton

There were many dialects in England, and some of them were mutually unintelligible. A man from the south traveling in the north might be mistaken for a foreigner and find that communication was impossible.

The government also began to standardized spelling. Spelling was determined by the ruling dialect, so that words were no longer spelled as they were pronounced but by the standard set by the government. With the introduction of the printing press to England, standardized spelling became universal and unchanging.

As prepositions became more popular, they began to supercede the use of case endings. By the end of the Middle English period, the case endings had all but disappeared.

There was also an increase in the use of the continuous aspect of the verb, using the –ing verb endings.

By this time, England had become a trilingual society: English, French, and Latin. English was spoken by the common man, French by the court, and Latin by the clergy. Most scholarly works were in Latin, and most English works were translated into Latin. One artifact of this reality can still be seen in the wedding vows still used by some: “to love, honor and cherish.” Love is an Old English word, honor comes from French, and cherish is Latin. All three words mean basically the same thing, indicating that the vows grew out of this trilingual culture.


MODERN ENGLISH

The most dramatic change to the English Language came in the Great Vowel Shift (15th century). English pronunciation shifted from its European roots (Ah Eh Ee Oh Oo), to its present pronunciation of Ay Ee Ai Ohh You. Even Shakespeare had a very difficult time understanding Middle English works, such as Chaucer.

Shakespeare, along with his contemporaries, began to coin many new words. Shakespeare’s vocabulary is so extensive because many of the words he used were springing into existence as he wrote.

One dramatic change during this time was the propensity to turn nouns into verbs, for example: hound = to hound.

There was also an influx of new scientific words that later took on metaphorical meanings, for example: Attraction, which originally referred to the force that caused to bodies to move closer to each other, and later took on the metaphorical use.

There was also the introduction of the nominalization of verbs using the “–ing” ending.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and Noah Webster’s Dictionary (1828) in America started the modern trend of lexicography of the English language.


PIDGIN ENGLISH AND CREOLE

Pidgin is a makeshift language used by two or more groups of people that do not share a common language, in such situations as trade or slavery. Creole is a fully developed language that evolved out of a Pidgin.