THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Chinese in the number of speakers. Over 350 million people speak English as their first language. The same number use it as the second language.

It became the international language. It is an official language in 44 countries. Over 60% of world’s mail, radio broadcast and periodicals are in English. In many countries it is the language of business, commerce and technology.

There are many varieties of English: American, Canadian, Australia and Pidgin English. English comes from a common Indo-European language. About 4,500 years ago, the people who spoke varying forms of this language split into groups that drifted into Europe and parts of Asia. Different speech communities developed, giving rise to several languages, including Latin. From Latin many languages spoken in Europe today developed.

Several factors contributed to establishing Standard English spelling. These factors included the introduction of the printing press into England in 1477 by William Caxton, the revival of interest in literature and growth of popular education. The need for standardization was recognized in the 13^th century. The London dialect was gradually adopted from the four main dialects as the basis of Standard English. The choice was made because the London dialect was the language of contracts and commerce and the speech of the ruling court. All official documents originated there were written in the London dialect. The translation of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James’ version of the Bible became tremendous forces for elevated English.

Today the English vocabulary is half Germanic and half Romance. It has a lot of borrowings from other languages due to openness of vocabulary.

This made English an effective medium of international communication. The difficulties are caused by written English which is not systematically phonetic.

Why are many English words pronounced differently from the way they are spelt?

English spelling is unpredictable at the best of times, and occasionally totally chaotic – an opinion no doubt shared by British schoolchildren and those studying English around the world alike. However, studies of the language claim that there are only about 400 words in English whose spelling is wholly irregular. Unfortunately many of them are among the most frequently used in the language.

The problems with the English spelling system came about as the language developed over a period of 1,000 years. Some complications arose early; when the Romans tried to write down Old English using the 23 letter Latin alphabet. Old English contained nearly 40 vowels and consonants.

The influence of French after the Norman Conquest also made an impact on English spelling. French scribes introduced ‘qu’ where Old English had used ‘cw’ e.g. queen, and ‘gh’ instead of ‘h’ e.g. night, amongst other changes.

The introduction of the printing press in 1476 meant that a standard spelling system began to emerge. The system reflected the speech of the London area. The pronunciation of vowels underwent further changes during the 15^th century, but because of the advent of the printing press, spelling never caught up.

Previously, scribes would have simply written down a new spelling to reflect the new pronunciation. Thus modern spelling in many ways reflects outmoded pronunciation of words dating back to the Middle Ages.

Despite many attempts to reform the English spelling system, so far no changes have been made since the 16th century - mainly because nobody can agree on what the best alternative may be!

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 936