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The English Language

It is only in the course of the last hundred years that English has become a world language. In 1600 the number of native speakers was 6 million, while now there are 427 million speakers of English. In number of speakers English is nowadays second only to Chinese. It is the official language of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of the United States of America and of Australia and New Zealand. It is used as one of the official languages in Canada, the Republic of South Africa and the Irish Republic. It is also spoken as a second language by many people in India, and numerous countries in Africa, to say nothing of people all over the world who know English - well or not so well as a foreign language.

From the British Isles English spread all over the world, but English has not always been the language of the people of those islands. The ancient inhabitants of Great Britain were the Celts. The language then was not like the English of today. Only a few their words remained in the language now spoken by the English people.

The Romans colonized England in the first century of our era. The Roman period of British history lasted 465 years. The Romans brought a few Roman words into the English language: street, for example. The Romans left about twenty large towns. Many of them were at first army camps, and the Latin word for camp, castra, has remained part of many town names to this day (with the ending -chester, -caster or -cester): Gloucester, Doncaster, Winchester, Chester, Lancaster and many other besides. But until the fifth century only Celtic languages were spoken by the people of Britain.

About the middle of the fifth century the Britisl1 Isles began to be invaded by the Saxons. These Germans were the founders of the English nation. By and by came other Germanic tribes who settled on different parts of the coast. Among these tribes were people called Angles. When the Angles and Saxons grew into one, they were called Anglo-Saxons, or Angles (English). The general name which they gave to the country in which they had settled was England. The Saxons as well as the Angles called their speech English. We call that language Old English.

The strength 'of Anglo-Saxon culture is obvious even today. Days of the week were named after Germanic gods: Tig (Tuesday),Wodin (Wednesday), Thor (Thursday), Frei (Friday). New place-names appeared on the map. The first of these show that the earliest Saxon villages were family villages. The ending -ing meant folk or family, thus "Reading" is the place of the family Rada, "Hastings" of the family of Hasta. Ham means farm, ton means settlement. Birmingham, Nottingham or Southampton, for example are Saxon place-names. Because the Anglo-Saxon kings often established settlements, Kingston is a frequent place-name.

The Anglo-Saxons established a number of kingdoms, some of which still exist in county or regional names to this day: Essex (East Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons), Middlesex (probably a kingdom of Middle Saxons), East Anglia (East Angles).



The Saxons divided the land into new administrative areas, based on shires, or counties. Over each shire was appointed a shire reeve, the king's local administrator. In time his name became shortened to "sheriff".

During the fifteen hundred years that have passed since the Anglo-Saxon invasions English has changed very considerably. First it was influenced by the language of Danish (Viking) invaders in the 8th - 10th centuries. Then between the 12th and 14th century it was very strongly influenced - both in its grammar and vocabulary, and in its pronunciation - by Norman French, the language of the people who conquered England in the year 1066. The battle in which the Normans won was near the town of Hastings. William who was at the head of the Normans was called the Conqueror after this battle and became the King of England.

Though the Normans became the masters of England and the Saxons became their servants, the Saxons did not want to speak their language. They spoke neither Latin, the language of the Church and of education, nor French, the language of law and of the Norman rulers. The Normans had to learn English (the old Anglo-Saxon language) to make the English people understand their orders. English continued to be spoken by ordinary people but was no longer written. But at the end of the 14th century, however, English was once again a written language, because it was being used instead of French by the ruling, literate class. But "Middle English", the language of the 14th and 15th centuries, was very different from Anglo-Saxon. This was partly because it had not been written for three hundred years, and partly because it had borrowed so much from Norman French. That is why the pronunciation of English words differs so much from their spelling.

Lastly, during the Renaissance, in the 14th -16th centuries, came the peaceful "invasion" of a large number of Latin and Greek words, which were introduced into English. In fact, this invasion has never come to an end, as new words continue to be made up from Latin and Greek roots for new inventions and scientific discoveries.

 


Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1698


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