Very interesting article!! Must read..
- Why are there so many words with similar meanings in English?
- Is Manglish `bad' English or just a new branch of the language?
- Did you know that Shakespearean expressions are alive and well in
- Why are words with a similar spelling pronounced so differently
("bomb", "tomb", "comb")? - Why do cows and sheep become "beef" and "mutton" when we eat them?
- Did you realise that most of the words we use in our 21st-century
SMS's or e-mails are Old English? - Why do some people write "honour" and others "honor"? Or "colour"
and "color"? Which is correct?
Find out in this four-part series.
English is the language of the Internet, of music, movies, medicine,
air traffic controllers and captains at sea. International business
would grind to a halt without it.
It is an official language in more than 45 countries. Three hundred
and fifty million people are native English speakers but a further
billion speak English as a second or foreign language – many of them
are in
If you've always wondered about this colourful – but sometimes
complicated and contrary – language, read on!
Where did English come from?
Surprisingly, it didn't come from
the dusty plains of
family of languages that linguists call "Proto-Indo European".
How did linguists discover the roots of English? They noticed strong
resemblances between English, German and Dutch words and Sanskrit –
one of the oldest of the Indo-European languages. The word "brother"
is "bhratar" in Sanskrit, "bruder" in German and "broeder" in Dutch.
This makes English, German and Dutch linguistic `cousins'.
Up to about the year 500, Celtic languages were spoken by the common
people of
thought that the Celtic tribes learned enough Latin (the language of
the Romans) to transact daily business.
Some of the words we use today that come from the Romans are "plant",
"cat", "wine", "wall" and "street". Very few Celtic words remain in
English and they usually refer to geographical features or places like
"tor", "crag" and "
Celtic languages?
The Germanic invasion
Around the year 500, people from Germanic tribes (nowadays Northern
Germany and
recruited as mercenaries to keep the peace after the Romans left. Some
were immigrants in search of a better life.
These tribes were the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. They fought with the
Celtic inhabitants for land and in the process pushed the Celts to the
northern and western edges of
cling on in these places today, but Cornish is now extinct.
The language of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes was "Englisc", from which
we get the name "English". Linguists refer to their language as "Old
English". They wrote in "runes" – characters formed from straight lines.
In the late 500s, Christian missionaries arrived in
with them the Roman alphabet. As well as getting a more flexible
alphabet,
words like "angel" and "Mass" entering the language.
By the 7th century, an English alphabet had emerged from the Roman
alphabet. The most famous writing we have in Old English today is the
poem `Beowulf'. But Old English is still vitally important in our
Internet age – about half of the most commonly used words in English
have Old English roots e.g. "be", "come", "day", "earth", "friend",
"from", "go", "here", "home", "love", "lust", "man", "sing", "sleep",
"the", "word", "work".
The Vikings make their mark
For almost 300 years from 787, Norwegian and Danish seafaring tribes
attacked and invaded the
dissimilar to Old English as it came from the same branch of
Proto-Indo European. The Vikings and the English would have been able
to understand each other's languages – if not motives.
King Alfred came to a practical solution to years of fighting by
dividing the
the line (the "Danelaw") was ruled by the Danes and their dialect took
hold. This explains the marked difference between the Northern and
Southern British accents, which still persists today.
For more information, contact the British Council or visit
www.britishcouncil.org
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