In 1066, the Norman king William I conquered England and displaced the reigning Anglo-Saxon ruling elite. Old English also absorbed syntax and grammatical structure from Old Norse, a testament to the language’s fluidity, even at this early stage in its development. The Viking immigrants and their Norse language further enriched the Old English vocabulary, adding important words like husband, sky, and leg. Old English works like Beowulf and Caedmon’s Hymn are the starting points of English literature.įrom the 8th to the 10th centuries CE, the British Isles were invaded and settled by the Vikings of Scandinavia. Old English was a rich literary language as well, leaving behind a trove of letters, charters, religious works, and legal texts. Some of our most fundamental words today come from Old English, particularly words related to family- man, wife, child, brother, and sister, to name a few. These Angles and Saxons brought their Germanic language to their new home, where it morphed over time into the language we now call Old English. The story of English began when Germanic peoples known as the Angles and Saxons, hailing from what is now Northern Germany, began migrating to and conquering the Roman province of Britannia in the mid-5th century CE.

English is a member of the Germanic family of languages (the West Germanic branch, to be precise), which is itself part of the larger Indo-European language family. Most of the languages of Europe and Asia belong to one great Indo-European family of languages. What are the origins of English? What are the characteristics of the language that made it easier for people all over the globe to adopt and spread it? What quirks and features of English make it unique? And what is the future of the language? The History of English Roots of English

To understand how this came to be, we need to understand the history of English and the processes by which it evolved into the language we speak and write today. Today, English is spoken by around 1.5 billion people across the globe, making it the world’s most widely spoken language.Īt first glance, it might seem unlikely that the native tongue of a people occupying just one part of an island off the coast of northwestern Europe would become the international language of business and diplomacy. In modern history, the English language has come to occupy a dominant position. The spoken and written word is what binds individuals together and helps us form stable communities.

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of The Mother TongueĪll human societies feature one crucial building block of social organization-language.

The mother tongue bryson