8/8/2019 A brief outline of the history of the English language

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In order to study English literature, one firstly has to know the history of its fundamental

element, the language.

English was formed over a territory known today as the British Isles. We know little, if 

anything, about the first habitants of these places. The first people in England about whose culture and

language we have valid knowledge are the Celts.

The first major change in the history of what is to become the English language began in the year 55 B.C.,

when Celtic Britain was invaded by the Romans under the command of Julius Caesar. The following

years, it was extensively occupied and colonized and thus, for more than 400 years, Britain became a

Roman province.

As a result, Latin was introduced in Britain, but it was known only to the upper classes, and that is why it

did not replace Celtic, as it did in Gaul, especially because the Roman troops retreated at the beginning

of the 5th

century, leaving Britain a defenceless country.

Under these circumstances, Britain became an attractive location for the various invaders

and about the year 449,occurred an event which profoundly affected the course of history: the invasion

of Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, who exterminated or chased away the local

Celtic population.

The linguistic consequences of the Germanic conquest were extremely important, for a

new language resulted from the fusion of the dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes, which soon

superseded/replaced Celtic and Latin.(except in the Scotch Highlands, Cumberland, Wales and Cornwall,

where the Celts retreated).This language became known as Old English. The seven kingdoms the

Germanic tribes founded on the British Isles(known as the Heptarchy) finally came together under the

same king,Alfred the Great, king of Wessex(around 850).

Starting the year 787, England faces a new threat coming from Scandinavia:the Vikings.

They attempted to conquer many of England territories and they would probably have conquered the

whole Britain if King Alfred would not had the brilliant idea of an agreement by which England was

divided into roughly equal halves: the Danelaw lying North and East and Saxon England lying South and

West. In 1016 the Danish king Canute became king of England and an ever-increasing number of 

Scandinavians settled into England. That is why there are more than 1400 places in England which bear a

Scandinavian name, most of these, naturally, in the North and East (Derby, Rugby, Greenwich)

The period of cohabitation with the Danes came to an end in 1066, when Will iam, Duke of 

Normandy, conquered Britain after defeating the English in the battle of Hastings. This historical event

represented the moment when the French civilization as well as the political institutions of feudalism

are imposed. For 200 years after the conquest, French remained the language of the Court and feudal

aristocracy in England, but due to the fact that more than 90% of the population-the peasants-continued

to speak their mother tongue, it had a small influence on English.

The Hundred Years War, the gradual decline of feudalism and the rise of two important English

speaking social strata-the small landowners and the town bourgeoisie-all contributed to the disuse of 

French and the steadily increasing importance of English.

Although the earliest inhabitants of the island were not of Germanic origin, English belongs

to the Germanic languages,which in turn belong to the large Indo-European family of languages.

The Germanic languages fall into three groups: East Germanic( the main representative is Gothic, which

disappeared a long time ago), North Germanic (which also split into West Norse-now Icelandic and

8/8/2019 A brief outline of the history of the English language

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Norwegian- and East Norse- Swedish and Danish) and West Germanic( divided into High German- which

is known as today German- and Low German-composed of Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian

and Old English).Old English therefore belonged to the Low German tongues, which were part of the

group of West Germanic languages.

Within English evolution, we can recognize three periods:

1)  Old English (4501100), the period of full endings or full inflexions- English was a synthetical

language

2)  Middle English (1100-1500), the period of leveled endings or inflexions and the addition of 

thousands of words from French and Latin

3)  Modern English (1500-present day)-lost endings or inflexions- analytical language(one in which

the relations between words are expressed by form words and words order)

While these important changes were transforming the language, Old English literature also evolved.

We could divide Old English literature into three subgroups:

1)  Old English Pagan Poetry (5th

7th

centuries)

2)  Old English Christian Poetry(7th

-9th

centuries)

3)  Old English Prose(9th-11th centuries)