THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

English as a word has different meanings:-People from England-English language-It is Germanic in origin -Approximately a half of its words derive from French and Latin

1.- The origins and history of English

• Irish and Scottish

English are varieties of

English influenced

by the Celtic languages.

Roman Empire ruled much of Europe until 476.

LATIN Influence on ENGLISH and GERMANIC.

Words as: -wall-kitchen-wine-mil-street

Were borrowed from Latin into Germanic (and through Germanic into English)

Its influence continues through Medieval and Renaissance times, through the catholic church, Humanism and Renaissance.

English starts when the Germanic tribes and their languages reach the British Isles (449)

-Trade contacts

-Slavery was

widespread in

Europe (contact

between cultures

and languages)

The word ENGLISH derives from the Angles.

Started as a Germanic dialect spoken in small part of England, nowadays it is spoken by over a billion people all over the world.

-English has adopted words from other languages

-approximately a half of the vocabulary of English comes from French and Latin

Modern English compared to earlier English and other

Languages.

Differences on three levels:

Sounds

Words

Sentences

Caedmon’s Hymn:

-Hefaen Heaven (no leter “v”)

-uard guard (“u” is pronounced differently)

-Lack of grammatical words as of, the, and we

-OE sentence (1) contains less words than the modern one (this additional words have a grammatical function)

-There are many differences!

-English has 25 consonants, other languages have different quantities.

-The most unusual consonant is the “th” (It represents 2 different sounds)

English syllable structure is COMPLEX

There are words as:

Strikes and split

3 consonants at the beginning

-In Spanish we adapt the sound “sk” to “esk” as in School to ESchool

-One of the functions of the language is to indicate who does what to whom

Languages differ in how they mark these functions through:

a) Endings on the verbs and nouns

b) Word order and grammatical words (prepositions and pronouns)

c) Old English- synthetic/Modern E.Analytic

Have almost no endings they use word order and grammatical words to mark the element’s function

-Whereas many languages of the Americas have:

Prefixes on the verb and the verb can represent an entire sentence

Navajo nanishté has 3 prefixes and a stem (na-ni-she-té) “arround yo I carried”

External and internal change

VARIETIES They are different, even though they are

English in their

grammars

External changes:

-Language contact (between speakers of different languages)

-Innovations by speakers

-issues of political or social identity

-Unpredictable

-have to do with social, economic, geographical, political, and historical reasons.

Internal changes:

-occur when speakers stop using endings (or inflections) and start to rely on words such as of, for, the and have.

-more predictable

-Change a vowel or a consonant:

Old English hamhome

skip ship

-prepositions start being used to introduce sentences.

Factors that inhibit internal changes:

Prescriptive rules: -Are taught in school-include “don’t split infinitives” and “don’t end

sentences with a preposition”. -Are based on Latin, on logic, or on an attempt to

conserve an older stage of the language.-Internal changes can be markers of identity.

e.g.: “eh” as a marker of identity in Canada.

OLD ENGLISH (OE)450 - 1150

Year 450, Germanic dialects pushed out

Celtic Languages to the periphery, e.g. Wales

Latin words:• Abbot• Altar• hymn

H

J8th and 10the century

the Scandinavians influenced on the

grammar.

Some words such as:

-egg, keel, leg, ill, add, bask, call, crave,

screech and thrive

MIDDLE ENGLISH1150 - 1500

Words such us:

Judge, government, authority