Sources of origin of the english language

2.1 The Norman Conquest

 
 

    In 1066 the Normans conquered England. They, like the Danes, had originally come from Scandinavia. But they had settled in northern France, and for some undiscoverable reason had given up their own language and learned to speak a dialect of French. For several centuries Normans, and other Frenchmen that they invited in later, held most of the important positions in England, and it seemed quite possible that French would become the standard language of the country. But the bulk of the population were still English, and they were stubborner than their rulers. Most of them never learned French, and eventually—though only after several centuries—all the nobles and officials were using English.

    It was not, however, the English of the days before the conquest. A good many French words had gotten into the language; and most of the inflections that had survived the Danish pressure had dropped out, with a standard word-order making up for their loss. We need not go into the argument about whether the new word-order had to develop because the endings dropped out, or the endings disappeared because the new word-order made them unnecessary. The two changes took place together, and by the time of Chaucer (died 1400) the language had become enough like modern English to be recognizable. The pronunciation was quite different and the spelling was still catch-as-catch-can; but a modern student can get at least a general idea of Chaucer's meaning without special training, while he can no more read Old English than he can German or Latin, unless he has made a special study of it.

    In the first two lines from Beowulf (about 700 A.D.), only we and in are readily recognizable; while in the first two from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, only soote (sweet) offers much of a problem.

    From Chaucer's time to our own the language has developed with no outside pressure comparable to that of the Danish and Norman invasions. Still more endings have disappeared, and there have been other changes; but the greatest development has been in the vocabulary. A considerable number of Chaucer's words have dropped out of use, and a much greater number of new words have been added. Some of these new words have been made by compounding or other- wise modifying old ones, but most of them have been borrowed from other languages, particularly Latin. 
 

    2.2 The Latin influence 
 

    Even before they came to England our ancestors had picked up a few Latin words; and they learned others from the Christian missionaries who began to convert them in the sixth century. These early borrowings were taken directly into the spoken language, and most of them have now changed so that their Latin origins are not easy to recognize. Street, wine, bishop, priest, and church (the last three originally borrowed from Greek by the Romans) are examples.

    After the Norman Conquest borrowings from Latin were enormously increased. French itself is directly descended from Latin, and we cannot always tell whether an English word came directly from Latin or through French. Suspicion, for instance, could have come into English by either route. But we do know that many words must have come straight from Latin, either because they don't occur in French or because their French forms are different. Scholars often could not find an English word for an idea they wished to express; and even if they could, they might think that a Latin word was more exact or more impressive.

    English has also borrowed words from many other languages, particularly Greek, and is continuing to do so at present; but ever since the late Middle English period it has been a matter of helping ourselves, rather than yielding to pressure.

2.3 Development of a literary standard

 

    The changes that took place in the language throughout the Old and Middle English periods were a natural development, unguided by any theory. Men talked more or less as their neighbors did, and anybody who wrote tried to indicate the sound of his speech on paper. There were no dictionaries, no grammars, and no printed books of any kind. As far as we know, very few people thought about the language at all; and most of those who did think about it seem to have considered it a crude and rather hopeless affair, unworthy of serious study. There were exceptions, of course, but they did not have much influence. Local differences were so great that a man trained in northern England would have serious difficulty reading a manuscript written in the southern part. However, the dialect of London had a certain prestige throughout the country; and although this dialect itself was by no means uniform, and changed with shifts in city population, it gradually came to be accepted as the standard. By the latter half of the fifteenth century it was quite generally used in writing throughout the country except in the extreme north. The introduction of printing in 1476, with London as the publishing center, greatly strengthened, the influence of the London dialect. Strong local differences in spoken English remain to this day, especially among the less educated classes. But throughout the modern period written (or at least published) English has been surprisingly uniform.

    3. III PERIOD 
 

    During new English the period of a history of the English language in its phonetic structure there were significant changes, is especial in system of vowels. Largest of them was merge during XV-XVIII centuries of a part of long vowels with diphthongs, and also reduction of number of vowels. This change carries the name of shift of vowels.

    In new English the period has taken place a line of changes in system of morphology and syntax of the English language. First of all it is necessary to note the general aspiration to unification of morphological forms. It finds the expression, for example, available the uniform form of a plural number on -es (-s). It is unified, that is receives the uniform form, the ending -es a verb in the third party of a singular of the present general time, having in Middle English two variants.

     The big number of so-called strong verbs accepts the ending -ed in past time and a participle II, switching, thus, in system of weak verbs and by that promoting unification of forms of a verb.

    Dying off of a grammatical gender of names of nouns has paved the way for occurrence in new English the period of division of nouns on names of alive essences and on names of subjects or the phenomena. This division has grammatic character. A line of grammatic features is fixed to names of alive essences - the form of a genitive case on 's, correlation to personal pronouns he and she and with a relative pronoun who. Names of subjects and the phenomena have no genitive case, correspond with a personal pronoun it and a relative pronoun which.

    The analytical type of the verbal form formed even in the Middle English period has received in new English the period a wide circulation. On its basis in early new English the period has arisen a line of verbal forms: long and perfect forms and a Passive Voice.

    The analytical type of the verbal form has penetrated as well into forms of present and past general time where there were interrogative and negative forms of analytical type with a verb to do, lost the lexical value, for example:

 

  Do you speak English?                                      He does not speak French. 

    During new English the period the lexicon of the English language has considerably changed and has extended due to occurrence of new concepts and words. It is connected to development of world trade, development of a science and engineering both in the Great Britain, and behind its limits.

    The basic source of updating of language new words were own means of the English language - various means of word-formation from which the wide circulation in this period is especial have received manufacture of words with a zero suffix, and formation of new words with the help of prefixes and suffixes.

    The dictionary structure of the English language has replenished also for the account changes proper name, personal and geographical in nominal. For example: Newton, watt, Aldis lamp, Newfoundland.

    Many English words receive new values in connection with the various new phenomena in life. So, the noun space, in connection with an outer space exploration has got one more value. The new concepts connected to it also were reflected in dictionary structure of the English language: space flight, spaceship.

    At last, the important source of enrichment of dictionary structure of the English language were borrowings from Latin, French, Spanish, Dutch Russian of languages.

Examples of the words borrowed from modern Russian, words can serve: Soviet, sputnik, kolkhoz, sovkhoz and glasnost. 
 
 

3.1 Eighteenth-century movement to regularize the language

 
 

    Until the eighteenth century the uniformity was the result of social pressure rather than of educational theory. Early English grammars (the first appeared in 1586) had been written either to help foreigners learn English or to prepare English students for the study of Latin grammar. On the whole these books neither had nor were intended to have any influence on the use of English by native speakers. It was not until about 1750 that there was any general attempt to teach Englishmen systematically how to use their own language.

    It is too bad that this attempt was not postponed for a few more generations. Since the really scientific study of various languages had not yet begun, the eighteenth century grammarians had to base their work on a set of theories that we now know are definitely wrong. For one thing, they thought that grammar had an absolute existence, and must therefore be the same in all languages. Since they believed that this grammar was well preserved in Latin and badly frayed in English, they often tried to reform a natural English expression on a Latin model.

    For another thing, they thought that the simplifying of inflections, which had been going on for centuries, was decay instead of progress. They could not do anything about the ones that had already completely disappeared, but they did make a deliberate and fairly successful effort to preserve those that were just disappearing. We would not have so many irregular verbs today if they had just let nature take its course.

    Perhaps the most dangerous of their ideas was that they could keep the language from ever changing any more. They argued that Latin had remained unchanged for centuries, and they saw no reason why English should not do the same. They failed to realize that the only reason classical Latin had remained unchanged was that the men who had written it had been dead for a long time. There were still scholars —there are a few even today—who could imitate classical Latin. But as a natural language for the people, Latin had developed, in different areas, into Italian, French, Spanish, and so forth. All of these languages, as well as English, are still changing, and we have every reason to believe that they will continue to change as long as they are used.

    If these theories had merely been the bad guesses of a few scholars, they would not have done much harm. But they became the guiding principles in most schoolroom instruction just at the time when education was becoming general, and when the study of the English language was beginning to be recognized as an end in itself and not merely as a preliminary step to the study of Latin. As a result, during the two hundred years in which English has been seriously taught in our schools, it has been taught almost entirely on a set of theories which can now be proved unsatisfactory, so that a great part of the effort has been wasted.

    Since most students find it hard enough to learn English grammar without making comparisons with other languages, we need not go into a detailed explanation of why the eighteenth-century theories were wrong. But the basic structural difference is easily grasped. Latin is a synthetic language. That is, it is highly inflected, and the relations between words are shown primarily by their endings. Old English was also synthetic, but modem English has become an analytical language. Most of the endings have dropped off, and even those that remain are much less important than they used to be, since the relations between words are now shown largely by word-order and function words, such as connectives and auxiliary verbs. It is now rather generally held that the shift from a synthetic to an analytical structure is an improvement, but most eighteenth-century grammarians considered it a calamity and tried to stop it.

    One effect of this misdirected effort has been to interfere with the natural development of the language. By 1750 most of the Old English irregular verbs either had dropped out of use or had become regular: help, holp had become help, helped; wash, wesh had become wash, washed, etc. A number of others were in the process of making the same change: Blow, blew to blow, blowed; throw, threw to throw, throwed; etc. We should probably still have some irregular verbs even if eighteenth-century grammarians had not deliberately resisted this development, but there would certainly not be so many. Most of us probably have a feeling that such forms as blowed and throwed are intrinsically wrong; but our acceptance of helped and washed as correct shows that this is purely a matter of habit.

    At the same time, many of those troublesome verbs like sing and take, which have separate forms for the past participle, were simplifying to a single past form. This change also was resisted, on the theory that the small number of inflections was "the greatest defect in our language." The fact that only about forty of our verbs now have these separate forms proves conclusively that we don't need them, and most of them would probably have disappeared by now if they had been allowed to depart in peace. But after two centuries of insistence on the importance of these unfortunate survivals, we may never get rid of them. 

3.2 After-effects of eighteenth-century grammatical theories 
 

    Of course the language continued to change in spite of all objections; and if the grammarians had done no more than slow up the rate of change it could be argued (although not proved) that their efforts had on the whole been useful. But they did something much worse than this. By insisting on rules which often had no foundation in the speech habits of the people, they converted "grammar" into an artificial and generally distasteful subject. When a Frenchman studies French grammar, he is learning how educated Frenchmen actually talk and write; and in his later life he can practice what he has learned in school with a comfortable assurance. But a good deal of what an Englishman or an American learns under the name of grammar has nothing to do with the use of our language; and a good deal more is in direct conflict with the actual practices of most educated people.

    The result is that many Americans go through life feeling inadequate, even guilty, about their language habits. Even if they actually speak English very well, they seldom have the comfort of realizing it. They have been taught to believe in a mysterious "perfect English" which does not exist, and to regard it as highly important; but they have never had the structure of the language explained to them. 
 

    3.3 American English 
 

    In the early part of the seventeenth century English settlers began to bring their language to America, and another series of changes began to take place. The settlers borrowed words from Indian languages for such strange trees as the hickory and persimmon, such unfamiliar animals as raccoons and woodchucks. Later they borrowed other words from settlers from other countries—for instance, chowder and prairie from the French, scow and sleigh from the Dutch. They made new combinations of English words, such as backwoods and bullfrog, or gave old English words entirely new meanings, such as lumber (which in British English means approximately junk) and corn (which in British means any grain, especially wheat). Some of the new terms were needed, because there were new and un-English things to talk about. Others can be explained only on the general theory that languages are always changing, and American English is no exception.

    Aside from the new vocabulary, differences in pronunciation, in grammatical construction, and especially in intonation developed. If the colonization had taken place a few centuries earlier, American might have become as different from English as French is from Italian. But the settlement occurred after the invention of printing, and continued through a period when the idea of educating everybody was making rapid progress. For a long time most of the books read in America came from England, and a surprising number of Americans read those books, in or out of school. Moreover, most of the colonists seem to have felt strong ties with England. In this they were unlike their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who apparently made a clean break with their continental homes.

    A good many Englishmen and some Americans used to condemn every difference that did develop, and as recently as a generation ago it was not unusual to hear all "Americanisms" condemned, even in America. It is now generally recognized in this country that we are not bound to the Queen's English, but have a full right to work out our own habits. Even a good many of the English now concede this, though some of them object strongly to the fact that Americanisms are now having an influence on British usage.

    There are thousands of differences in detail between British and American English, and occasionally they crowd together enough to make some difficulty. If you read that a man, having trouble with his lorry, got out his spanner and lifted the bonnet to see what was the matter, you might not realize that that the driver of the truck had taken out his wrench and lifted the hood. It is amusing to play with such differences, but the theory that the American language is now essentially different from English does not hold up. It is often very difficult to decide whether a book was written by an American or an Englishman. Even in speech it would be hard to prove that national differences are greater than some local differences in either country. On the whole, it now seems probable that the language habits of the two countries will grow more, rather than less, alike, although some differences will undoubtedly remain and others may develop.

    It also seems probable that there will be narrow-minded and snobbish people in both countries for some time to come. But generally speaking, anybody who learns to speak and write the standard English of his own country, and to regard that of the other country as a legitimate variety with certain interesting differences, will have little trouble wherever he goes.

3.4 Our days

 
 

    With distribution of literacy the English language has slowed down the change, but it continues to vary and to this day. With settling and branch of colonies of British Empire in parallel with the British English began to develop American, Australian, Pakistan, Indian and other variants of language. All of them considerably differ only a pronunciation, and the grammar and use of words as a whole are very similar. Does not manage and essential differences, but even more often британцы is not realized use the American expressions, accepting them for truly British expressions, and on the contrary.

    Simplicity of use of rules, and riches of a lexicon which continues to extend, has allowed the English language to become for last half-centuries an international language of dialogue. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

5. From the history of some words

 

Panic.

      The word panic means “uncontrolled quickly spreading fear”. It comes from the Greek language. Pan was a Greek god, the god of shepherds (a shepherd is a man who watches sheep). Pan was half-man, half-animal. He lived in the forests and liked to hunt. He also liked to play the flute. People were afraid of him because he was very strange. They did not know what to do when they saw him began to cry, “Pan! Pan!” Later the word was changed a little. So the word panic was born. A person in panic is very much afraid of something and sometimes he does very strange things. This word is used in many other languages besides English.

Academy.

 

      Of course, you know the word academy. The history of this word is very interesting. It comes from the name of a garden which was founded many thousands years ago. Once it was a pleasure resort. In this garden, a Greek philosopher Plato held his morning philosophical conferences. That is why the word academy means “a place of learning”.  

Window. 

      The object this word names has change, but the word itself has not. The word window comes from the Anglo-Saxon words, which mean “wind” and “eye”. Many years ago, there was no glass and windows were openings in a wall. They wee also used for giving air to the room. 
 
 
 

Dollar.