The History of English

In this post, I provide a condensed version of the history of the English language and highlight the incidents in history that have contributed to its evolution over time.

Spoiler Alert: The English language is chaotic but wonderful!

There are three distinct eras in the progression of English. Old English, from around 450 to 1100, Middle English from 1100 to 1500, and Modern English from about 1500 until now!

Languages do evolve over time, however, and this evolution occurs gradually. It’s not like there were abrupt changes to English between the three eras.

English is a Germanic language. Germanic languages include English, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, etc. They are all categorized together because they all originate from Proto-Germanic. When studying languages, the word Proto, such as in Proto-Germanic, refers to the hypothetical ancestor of another language or group of languages.

The history of English is intricate and cannot be separated from the history of invasions and the migration of people.

When England was controlled by the Romans, some Latin infiltrated the otherwise Celtic locals. This is how we use sub and pro in Modern English. The Romans departed England in roughly 400 BCE. This created the opportunity for Germanic tribes to gradually come and settle the area. They ended up pushing most of the Celtic people out. Old English was created during this period, and today we have works like “Beowulf” to remember how English was during this time. If you’ve ever listened to a clip of Beowulf, you already know that Old English does not sound very similar to Modern English. In fact, it’s pretty unrecognizable and pretty far away from English as we now know it. Understandably, since it hasn’t been spoken in over 900 years.

After that in Britain, the Vikings invaded. The Vikings spoke a language called Old Norse. Roughly 2,000 words in Modern English come from Old Norse or about 1% of the language. Old Norse brought us words like egg, kindle, chose, dirt, reindeer, rotten, call, Thursday (which means Thor’s day !! ), and many more.

The next significant event was the Norman conquest. This was led by William the Conqueror, who spoke French. He took over Britain in 1066, and because of that, French crept into the English language. During this time, French words were more commonly spoken by the upper class, and Old English was spoken more by commoners. This division is why we today have pairs of words that mean very similar things. We have this separation to thank for words such as deem and judge, hunt and chase, pig and pork, cow and beef, freedom and liberty, weird and strange, lawyer and attorney, and many more. Next time you are using a very precise word to describe something specific, thank William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest which resulted in an intricate and colorful language that allows for more creative expression. Over 7,000 words we use today are from French! And, you guessed it, this invasion gave us what we refer to today as Middle English. If you listen to “The Canterbury Tales,” you’ll soon realize that while you generally still can’t understand Middle English, it is much more familiar-sounding than Old English and you’ll probably be able to pick out a few words.

Next up is Early Modern English. We can’t get through this era without mentioning Shakespeare. This dude introduced an enormous amount of words and phrases to the English language. From him, we get words such as cold-blooded, uncomfortable, assassination, manager, and many others. If you’ve read or heard any Shakespeare, you know that you can understand it, though it’s somewhat different than our currently used English. Shakespeare lived in the late 1500s to the early 1600s, right on schedule with the start of Modern English.

The other notable event around this time was the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th century. This is essentially what it sounds like, a shift in the pronunciation of English vowels. Anyone who has endured any spelling lessons knows that the vowels in English can be pronounced in different ways. For example, the letter A is sometimes pronounced as AY and other times it’s AH. However, this wasn’t always the case! There was also a shift in how other things were pronounced. Before this shift, words that we pronounce today with a silent K would’ve been pronounced with the K back then. Knives, knave, knowledge, know, knife, and knight would all have been pronounced differently. Knave might’ve been pronounced like ke-nah-veh. Also, if there is a silent E at the end of a word, it changes how you say the A in the word. It changes the short A to a long A. Around this time, people were writing down the rules of spelling. Unfortunately, the people writing it down weren’t really talking to the pronunciation people. So, the pronunciation changed but the spelling didn’t. We pronounce knight like nite, but we spell it in the most absurd and difficult way possible. I pity those trying to learn English as their non-native language.

It’s also important to mention the King James translation of the Bible, which was published in 1611. This translation both strengthened our ridiculous word spelling, and it also introduced new idioms and phrases. Have you ever had a broken heart? Or maybe you noted that something was a sign of the times? Both of those idioms and many more expressions we use today come from the King James Bible.

We are comfortably hanging out in Modern English now. As the British began to explore and colonize places around the world, English speakers interacted with lots of people speaking other languages, and English essentially adopted some words from those languages. We get the word Ketchup from Chinese, Trek from Afrikaans, and pajamas from Persian. As English speakers migrated, new dialects began to form in those places.

All languages are constantly evolving, some go extinct, and some continue to morph and change. Latin spread so wide that local dialects snuck in and it all morphed into new languages.

Who knows what the future will hold for English?