HISTORY OF ENGLISH Linguistics August, 1st. 2015 Licda. Milvia Rosales G
CELTIC AND LATIN INFLUENCE "In
linguistic terms, obvious Celtic influence on English was minimal, except for place- and river-names.
Latin influence was much more important, particularly for vocabulary.
OLD ENGLISH (449 - 1066 CE) It
is also called Anglo-Saxon. The Germanic tribes were exposed to Latin before they invaded England, so the languages they spoke did have some Latin influence After converting to Christianity, Latin had more influence Celtic did not have a large impact on English, as only a few place names are of Celtic origin, but Danish did contribute many vocabulary words.
CHARACTERISTICS OF
Nouns
OLD ENGLISH
could be of three genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Numbers could be either singular or plural The infinitive of verbs ended in -an. The weak past tense added –de The comparative add -ra to the adjective The superlative had many endings: -ost, -ist, -est, and -m. Adverbs add -e to the adjective, or –lic.
THE LORD'S PRAYER IN OLD ENGLISH
Fæder ure ðu ðe eart on heofenum si ðin nama gehalgod to-becume ðin rice geweorþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofenum. Urne ge dæghwamlican hlaf syle us to-deag and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgifaþ urum gyltendum ane ne gelæde ðu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfle.
MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066 - 1500 CE) The
upper class in England began to speak French while the lower classes English.
By
1250 CE, French began to lose its prestige.
King
Edward I spoke only English. At this time, many foreigners entered England which made the nobility feel more "English“.
The upper class tried to learn English, but they did still use French so, it still maintained its prestige elsewhere.
Middle English (1066 - 1500 CE) The
Hundred Year's War (1337-1453 CE) intensified hatred of all things French. The Black Death. Several
of the workers had been killed by the plague, which increased the status of the peasants, who only spoke English.
By
1362 CE, the Statute of Pleading declared English as the official spoken language of the courts.
A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, or more generally, in any pre-industrial society. In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their personal status: slave, serf, and freeman.
THE BLACK DEATH (1346–53) YERSINIA PESTIS It
is one of the most devastating pandemics in human history (75 to 200 million people died in Europe). Symptoms: appearance of buboes in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. What causes this: The medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air“. The rat flea (the bubonic plague).
MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066 - 1500 CE) By 1385 CE, English was the language of instruction in schools. 1350
to 1400 CE is known as the Period of Great Individual Writers (most famously, Chaucer), but their works included an apology for writing in English.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH The
writing system changed dramatically:
þ
and ð were replaced by th
c
before i or e became ch
sc
became sh
hw
became wh
cw
became qu
k was used much more often (cyning became king) Verb
infinitives dropped the -an ending, and used "to"
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1500 - 1650/1700 CE) William
Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1476.
Ten
thousand words were added to English as writers created new words by using Greek and Latin affixes . Some English words are borrowed from other languages. Henry
Cockrum dictionary.
published
his
English
CHARACTERISTICS OF EARLY MODERN ENGLISH Adjectives
lost all endings except for in the comparative and superlative forms.
The
third person singular form became -(e)s instead of -(e)th.
The
Great Vowel Shift (1400-1600) changed the pronunciation of all the vowels
AMERICAN ENGLISH Immigrants
from Southeastern England began arriving on North American in the early 1600's. The American English language is characterized by archaisms (words that changed meaning in Britain, but remained in the colonies) and words borrowed from French and Spanish. Several spellings from British English changed (colour became color, theatre became theater, etc.)
THE FIST AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE It
was published in 1828, by Noah Webster. It took twenty-eight years to be completed. Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Greek, Hebrew and Latin. His work went on to inspire many other authors in their use of the language. As with Emily Dickinson
"Education is useless without the Bible."
E-GRAPHY http://www.ielanguages.com/linguistics.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/oeterm.htm
http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/historytim
eline.htm http://webstersdictionary1828.com/NoahWebster