THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH

The history of English begins a little after
A.D. 600. English is a Germanic Language
of the Indo –European Family
Indo –
European
English French Latin Greek Swedish Russian Hindi

History of English is divided into three:
•
Old English (7th century-1100): is a language
rich with morphological diversity and is pronoun
essentially as it is spelt.
Old English
Hie dygel lond
Warigeath, wulf –hleothu, windige
naessas,
Frence fen –gelid, there forge –steam
Under naessas genipap, neither gaited
Flod under foldan.
Modern English
Lonely and waste is the land they inhabit,
Wolf –cliffs wild and windy headlands,
Ledges of mist. Where and mountain
torrents
Downward plunge to dark abysses
And flow unseen.
Beowuef (printed in the modern alphabet)

•

Middle English(1100-1450/1500): The sound
system & grammar wasn’t so effected but
vocabulary was effected much.
Middle English
A Clerk ther was of Oxenford
also,
That un –to logik hadde
longe y –go.
Modern English
A Clerk that is an Oxford
scholar – who
Looked hollow to his bones,
and threadbare, too.

•
Modern English (1500-now):the change was
the elimination of a vowel sound and the
Great Vowel Shift .