Student_ History of English (Speaking)

History of English Dr Farhana Abu Bakar
(Speaking) Language Academy
FSSH UTM

Typically, studies of the development of
English taking this wider approach divide the
language into four stages: Old English,
Middle English, Early Modern English and
Modern or Present day English. However, this
is also not a straightforward task, as there are
no hard and fats rules about when one
period of English ends and another begins.
What one has to do is decide upon a set of
criteria for dating each period in a particular
way. The days for periods of English I have
chosen in this book are as follows:

Old English : __C_E_5_0_0_-1_1_0_0______

Middle English : 1100-1500

Early Modern English: _1_5_0_0_-1_8_0_0______

Modern English : 1800- present

• Each of this dates actually makes a historical event (rounded to the nearest century or half-century),
rather than a linguistic development.

• The __O_l_d_E_n_g__lis_h____period begins about fifty years after the invasion of Britain by the Germanic tribes at
the behest of the Celtic king Vortigern in CE 449. This is the time when the Germanic dialects were first
brough to Britain, providing the raw material for the development of English. We round up to CE 500
here with good reason, as it probably took several generations of settlement before any distinctively
__A_n_g_lo_-_S_a_x_o_n_______ variety of Germanic established itself.

• The Old English period ends with the second major invasion of Britain (the third, actually, if we include
the _in_va_s_io_n_b_y_th_e_R_o_m_a_ns_before the Germanic language came to the Britain).

This was the conquest of Britain by __W_il_lia_m__, D_u_k_e_o_f_N_o_rm__an_d_y___ in
1066, which marks a watershed in the linguistic history of
Britain, as it heralds almost four hundred years of intimate
contact with French, the period that we call Middle English.

The Early Modern period begins in 1500 and ends in 1800.
The date 1500 roughly marks the beginning of the
__R_e_na_i_ss_a_n_ce______ and the introduction of the printing press,
both of which had profound consequences for the
development of the English language.
The Early Modern English period ends with the
_i_nd_e_pe_n_d_en_c_e_o_f t_h_e _A_m_er_ic_a_n _co_lo_n_ie_s_. This event marks the end of the
British monopoly on the English language and the beginning
of the Modern English period, in which several national
varieties of English developed, changing the profile of English
for ever.

• There are some important linguistic characteristics that overlap with these historical period,
of course. The year CE 500 marks the branching off of English from other
_G__e_rm__an_i_c_D_i_a_le_c_ts__________.

• The year 100 marks the period in which English lost the vast majority of its inflections,
signaling the change from a language that relied upon ___m_o_r_p_h_o_lo_g_ic_a_l _______of
grammatical roles to one that relied on word order to maintain basic grammatical relations;
1500 marks the end of major French influence on the language and the time when the use
of English was established in all communicative contexts.

• From 1500 to 1800 and later, the English language absorbed a huge number of words
from ___L_a_tin__a_n_d_G_r_e_e_k_____as a result of the revival of classical learning. Towards the end of
this period, and picking up momentum from 1800 on, the lexicon of English is enriched by
two significant historical processes.

The first is colonialism (which actually begins at the
beginning of the Early Modern English period), during
which process English both spread throughout the
world and absorbed many hundreds of words from a
rich array of the world’s languages with which it came
into various forms of contact.
And from the end of the eighteenth century the
_In_d_u_s_tr_ia_l _R_e_v_o_lu_ti_o_n_and, eventually, the emergence of
the _U__n_ite_d__S_ta_t_e_s__as a world power, coupled with the
development of technology (particularly electronic
and computer technology), also had a profound
influence on the vocabulary of English.

The causes of language change, then, we can say
that languages change because of:

• ___g_e_o_g_r_a_p_h_y_____(separation of one
language or variety from another;
alternatively closeness-language contact);

• C_o_n_t_ra_c_t_w__it_h_n_e_w__v_s_._o_ld__p_h_e_n_o_m_e__n_a_(the need
to adapt to new, different, or changing
aspects of society);

• __Im__p_e_rf_e_c_t _le_a_r_n_in_g______;

• A substratum effect;

• _S_o_c_i_a_l _p_re_s_t_ig_e__fa_c_t_o_rs___(the attempt on the
part of speakers to imitate or acquire
linguistic features that are considered ‘better’
than their own).

Old English:
https://youtu.be/nRHR8D6QcHo
Middle English:
https://youtu.be/qxPiI1CcVrM
Early modern English:
https://youtu.be/eg-7Y1bEqXs