How old is the English Language, compared to Latin??

Answer 1

It's impossible to put a date on when the English language originated because it's in constant change. The People of England spoke Celtic languages before the arrival of the Romans in 43 AD. After the Roman occupation Latin became the language of the upper classes, the common people continued to use Celtic.
The Romans occupied England for 400 years. When they moved out, People from the Germanic parts of the mainland began to move in looking for land. The Jutes, the Saxons, Angles,and others brought their German language to the Island.
From about 750 to 950 AD raiders from Norway and Denmark known as Vikings made raids on outlying churches and monasteries. Later armies from those countries fought for and gained land, bringing more of the Germanic language with them.
In 1066 Willian Duke of Normandy conquered all of England, bringing with him the French language, which is derived from Latin. So now the people had to converse in a mixture of Old German, Old French, and what was left of Latin.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was written at the very end of the sixteen hundreds. The story can't be understood by anyone who has not made a special study of of that period.- - Prologue

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath percd to the toote.
And gathed every veyne in swich licvor
Of which verty engendered is he flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Insoired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours Y-ronne
And smale fowles maken melodye,
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

Even two hundred years later, when the King James Bible was translated, English was far from what it is now. So when did it begin ???
Latin, though much older than English died with the end of the Roman Empire. Many will say that Latin is still in use, therefore it's not a dead language.That's not correct because a language is considered to be a dead language when no new words are ever added to it. Latin has no words for the airplane, automobile, radio, computer, and millions of other words that have come into use since the end of the Empire,
A few years ago, the Pope in writing a letter in Latin had to find a way to say airplane. He described it as a machine that goes through the air propelled by a special kind of juice.

Answer 2

The English language was a combination of Latin and indigenous Gaellic and Gaulic languages, and is therefore younger than Latin. It began about the time the Romans invaded England, when a lingua franca, or a common language, developed between the conquerors and the native Britons. For a long time, this remained the language of the commoners, as the aristocracy spoke French. In fact, Mary, Queen of Scots, didn't speak English, but French. Most of the English kings and queens also spoke French, until the time when the Germans began to intermarry into the British Royal family.
English is what is known as a living language. It continues to evolve -- new words are being added to it every year. Latin is a dead language. It doesn't change, and isn't commonly used.
That's not an exact answer to your question, but hope it helps a bit.

Answer 3

That's a hard question to answer, as the modern English language has evolved from earlier languages. Modern English has been spoken since about 1450, Middle English from about 1100 to 1450, and Old English prior to 1100. Old English or Anglo-Saxon was a West Germanic dialect similar to Dutch and Frisian. It gave rise to Middle English, which was a diverse bunch of dialects and was increasingly influenced by Latin and French after the Norman Conquests. Modern English was the London area dialect which came to dominate England possibly as a result of the new movable type used in printing - and it is only this language which is obviously English to someone who has not studied Old or Middle English. Obviously if you go back far enough in time, thousands of years then the origins of Latin and English merge, but English as we know it has only been around for about 700 years, whereas Latin goes back several hundred years before the time of Christ.

Answer 4

Dating is not easy, but written records and archaeological evidence indicate that the island of Britain was settled by speakers of the ancestor of the English language around the year 450 AD. If we use this as a starting point, the English language is just over 1,500 years old.
Latin
In one sense, Old French began when the Roman Empire conquered the territory it called Gaul during the conquests of Julius Caesar, which were substantially completed by 51 BC. The Romans introduced the Latin language into southern France starting in around 120 BC, when they occupied southern Gaul during the Punic Wars.

Starting during the period when Plautus was writing, the common Latin of the Roman world, the phonological structure of classical Latin began to change, yielding the vulgar Latin that was the common spoken language of the western Roman world.

This vulgar Latin began to vary strongly from the classical language in its phonology; spoken Latin, rather than the somewhat artificial literary language of classical Latin, was the ancestor of the Romance languages including Old French. Some Gaulish words influenced Vulgar Latin and thus, not only Old French but also other Romance languages. For example classical Latin equus was replaced in common parlance by vulgar Latin caballus, derived from Gaulish caballos (Delamare 2003 p.96) thus giving Modern French cheval, Italian cavallo, Spanish caballo, Romanian cal and (borrowed from French) English cavalry.

Answer 5

Seen as though the English language spoken today derives from Latin not as old! x

Answer 6

English is a pretty modern language, it's still evolving, half of the words in the dictionary were slang only last century, and some of them are the most un-slangish words ever.
granted, Old English comes in pre-roman invasion, so it could pre date Latin, but it's a totally different language to the one we speak now.

Answer 7

examine Mikhail's dazzling answer. although center refers to a term (center German became into spoken between old German and modern German). I agree that calling many different languages GERMANIC isn't situation-free to describe. My important became into in Germanic Philology and distinctive human beings do no longer understand that I studied extra often than not Nordic languages traditionally. with the aid of age, do you mean age of written textile? All languages from from an older version, apart from pidgins and built languages. So how can you assert whilst a languages must be measured from? eu languages stem from Proto-Indo-eu (a reconstructed hypothesis of what the older language would have been. this is like PIE got here from Nostratic or another historical reconstruction. Norwegian has 2 written types these days. however the dialects circulate decrease back to old North Scandinavian.

Answer 8

English is not derived from Latin. It is derived from Germanic languages. It was first brought to Britain in the 5th century (A.D.). It's probably a little bit older that.

Answer 9

Younger. Especially as the mixture it is today (Latin, as a dead language, has not changed in a veery long time; English is being reborn each day, because people speak it).

Answer 10

English is from the 5th century AD

Latin is from the 9th or 8th century BC

So Latin is 1300 years or so older.