How the English language has developed over time?

Answer 1

There was an original Anglo language. Over the years we were invaded by everybody around. They all tried to force their languages on us, and some of it stuck. So modern English is a mixture of Anglo/saxon, Scandinavian, Latin, French and so on and on. That is why it is such a wonderful, descriptive language.
Also, play on all these words gives us our jokes and a great sense of humour.

Answer 2

this was a real shock, the Encarta disc of encyclopedias has a build in dictionary. It has to be updated every six months.
Because our language is changing so fast.
If you want to see the English language 200 years ago read the king James bible. That is a perfect example of how much our language has changed. A shambles use to be a meat market.
That is why the newer bibles are actually more accurate.
there was a list of things that had changed. But just think how different English speaking countries have different words for the same thing. Like the UK or Australia or even more so South Africa.

Answer 3

I once saw this cool comparison of how the English language has developed since 800 A.D., and Old English of that time is completely unintelligible. Middle English around 1100 was a little bit more understandable, but still a little rough. Shakespearian English (around 1600) is the oldest version of the language still understandable by the modern layman.

Answer 4

This would take far too long to answer, but I can recommend any of the following books 'Growth and Structure of the English Language' by Otto Jespersen, 'A History of the English Language' by A.C.Baugh & Thomas Cable, 'A History of English' by Barbara Strang' or 'Our Language' by Simeon Potter. They are all sitting on my bookshelf, so if you are ever in the Daventry area, you're welcome to come and browse. My telephone number is 01327·877425 .

Answer 5

Well, that's a pretty broad question! For a more comprehensive look, see an encyclopedia article, or look at the history of the English language on Wikipedia. However, I'd give these broad generalisations:

(and this is VERY brief)

-Pre-Norman: this is old English, which to be honest has more in common, for the modern reader, with German than English. However, certain fundamental words- such as "a", "the", "I" and so forth still exist

-Norman Invasion (Middle English)
Now, there's an influx of Romantic lexis, especially in relation to those activities French nobles moving into England would have specifically been associated with: government, academia (those two words themselves are derived from Latin), deliocacies and food for pleasure, entertainment.

Syntax is more stable, and English moves from a synthetic (where meaning is based on suffixes etc.) to analytic (where it is suggested by word order) style.

-Early modern-English

Marked by the advent of printing- Caxton's use of a Midlands dialect for lexical choice and spelling patterns helps standardise the English language (that is, printing, because it allows circulation, makes language use less specific to province, more to the area that these texts may be distributed in, if you see what I mean).

Colonialism grows, and words from the 'orient' start to appear in English ('kiosk', for example, is Iranian), as well as those derived from the new specialities of science, mathematics, medicine etc.

-18th century
Samuel Johnson's dictionary is printed, and prescriptivism grows: the idea of a need to conform to a standardised pattern of spelling, lexical choice, construction etc. Artificial rules form Latin are (unsuccessfully) introduced by scholars to obtain English a level of 'respectability')- for example, the rule insisting that we never finish a sentence with a preposition.

Over this time, syntax has become gradually more stable, as have spelling patterns etc.

Phew!

Hope that's helpful.

P.S. 'Yay Answers', you're right in your idea, but it's the french rather than Norwegians. So 'beef' and the French 'boeuf' versus 'cow', English 'poultry' and French 'poulet' versus 'chicken'. The words related to meat are derived from the names their largest consumers (i.e. the French) gave them, the words related to livestock from those who reared them (i.e. poor English farmers)

Answer 6

Read the Venerable Bede, then Chaucer, then Shakespeare, then Dickens, then Zadie Smith.
In the original, of course.
Then consider the various incursions and invasions, from the Romans (AD 52) Normans (AD1066 and all that), to all the other incomers who brought with them their own languages and "loaned" us so many words and phrases.
Massive question, even more massive potential answer.

Answer 7

There is a very good book you may be able to buy in the internet by Melvin Bragg called "The adventure of English" all about this subject.

Answer 8

It's going through another change now,,thanks to Tony Blair and his bunch of tossers,,now are kids cannot even speak English properly init!

Answer 9

intresting! check this out--- (i might be getting the names wrong, but whatever.) anglo saxons beat norweigans in war a long time ago. so, the anglo saxons were higher class like nobles and stuff, norwiegans=servants, etc. so like since the norwiegans killed animals and served the food to the anglo saxons, beef is an anglo saxon word, and cow is a norwiegen word. pork= anglo, pig= norwiegan. get it? cool huh!

Answer 10

read shakespear, then read Tom Clancy.