How was the English Language developed?

Question

The English Language is spoken all over the world and is considered as one of the universal languages of the world. You can speak English in just about any country including in countries such as India, Nigeria, South Africa, and China.

How was the English Language started and where in the world did it originate? Also, how did the English Language become the Universal Language of the World?

Answer 1

English is a West Germanic language originating in England, and the first language for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America (also commonly known as the Anglosphere). It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language throughout the world, especially in Commonwealth countries such as India, Pakistan and South Africa, and in many international organisations.

Modern English is sometimes described as the global lingua franca.[1][2] English is the dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment and diplomacy.[3] The influence of the British Empire is the primary reason for the initial spread of the language far beyond the British Isles.[4] Following World War II, the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States has significantly accelerated the spread of the language.

Because a working knowledge of English is required in certain fields, professions, and occupations, English is studied and spoken by up to a billion people around the world, to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). English is one of six official languages of the United Nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

Answer 2

English as we know it today has only been around for about 500 years. It started out as a Germanic language, belonging to the same language family as German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, etc. In fact, if you were to look at Holland, which is geographically halfway between Germany and England, its language, Dutch, if you look at it, actually looks like a combination of English and German!
If you were to go back and look at Old English (such as the works of Beowulf), which we find around 800 A.D., it would be completely incomprehensible. Middle English, around 1200 A.D., is a little more decipherable, but still fairly foreign. Then we have "Shakespearian" English, around 1600 A.D.(which is still considered "Modern" English), which we find in the King James version of the Bible and in the works of Shakespeare. This is still readable by modern speakers of English.
English became a worldwide "second language" due to the fact that most post-modern development of technology has been created by Americans, and Great Britain had a great influence around the world due to their imperialism in the last 200 years.

Answer 3

The Romans, who spoke Latin, occupied most of Britain until 400 CE. After they left, several different tribes took over including the Angles and the Saxons. They were speaking what linguists refer to as Old English. In 1066 William the Conqueror (or Bastard) won the Battle of Hastings and brought French speaking people over. The two languages combined to give us Middle English (Chaucer wrote in it). Over time things were changed and added until we arrived at what we call Modern English at some point during the Renaissance. It's just continued to grow and have all sorts of things added to it because of exposure to other cultures and languages. It became so widespread because of the huge British Empire. At one time the sun never set on the British Empire. The Empire broke up throughout the 20th century, but a lot of the places that were colonies still speak English.

Answer 4

Okay, well it started with the Invasion of Britian by the Angles, (thusly it's called Angle-land). Then the Saxons came, and the languages merged and became Anglo-Saxon, also known as Old English. Anglo-Saxons had traits of Germanic before the Second High German Consonant shift.

Then the Normans, who were French Vikings, more or less, came over and at the battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conquerer took over England. Slowly, Anglo-Saxon mixed with Norman French. That's why we have spelling similar to some French words. Then some of the sounds slowly changed and were added. Then Middle English was formed. Chaucer wrote in this time, Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur is in Middle English, Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knyght was written in Middle English too. But then a scary thing happened. The Vowels shifted!
What we call the Great Vowel shift happened I think somewhere from 1300 to 1600 or so. This was went most of our vowels moved up. So words with /i/ moved up and was diphthongized to /aj/, /e/ moved up to /i/, /a/ shifted to /e/, /o/ to /u/, and /u/ to /aw/. That's why our vowels are so messed up today. What's worse is that some of our past tense forms did not shift. So Keep was orginally /kep/ (sounds like cape), and it moved up to /kip/ but the past tense stayed down at /kεpt/ .
Shakespeare wrote after this change, and wrote in an era known as "Early Modern English." It wasn't the same as it is today, because subjunctive was used more, the third person ending wasn't decided between -th and -s yet, and the Thou form was still used. Slowly it became English as we know it today.

Answer 5

interesting question....

I would say that the English language didn't just "start," but evolved over hundreds of years. It derived from many different languages, some being German, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish.

It's not the most detailed answer, but it's what I know. haha...not much.

Your questions always make me think, they are very interesting. Keep it up!

:)xoxo

Answer 6

Not only English, every language has its own system of idiom and metaphor when the literal meaning of words and their actual conveyed meaning is very different. All languages develop and evolve, getting rid of some grammatical rules and styles while developing others, which can cause strange rules and exceptions in grammar. Having said that, English is rather unique, it was a rather simple language of a small tribe of people which was then (and still is) heavily influenced by a number of different languages including: French, German, Latin, Greek and others. English has adopted spelling and grammatical rules and expressions from all of these languages, which is why it can behave particularly strangely sometimes. It is hard to judge the absolute difficulty of languages, but I suspect they're all roughly the same, within a certain range. English does have a lot of idiosyncrasies, but look closely at any language and you will see that they do as well. Studying language can often cause us to look at other languages, and even our own with an excessively critical eye. Just remember that the most important goal of language is communication between people, if you communicate enough, any language will make itself plain to you, and eventually be easily understood.

Answer 7

where did it originate? oh i don't know, maybe england? lol

Anglo-Saxton, germanic, and latin influences.

It became universal because the British empire has been in most of the world ("the sun never sets on the British empire")


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Answer 8

English was started by the french.

Answer 9

It all started one morning about a hundred years ago when a guy walked up to a group of guys and said "S'up y'all?" It just kind of caught on.

Answer 10

From the northern Germanic Tribes, Latin and Greek but Latin is from Greek also.