HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1.   English – Present and Future

1. Language and Culture

Among other things, one thing which distinguishes man from animal is ‘taking interest in his past’. As we feel that our education is not complete without some basic knowledge of economics, every day science and history, so we have a keen desire to discover how our mother tongue (or any other language) started and developed into the present shape. We are keen to study the details about the medium through which we communicate with our family and friends, the tool with which we conduct our business and the vehicle by which science, philosophy and poetry have been transmitted to us. Thus an educated man must know something of the structure of his language, its position in the world, its relation to other tongues, the richness of its vocabulary; and political, social and cultural influences on his mother tongue.

2. Influence on Language

While political and social events of history have profoundly affected the English people’s life, they have overwhelmingly affected their Language also. Christianizing of Britain in 597 brought England into contact with Latin civilization and made significant additions to the vocabulary of English language. The Scandinavian invasions resulted in a considerable mixture of the two peoples and their languages. After Norman Conquest, English language for two centuries remained the language of the lower class; while the nobles used French all the time. And when the English once again came to power, English language became the language of all population. But it was now an English greatly changed both in form and vocabulary from what it was in 1066. Similarly, the Hundred Years’ War, the rise of middle class, Renaissance, maritime power of England, expansion of British Empire, and growth of commerce, industry, science and literature all have contributed to make the English language what it is today. Thus the English language reflects in its entire development the political, social and cultural history of the English people.

3. Growth and Decay of Language

All languages have a history of growth and decay. English language has also seen many ups and downs. Such as plants and animals live and die, so is the language. Sometimes, it is living and sometimes it is dead. This process of change in Language is essential for its progress. When a language ceases to change, we call it a dead language. Classical Latin is a dead language because it has not changed for nearly two thousand years. Change in a living language can be mostly seen in its vocabulary. Old words die out, new words are added and existing words change their meaning. For instance Nice in Shakespeare’s days meant foolish, rheumatism meant a cold in the head. Pronunciation also changes. Old English word stan has become our stone; cu has become cow. Grammar also changes. Previously, knowed was the past tense of know. This process of change is called analogy. It is interesting to trace the influences which alter a language (spoken and written) from age to age. These are the influences which have made the English language of 900 quite unintelligible to the people of 1900.

4. Importance of Language

There is a strong relationship between a language and the people who speak it. The two can never be thought apart. A language lives only so long as there are people who speak it. A language is important because the people who speak it are important – politically, economically, commercially, socially and culturally. English, French and German languages are important because they are the languages of important peoples.  Hence they are widely studied even outside their native countries. But Romanian, Serbian and Malay are seldom learned by outsiders. Sometimes cultural importance of a nation has been so great that its language remains important for a long time even though that nation has lost its political, commercial or cultural greatness. Greek language, for example, is studied in its classical form because its literature preserves the most complete record of its great civilization. As for the Modern Greek language spoken today, it is largely neglected by the outside world.

5. Importance of English

English is the largest language spoken in Europe and America by more than 340 million people. A comparison with the speakers of other European languages is as follows:-

Language	Number of Speakers
English	340 m
Spanish	210 m
Russian	200 m
Portuguese	115 m
German	105 m
French	80 m
Italian	62 m

Importance of a language is not only due to the large number of its speakers. It also depends on the importance of the people who speak it. It is closely associated with the political role played by the nations who use it; with their influence in international affairs; with the extent of their business and international trade; with the conditions of life under which their people live; and with the part played by them in art and literature and music, in science and inventions; and in exploration and discovery – in short with their contribution to the material and spiritual progress of the world. English is the mother tongue of the nations whose combined political influence, economic soundness, commercial activity, social well-being and scientific and cultural contributions to civilization have made English the largest language of the world.

It is interesting to note that Arabic is spoken by 325 million people. But since the Arabs today are not living like a strong and powerful nation, their language is not as important as English. If they are united as one Muslim nation, Arabic can become the language of the world.

6. The Future of the English Language

What will be the future of the English Language? It is very difficult to predict about the future of a language because we cannot predict about the future of the nations. Existence of a language mostly depends on the population of its speakers. Current trends show that the population of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America is growing faster than the population of developed countries in Europe and North America. Thus the population of the English speaking countries is shrinking. But we should remember that the future of a language is not merely the matter of the number of people who use it. A language lives as far as its speakers live like a strong and powerful nation. Besides, English is widely used as a second language throughout the world. In some developing countries which are experiencing fast economic growth, such as India, Nigeria and Philippines, English is one of the official languages. Although such countries try to adopt their native language as official language, but these efforts mostly fail and English language continues to play its vital role in the developing countries. It is hoped that English language will remain important and indispensable throughout the world in future.  

7. Will English become the language of the world?

Will English become some day the language of the world? This is a very interesting question. What a pleasant idea it is:-

·         if a traveler is not required to rely on a foreign language while visiting any country of the world;

·         if we can conduct our business using one single language;

·         if scientists and scholars can learn and exchange information without any barrier of language; 

·         if we could avoid misunderstandings among nations and promote peace through direct contacts among the world leaders – all of them using one common language.

The world is fully aware of the need of one international language. Several attempts made in the past to create a new artificial language have, however, failed. The official languages of United Nations are English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. When we compare the present status of English with other five languages, we see that English is the most popular language of international communication and media, its number of speakers is increasing, in many countries it is either the primary (official) language or a compulsory second language in schools, courts and business. Thus it can be hoped that if some day the whole world agrees to adopt one single language for communicating with one another, it will be none but the English language. As John Galsworthy remarked, “any impartial scrutiny made at this moment of time must place English at the head of all languages as the most likely to become, in a natural, unforced way, the single intercommunicating tongue.”

8. Assets and Liabilities (Strengths and Weaknesses of English Language)

Every language has some strong points and some weak points.

Strengths of English Language

English language has the following 3 strong points which have made this language easy to learn for foreigners:-

1. Cosmopolitan Vocabulary
2. Inflectional Simplicity (Simplicity in variations)
3. Use of Gender

9. Cosmopolitan Vocabulary

English is called a Germanic language, which means that it belongs to the group of German, Dutch, Flemish (Belgian), Danish, Swedish and Norwegian languages. It shares with these languages similar grammatical structure and many common words. More than half of its vocabulary is derived from Latin (through French, Italian and Spanish). It frequently borrows words from many other languages, such as:-

WORDS	BORROWED FROM
Caravan, divan, khaki, shawl, sherbet, jasmine, paradise, check, chess, lemon, turban, spinach	Persian
Brandy, golf, wagon, uproar	Dutch
Balcony, duet, granite, opera, piano, umbrella, volcano	Italian
Cargo, contraband, cork, mosquito, stampede, tornado, vanilla	Spanish
Anthology, barometer, catastrophe, chronology, elastic, magic, tactics	Greek
Vodka, ruble,	Russian

Besides, English has borrowed many words from Arabic, Hungarian, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Chinese; and also from the languages of Java, Australia, West Africa and Brazil. Such a cosmopolitan vocabulary can easily make a language international.  

                         

10. Inflectional Simplicity (Simplicity in Variations)

A language in which variation of words is simple can sustain and can progress. In the process of simplification, English has gone further than any other language in Europe. For instance, to make plural of a noun, generally, we have to add ‘s’ after it and for apostrophe, we are required to add “ ’s” after the noun. For making past tense of a verb, we may simply add ‘ed’ after it. For making comparative and superlative degrees of adjective, we generally add ‘er’ and ‘est’ respectively. These things are very complicated in other languages like German and French.

11. Use of Gender  

Handling of Gender in English language is very simple when compared to other European languages. Gender in English is determined by meaning and there is a very simple rule for this: All living creatures are masculine or feminine according to their sex; while all non-living things are called Neuter Gender. We say:-

·         Man is brave. He is not afraid of any one.

·         Lady is beautiful. She is wearing a nice dress.

·         I have a chair. It is made of wood.

For non-living things, we never bother whether we should use for them ‘He’ or ‘She’; we simply use ‘It’.

12. Liabilities (Weaknesses of English Language)

Like all other languages, English also has some weak points, which make it difficult to learn, especially for foreigners:-

1. Difficult idiomatic expressions:      An idiom is a form of expression peculiar to the language. Foreigners often complain that they cannot easily express themselves idiomatically in English. English language is not alone to face this problem. All languages have their special ways of saying things. Let us see these sentences expressed in German and English:-

German	English
Was fur ein Mann (What for a man)	What kind of man
Il fait froid (It makes cold)	It is cold

  

The French visitor, who had learned the English idiom: ‘to press a person to do something’ said: “Can we not squeeze the young lady to sing?” His substitution ‘squeeze’ for the word ‘press’ was logical; but it was not idiomatic. Similarly, note the difference in the meanings of these sentences:-

My husband isn’t up yet	My husband isn’t down yet
Go fast (Run fast)	Stand fast (Stay firm)

But such difficulties we find in every language. Specially, the languages which are simple have to face these kinds of problems. Their mastery largely depends on their memory.

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2. Relation between spelling and pronunciation:       The most adequate system of spellings is that which best combines simplicity with consistency – a system in which the same sound is regularly represented by the same character and a given character always represents the same sound. There is only one language in the world which perfectly fulfils this condition; and that is Arabic – the language of the Holy Quran. Among European languages, Italian and German are much better than English in this respect.

In English:-

1)      The vowel sound in each of the following words is represented by a different spelling:-

Believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see

2)      The character ‘a’ sounds differently in the following words:-

Father, hate, hat

3)      There are 14 spellings for the sound of ‘sh’:-

Shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon (protector), schist (rock), fuchsia (bush), Pshaw (hate)  

This shows that there is lack of uniformity in spelling in English language. One cannot tell how to spell an English word by its pronunciation or how to pronounce it by its spelling. The English-speaking child wastes much valuable time during the early years of his education in learning to spell his own language; and to a foreigner, English spelling is extremely difficult. About a hundred years back, an attempt was made to simplify English spellings as follows:-

Existing Spelling	Simplified Spelling
Have	hav (like ‘has’ and ‘had’)
Are	ar (like ‘is’)
Were	wer (like ‘was’)

But though logically sound, these spellings seemed strange to the eye. So this change could not be accepted. But there is a possibility that some day we are forced to reform our spelling from international point of view.

2.   Indo-European Family of Languages

13. Language Constantly Changing

Language is not writing. Actually it is speech. Writing is only a device of recording sounds. Since language is speech, therefore, it is not uniform and fixed; it is always changing. Speech is produced by moving certain muscles of human body. When muscles are moved repeatedly, this movement is subject to alteration. This alteration takes place largely without our being conscious of it. Thus each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing slight changes in his speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in a language. Speech of one community differs from that of another; speech of different individuals of a single community differs from one another; even speech of different members of the same family differs from one another. Members of a group, however, are influenced by one another. Therefore we find a general similarity in the speech of a particular community. Changes in speech are general and common to a large part of the community.  

Alteration that is going on in a language is so gradual that we hardly notice it. But after a period of time it becomes visible. Classical Poet, Alexander Pope writes:

            Good-nature and good-sense must ever join;

            To err is human, to forgive, divine …..

Here it is apparent that he pronounced ‘join’ as ‘jine’. Again he says:

            Here thou great Anna! Whom three realms obey,

            Dost sometimes counsel take – and sometimes Tea.

This shows that he pronounced ‘Tea’ as ‘Tay’. At other places Pope has used the words full—rule, give—believe, glass—place, ear—repair etc. Similar examples can be seen in Chaucer’s and King Alfred’s works. Alfred used the words: ban (bone), hu (how), heah (high). These words can hardly be recognized by the ordinary English-speaking person today.

14. Dialectal Differentiation

In a community, individual differences of speech remain merged in the general speech of the community, so they are not visible. But if any separation of one community from another takes place and lasts for quite some time, differences grow up between them and become visible. We call them ‘Local Dialects’. If separation is still longer, so as the language of one district is not understood by the other district, then we have ‘Development of a separate language’. Common features in two languages indicate that at one time in the past they were one, such as English and German:-

German	English
Milch	Milk
Brot	Bread
Fleisch	Flesh
Wasser	Water

Let us have a look at the English words ‘Father’ and ‘Brother’ in other languages:

English	Father	Brother
German	Vater	Bruder
Dutch	vader	Broeder
Greek	Pater	Phrater
Sanskrit	Pitar	Bhratar

This shows that the languages of Europe and Asia were at one time identical.

15. The Discovery of Sanskrit

In late 18^th century, it was discovered that Sanskrit, a language of ancient India, was also one of the language of this European group. The rich literature of India, reaching back further than that of any of the European languages, preserves features of the common language. Besides, the inflections (variations) of these languages also have a common origin. Compare the inflection of ‘is’ and ‘are’ :-

English	Is	are
Old English	Is	sindon
Gothic (German)	Ist	sijum
Latin	Est	sumus
Greek	Esti	semen
Sanskrit	Asti	smas

Analysis carried out by Hindu grammarians also proves that a close relation exists in Sanskrit and European languages, which shows that Sanskrit is also from the family of European languages.

16. Grimm’s Law

In 1822 a German Philologist, Jacob Grimm discovered that there was a great similarity between some consonants in Germanic languages and those found in Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. According to him a ‘p’ in Indo-European languages remained as ‘p’ in Latin and Greek; but it was changed to ‘f’ in Germanic languages. So the Latin word ‘piscis’ (pish) became ‘fish’ in English. Similarly, ‘c’ (sounding as ‘k’) in Latin was changed to ‘h’ and ‘t’ to ‘d’ in English. So the Latin word ‘centum’ (sounding as ‘kentum’) became ‘hundred’ in English. Formulation of these correspondences is known as Grimm’s Law.

The cause of this change is not known. It is said that it took place in fifth century B.C., after the Germanic dialect was separated from the neighboring dialect of the parent language. It is also assumed that the change was due to the migration of Germanic tribes and their contact with non-Germanic population. Another possibility is that a foreign population had entered into Germanic territory which caused this change.  

There were some exceptions in Grimm’s Law. For instance, Latin word ‘centum’ became ‘hundred’ in English. Here change from ‘c’ to ‘h’ was according to rule; but change from ‘t’ to ‘d’ was an exception (because according to rule, ‘t’ should have been changed to ‘th’ (sounding as ‘th-e’) and not ‘d’). In 1875, Karl Verner showed that some voiceless spirants became voiced in Germanic languages. So ‘th-e’ became ‘the’ and then ‘d’ in English.

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17. The Indo-European Family

The languages brought into relationship from a parent speech are called a family language. Previously, the name ‘Aryan’ was used for the Indo-European family languages. But now this word is used only for the language of the family located in India. Another common term used for the Indo-European family languages is Indo-Teutonic (i.e. the languages of Indians, Germans, Scandinavians and British). German Philologists name this family as Indo-Germanic. But this is open to objection of giving undue emphasis to Germanic languages. The term now most widely used is Indo-European, suggesting more clearly the geographical extent of the family.   

We have no written record of the common Indo-European language. By comparison of its descendants, however, it is possible to form a fair idea of it and to reconstruct with approximate accuracy its vocabulary and inflections. There are 11 surviving languages of Indo-European family, which show various degrees of similarity to one another.

18. Indian

The oldest literary texts preserved in any Indo-European language are the Vedas (sacred books) of India. These books form the basis of Brahman philosophy. Oldest of these books go back to 1500 B.C. These are written in Sanskrit language (or Vedic Sanskrit). This language is also found in certain prose writings containing directions for various religious activities of Hindus. Sanskrit was later used for writings other than religion. It was now given a literary form and was known as Classical Sanskrit. Two great epics (long poems) ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Ramayana’ were written in this language. Besides, numerous scientific and philosophical works are also available in Classical Sanskrit. However, long ago Sanskrit ceased to be a spoken language. Later, some local dialects of Sanskrit got a literary form. One of these, ‘Pali’ became the language of Buddhism. The present official languages of India (Hindi), Pakistan (Urdu) and Bangladesh (Bengali) have also descended from these local dialects. These languages are spoken by about 600 million people. Other important languages of India and Pakistan are ‘Panjabi’ and ‘Marathi’. Urdu is closely related to Hindi. However it is differentiated from Hindi for its considerable mixture of Persian and Arabic words and also for its script which is Arabic, not Sanskrit.