The closest undoubted living relatives of English are Scots and Frisian.
This broad family includes most of the European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several major branches: The influence of the original Indo-European language, designated proto-Indo-European, can be seen today, even though no written record of it exists.
The word for father, for example, is vater in German, pater in Latin, and pitr in Sanskrit. These words are all cognates, similar words in different languages that share the same root. Of these branches of the Indo-European family, two are, for our purposes of studying the development of English, of paramount importance, the Germanic and the Romance called that because the Romance languages derive from Latin, the language of ancient Rome, not because of any bodice-ripping literary genre.
English is in the Germanic group of languages.
Definition of analysis in English: analysis. noun mass noun. A brief history of singular ‘they’ One of the mysteries of the English language finally explained. Read more. Top tips for better writing. Some advice to nail your writing assignments. Read more. English prepositions. English as a second language (ESL): ELL students receive bilingual and ESL instruction for two or three years, followed by immersion in the English mainstream. English mainstream: All bilingual and ESL services are refused, and the student is initially placed in the English mainstream. A Brief History of the English Language: and this had also an effect on the development of the language as new words had to be invented or existing ones modified to cope with the rapid changes in technology. New technical words were added to the vocabulary as inventors designed various products and machinery.
This group began as a common language in the Elbe river region about 3, years ago. Around the second century BC, this Common Germanic language split into three distinct sub-groups: East Germanic was spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No East Germanic language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language that survives is Gothic.
North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic but not Finnish, which is related to Estonian and is not an Indo-European language.
They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian--the language of northeastern region of the Netherlands--that is called Old English. These invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words.
Cornish, unfortunately, is now a dead language. Also influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse invasions, beginning aroundbrought many North Germanic words into the language, particularly in the north of England.
Some examples are dream, which had meant joy until the Vikings imparted its current meaning on it from the Scandinavian cognate draumr, and skirt, which continues to live alongside its native English cognate shirt.
The majority of words in modern English come from foreign, not Old English roots. In fact, only about one sixth of the known Old English words have descendants surviving today.
But this statistic is deceptive; Old English is much more important than this number would indicate. About half of the most commonly used words in modern English have Old English roots. Words like be, water, and strong, for example, derive from Old English roots.
Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted until about This last date is rather arbitrary, but most scholars choose it because it is shortly after the most important event in the development of the English language, the Norman Conquest.
The Bayeux Tapestry, details of which form the navigation buttons on this site, is perhaps the most famous graphical depiction of the Norman Conquest. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman. The Normans were also of Germanic stock Norman comes from Norseman and Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin roots.
Prior to the Norman Conquest, Latin had been only a minor influence on the English language, mainly through vestiges of the Roman occupation and from the conversion of Britain to Christianity in the seventh century ecclesiastical terms such as priest, vicar, and mass came into the language this waybut now there was a wholesale infusion of Romance Anglo-Norman words.
The influence of the Normans can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and cow. Beef, commonly eaten by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while the Anglo-Saxon commoners, who tended the cattle, retained the Germanic cow.
Many legal terms, such as indict, jury, and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the Normans ran the courts. This split, where words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romantic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.
Sometimes French words replaced Old English words; crime replaced firen and uncle replaced eam. Other times, French and Old English components combined to form a new word, as the French gentle and the Germanic man formed gentleman. Other times, two different words with roughly the same meaning survive into modern English.
Thus we have the Germanic doom and the French judgment, or wish and desire. It is useful to compare various versions of a familiar text to see the differences between Old, Middle, and Modern English. Take for instance this Old English c. Rendered in Middle English Wyclif,the same text starts to become recognizable to the modern eye:English as a second language (ESL): ELL students receive bilingual and ESL instruction for two or three years, followed by immersion in the English mainstream.
English mainstream: All bilingual and ESL services are refused, and the student is initially placed in the English mainstream. In today’s modern world, technology has an ever-changing effect on many things – and this includes English language learning and teaching.
Technology has gained a more prominent place in classrooms in recent times and is of particular use to blended teachers. Oct 12, · So I've had a request for a summary of the history of english.
I'm doing this without referencing my notes, so it may require future editing. I'm trying to be as brief as possible but it's kind of long. Origin: Proto-Indo European language speakers move from Caspian sea slowly migrating northwestwardly (as well as other.
The Effect of Using Computer Technology on English Language Teachers’ Performance Yasir Bilal Margan Saeed1 1 University of Tabuk - Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using computer technology on the teaching performance of Sudanese English language teachers.
computer technology in teaching. Unlike Old English, Middle English can be read, albeit with difficulty, by modern English-speaking people. By , the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over.
In that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the courts and it began to be used in Parliament. English Language Learners A Policy Research Brief English Language Learners Recent Policy History Over the last 40 years, U.S English language education has been shaped by a variety of legal and legislative decisions.
In , the use technology .