The History of English
Chapter 1
English Present and
Future
The History of the English
language
Let’s attempt to answer these
questions:
What sets humans apart from all other
creations in the universe?
How are we exclusively different?
“The
gift of language
is the single human
trait that marks us all genetically, setting us
apart form the rest of life.” (Lewis Thomas in
The Lives of a Cell
, 1974, p. 89)
“communication via
speech is uniquely human
—
so much so that it often is used as the singular,
What do we call the scientific
study of language?
What are some branches of Linguistics?
Is there any relationship between linguistics
and other disciplines/fields of study e.g.
language and sociology, psychology,
The scientific study of:
Language + history=
Historical approaches to study language
were among the earliest approaches of
linguistics (during the 19
th
century). It
was called ‘
Philology
’. It focused of
studying languages diachronically (over
time).
Historical linguistics analyzes Histories of languages and
answers some
questions
such as:
How do languages
change over time
?
What are the
factors
(
political, social, cultural, economic
, etc,)
which affect the development and change of a language?
What are the
linguistic
(
phonological, syntactic, lexical,
etc. )
changes
that happened to a specific language in history?
What happens to languages when they come
in contact
?
What is the
etymology
of a specific word?
What are
language families
?
Introduction
Why study the
History of English
?
Because you need to know the historical
story of English; how it evolved, where
it started; when, how it has changed
throughout the centuries,
why it has such characteristics and
irregularities as in the plural (man,
men), in verbs, and in spelling,
Albert C.
Baugh’s (2002)
A History of the English
language
(5
thedition).
The aim of the book as stated by the author in the first
edition of the book is “to present the historical
development of English in such a way as to preserve a
proper balance between what may be called
internal
history
– sounds and inflections – and
external history
– the
political
,
social
, and
intellectual
forces that have
determined the course of that development at
different periods.”
Before we embark upon and sail
through the story f English
development throughout
history, we will stop today to
the current
analyze and focus on
status of the English language
.
4. The importance of a language:
• Languages do not acquire importance from internal (linguistic) advantages. • The status of language depends on extralinguistic features; political, economic,
technological, and military events that shape the balance of power among nations. The language of a powerful nation will gain importance.
• The arts & sciences expressed in the language of powerful nations spread easily and acquire importance, too, reinforcing its prestige.
• So, any language of the 4000+ languages of the world can be important if the circumstances allow it to be so.
• English, French, German & Spanish are Important because of the history & influence of their populations in modern times.
• One of the most important
languages in the
world
– Number of speakers
• Largest of Western languages (spoken by 380 million)
The Importance of English
Inner circle
Outer circle
Expanding circle Source: White,
By total number of speakers, English is ranked no. 1:
The Importance of English
Source:
• Chinese: most widely used native language (1.3 billion) • Spanish: next in size to English (spoken by 330 million) Other important languages: Russia, French, Italian, etc.
–
Lingua fran
ca for international communication
• Former colonies of England with diverse populations: The colonizer’s language remained indispensable even after independence, and in spite of hostility to the political and cultural values of the colonizer.
• During the current information age, English is one of the most widely used language in the internet, social media, etc.
– Language of economy & technology
The Future of the English language
• Growth of a language is a matter of population
Birth rate – death rate
International migration Growth
• Which populations of the world will increase most rapidly?
– Population in economically developed countries will shrink (with the exception of the US)
– Third World countries will grow
• Will English use decline with a declining population? – Unlikely
– English is widely used as a 2nd and foreign language
– Speakers who have acquired English between with native-like competency 400-350million
– Total of native & non-native English speakers = 1-1.5 billion – English is an official language in some Third World countries
•
There are many calls in such countries to
officially depend on vernacular languages for
government and education e.g.
Hindi in India
,
Swahili in Tanzania
,
Tagalog in Philippines
, yet
there aren’t enough resources. Teaching
materials are hardly published in such languages
while these are readily available in English.
•
Because of such reasons English is expected to
hold its position and importance in the future.
•
The growth of English will be most notable in its
use throughout the world as a second language.
English as a world language
The world is fully alive to the need for an international language for communication. Many artificial, universal languages were proposed (e.g. Esperanto), none was successful. It was proved that the means for political, scientific, historical, and literary thought and interaction has to be a living language.
English found itself at the right place and at the right time.
1. More scientific research is published in English than in any other language.
2. The revolution of communications during the 2th century has contributed to the spread of several European languages, especially of English because of major broadcasting and motion picture
industries in USA and UK.
3. During the 1990s, the explosive growth of the internet was extending English as a world language. The development of the
technology and software to run the internet took place in the United States (the U.S. Department of Defense). In 2000, English was the
Is English an easy language to
learn?
• English vocabulary is
vast
and
mixed
– English is a Germanic language (like German, Dutch, Swedish) – More than half its vocabulary is Latin (French, Italian,
Spanish)
– English is familiar to speakers of Germanic/Romance languages
– English welcomes borrowings from other languages
• Chipmunk, raccoon, skunk (Native American) • Landscape, uproar, wagon (Dutch)
• Balcony, piano, umbrella, volcano (Italian) • Alligator, mosquito, tornado, vanilla (Spanish) • Catastrophe, chronology, elastic, magic (Greek)
• Algebra, Alchemy, Alcohol, coffee, cotton, hummus (Arabic)
• The
cognates
in many languages is an asset of English.
They are learned more rapidly and retained longer than
other words.
English has inflectional simplicity
• A feature of English is
inflectional simplicity
– Nouns
only inflected for plural & possessive
• (e.g,
book
s
,
Abrar’
s
book
)
– Adjectives
only inflected for comparative
or superlative degrees
• (e.g.,
bigg
er
, bigg
est
)
– Verb
agreement simplified from what it still is
in German (no personal endings)
• German
uses
grammatical
gender (a student must learn
both the meaning and the gender of the word).
• In the Romance languages (such as it is the case in
Arabic) there are only two genders and all nouns which
are neuter in English are either masculine or feminine.
• In German:
– sonne (sun) is feminine
– mond (moon) is masculine
– kind (child), mädchen (maiden), and weib (wife) are neuter
• Gender in
English
is now determined by
meaning
– Nouns naming living creatures
• Either feminine or masculine according to sex – All other nouns
• are neuter
Liabilities:
• Difficulty to express oneself
idiomatically
– My husband isn’t up yet
– My husband isn’t down yet
Sometimes without reasonable justification (depends on
memory): run fast/ stand fast
• Chaotic character of English
spelling
; lack of correlation between
spelling & pronunciation. One cannot tell how to spell and
English word by its sound. Valuable time is spent (by English
kids, or nonnative learners of English) learning how to spell
English words. Yet, English spelling reflects the etymology of
the word.
–
sh
oe,
s
ugar, i
ss
ue, na
tio
n, suspi
cio
n, o
cea
n,
