Creative work on a subject of a report is:”History of English, English written language”. 
 
 
 
 

Executed: Tsudzevich Marry, IE-391. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

English.

The English language is spoken by 750 million people in the world as either the official language of a nation, a second language, or in a mixture with other languages (such as pidgins and creoles.) English is the (or an) official language in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; however, the United States has no official language.

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England and south-eastern Scotland during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century, it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world, and the most prominent language in international business and science. It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organizations.

Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of the island of Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century . English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders.

At the time of the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from the 12th century Old English englisc or Engle, plural form Angles ("of, relating to, or characteristic of England").

Modern English developed with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words. A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and Greek. 
 

Classification and related languages.

The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic Family, a member of the Indo-European languages. The closest living relatives of English are the Scots language, spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, and Frisian. As Scots is viewed by some linguists to be a group of English dialects rather than a separate language, Frisian is often considered to be the closest living relative.

After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages which are more distantly related, namely the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Low German, Dutch, Afrikaans, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the exception of Scots, and on an extremely basic level, Frisian, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, due in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some such as Dutch do show strong affinities with English. This isolation has allowed English and Scots to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time.

Lexical differences with the other Germanic languages can arise from several causes, such as natural semantic drift caused by isolation, and heavy usage in English of words taken from Latin (for example, "exit", vs. Dutch uitgang) (literally "out-gang" with "gang" as in "gangway") and French "change" vs. German Änderung, "movement" vs. German Bewegung (literally "othering" and "be-way-ing" ("proceeding along the way")). Preference of one synonym over another can also cause a differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic (for instance, both English care and German Sorge descend from Proto-Germanic *karo and *surgo respectively, but *karo became the dominant word in English for "care" while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *surgo root prevailed. *Surgo still survives in English as sorrow).

Although the syntax of German is significantly different from that of English and other Germanic languages, with different rules for setting up sentences (for example, German Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen, vs. English "I have never seen anything in the square"), English syntax remains extremely similar to that of the North Germanic languages, which are believed to have influenced English syntax during the Middle English Period (eg., Norwegian Jeg har likevel aldri sett noe i torget; Swedish Jag har ännu aldrig sett något på torget). It is for this reason that despite a lack of mutual intelligibility, English-speakers and Scandinavians can learn each others' languages relatively easily.

Dutch syntax is intermediate between English and German (eg. Ik heb nog nooit iets gezien op het plein). In spite of this difference, there are more similarities between English and other Germanic languages than differences (eg. English bring/brought/brought, Dutch brengen/bracht/gebracht, Norwegian bringe/brakte/brakt; English eat/ate/eaten, Dutch eten/at/gegeten, Norwegian ete/åt/ett), with the most similarities occurring between English and the languages of the Low Countries (Dutch and Low German) and Scandinavia.

Semantic differences cause a number of false friends between English and its relatives (eg. English time vs Norwegian time "hour"), and differences in Phonology can obscure words which actually are genetically related ("enough" vs. German genug, Danish nok). Sometimes both semantics and phonology are different (German Zeit, "time", is related to English "tide", but the English word, through a transitional phase of meaning "period"/"interval", has come primarily to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon, though the original meaning is preserved in forms like tidings and betide, and phrases such as to tide over). These differences, though minor, preclude mutual intelligibility, yet English is still much closer to other Germanic languages than to languages of any other family.

Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "-hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum"). Icelandic and Faroese are other Germanic languages which follow English in this respect, since, like English, they developed independent of German influences.

Many written French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends (for example, "library", vs. French "librarie", meaning bookstore) (in French, "library" is "bibliotheque").

The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with exceptions such as mirage or phrases like coup d’état) has become completely anglicised and follows a typically English pattern of stress. Some North Germanic words also entered English because of the Danish invasion shortly before then (see Danelaw); these include words such as "sky", "window", "egg", and even "they" (and its forms) and "are" (the present plural form of "to be").

History of the English Language.

The English language begins with the Anglo-Saxons.  The Romans, who had controlled England for centuries, had withdrawn their troops and most of their colonists by the early 400s.  Attacks from the Irish, the Picts from Scotland, the native Britons, and Anglo-Saxons from across the North Sea, plus the deteriorating situation in the rest of the Empire, made the retreat a strategic necessity.  As the Romans withdrew, the Britons re-established themselves in the western parts of England, and the Anglo-Saxons invaded and began to settle the eastern parts in the middle 400s.  The Britons are the ancestors of the modern day Welsh, as well as the people of Britanny across the English channel.  The Anglo-Saxons apparently displaced or absorbed the original Romanized Britons, and created the five kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex (see map below).  Notice that the last three are actually contractions of East Saxon, South Saxon, and West Saxon, and that the Welsh still refer to the English as Saxons (Saesneg). 
 
The language we now call English is actually a blend of many languages. Even the original Anglo-Saxon was already a blend of the dialects of west Germanic tribes living along the North Sea coast:  The Saxons in Germany and eastern Holland, the Jutes, possibly from northern Denmark (the area now called Jutland), and the Angles, probably living along the coast and on islands between Denmark and Holland.  It is also likely that the invaders included Frisians from northern Holland and northern Franks from southern Holland (whose relatives gave their name to France).  The dialects were close enough for each to understand the other.

Later, in the 800s, the Northmen (Vikings) came to England, mostly from Denmark, and settled in with the Anglo-Saxons from Yorkshire to Norfolk, an area that became known as the Danelaw.  Others from Norway ruled over the people in the northwest, from Strathclyde to the north of Wales.  The Norse language they spoke resembled Anglo-Saxon in many ways, but was different enough for two things to happen:  One, there were many Old Norse words that entered into English, including even such basic ones as they and them;  And two, the complex conjugations and declensions began to wither away as people disagreed about which to use!

Last, William the Conqueror and his Norman supporters invaded England in 1066.  Although, as their name suggests, they were the descendents of the same Northmen that had invaded England earlier, they had been settled long enough in Normandy in the north of France to adopt a dialect of French.  They brought this Norman French with them to England and kept it as the language of their newly imposed aristocracy.  In the day-to-day need to communicate, the common language became English, but with a large number of French words, and still more withering of grammatical complexities. 
 
English since then has been absorbing vocabulary from a huge number of sources.  French, the language of diplomacy for Europe for centuries, Latin, the language of the church, and Greek, the language of philosophy and science, contributed many words, especially the more "educated" ones.  Other European languages have left culturally specific words.  The American Indian languages, Australian Aborigine languages, and the languages of Africa and India gave us many hundreds of words, especially for the innumerable species of plants and animals of the world.  On top of all this, there is the steady creation of new words and new uses for old words by the many subcultures of the English speaking world.

English's closest relatives can be found right across the water in Holland and Germany.  It's very closest relative is Frisian, spoken in northern Holland and the islands running along the coast from Holland up into Denmark.  Notice some obvious similarities: 

English        Frisian        Dutch        German 
 
as             as             als          als     
bread          brea           brood        Brot              
chaff          tsjêf          kaf          Kaf          
cheese         tsiis          kaas         Käse                  
church         tsjerke        kerk         Kirche                
cow            kou            koe          Kuh 
day            dei            dag          Tag                             
dove           dou            duif         Taube          
dream          dream          droom        Traum             
ear            ear            oor          Ohr     
flea           flie           vlo          Floh          
flown          flein          gevlogen     geflogen                  
fly            fleane         vliegen      fliegen              
goose          goes           gans         Gans          
great          great          groot        gross              
ground         groun          grond        Grund                    hail           heil           hagel        Hagel              
head           haed           hooft        Haupt         
heap           heap           hoop         Haufe         
hear           hear           hoor         Hören     
him            him            hem          ihm 
is             is             is           ist 
it             it             het          es                        
lain           lein           gelegen      gelegen               
lay            lei            lag          lag          
nail           neil           nagel        Nagel                   
need           noot           noot         Not     
nose           noas           neus         Nase        
rain           rein           regen        Regen     
salt           sâlt           zout         Salz            
say            sei            zeg          sag              
seed           sied           zaad         Saat        
sleep          sliepe         slaap        schlaff              
soft           sêft           zacht        sanft              
think          tinke          denken       denken              
thought        tocht          dacht        dachte             
through        troch          door         durch          
thumb          tomme          duim         Daum          
to             to             toe          zu             
Tuesday        tiisdei        dinsdag      Dienstag                 
under          ûnder          onder        unter             
us             ús             ons          uns            
way            wei            weg          Weg                  
yesterday      juster         gisteren     gestern 

To understand these relationships better, here is the Germanic languages family tree: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Germanic Family of Languages. 

English is a member of the Germanic family of languages. 
Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European language family.

 
You get a better sense of the relationships by looking at the numbers in some of the ancient and modern languages: