A Short History of English by Ken Eckert, Ph.D.

Introduction Where does English come from?

 

Source: A Biography of the English Language, 1988 (C.M. Millward)

Old English (Anglo-Saxon) About 500 - 1100 AD

 

One way of categorizing languages is to call them inflectional, agglutinative, or isolating, as Millward does. No language fits totally into one of these categories, but they are useful in understanding how grammar creates meaning: An inflectional language adds prefixes or endings to words, or changes the root of the word itself, to create statements. In Spanish, we add endings to verbs to indicate who is doing something: tiene (you have, polite), tienes (you have, familiar), tienen (they have). The root changes for the first person singlar (tengo, I have) and plural (tenemos, we have). An agglutinate language sounds like 'glue' and acts the same way, adding words and parts into a chain. The Siberian Chukchi might say "Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən," meaning "I have a bad headache." Korean "anyonghaseyo" (안녕 하세요) is used to mean "hello" but is literally a multiword question: "Are you at peace?" An isolating language uses separate word/word parts or word order to create utterances. Chinese has no endings at all for plurals or verb agreement: wo ai is I love and ni ai is you love. There are no changes in verbs for tense; for future tense Chinese says mingtian wo ai, "tomorrow I will love." Latin is an inflectional language, and so word order is almost irrelevant. If you want to say "The dog bit the man," you can use hominis canem mordet, canem mordet hominem, or canem hominem mordet. What word you put first adds emphasis to that word, but otherwise the word order doesn't really matter as the endings -et and -em tell you who bit who. In English, we only know because dog comes first. Old English (OE) is slightly more inflectional, as it used word endings on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It also had grammatical gender, so that nouns were male, female, or neuter regardless of what they physically were. As Twain joked, in German a girl is das Mädchen (neuter) but a turnip is die Rübe (female). The grammatical gender of the European languages always seems useless to modern English speakers, but OE had it as well, a holdover from IE's three genders. It's been theorized that in IE male nouns "did" things and female nouns "were" things. Although admittedly sexist, the language gender system served a purpose. Thus OE was slightly more freewheeling in word order than modern English, and we still have archaic expressions such as "He for his lover pined" and "Where are my fiddlers three?" There was no clear sense of a and the in the language; OE made do with an (one), and se/þe (this). Latin also didn't have any definite articles, although Late Latin had ille (this) and illa (that), which becomes il, el, le, la, and so on in the Romance languages. OE used fewer prepositions, so that we still have the grandfathered statement ic ga ham ("I go home") which has no "to" preposition.

	The Lord's Prayer About 1000 AD
Listen to it

 

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum si þin nama gehalgod Tobecume þin rice Gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum Urne dæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg And forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele Soþlice.

Our Father who is in heaven be Your name made holy May Your kingdom come to happen  Be done Your will on earth just as in heaven  Our daily bread give us today  And forgive us our guilts just as we forgive our debtors And do not lead You us into tempation, but deliver us of evil Amen.

 

This is my educated guess at what Old English sounded like, as there are of course no recordings. Almost every letter is pronounced in Old English, as you can hear. There were basically no silent letters. Notice also the letters ð and þ in the samples, which both sound like th. OE had a primitive writing system called runes, which were chopped into wood and were thus very angular-looking (try to cut a good curve into wood with a knife). When Roman missionaries came to England around 600 they brought their writing system along with lots of new loanwords. Old English is good at describing basic earthy concepts and objects, but the language lacked governmental and religious terminology, and so the solution was usually to import a foreign term, such as candel or carte (document), although sometimes an OE word combination would do, such as halig gast (holy ghost).

 

	Beowulf About 800-1000 AD
Listen to it

Hwæt! We Gardena         in geardagum, þeodcyninga,         þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas         ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing         sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum,         meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas.         Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden,         he þæs frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum,         weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc         þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade         hyran scolde, gomban gyldan.         þæt wæs god cyning!

Listen! We have heard of the glory of the kings of the Spear-Danes in days of yore, and how the princes performed courageous deeds.  Often Scyld Scefing deprived many an enemy band of their mead benches, terrifying warriors, long after when at first he was found destitute. He was awaited as their consolation, and thrived under the skies, prospering in honor until each one of the neighboring people over the whale-road had to obey him and pay tribute. That was a good king!

Beowulf is the first epic poem of English. It's basically a monster / hero story where a young adventurer named Beowulf fights a beast named Grendel and his mother, and later has to battle a fire-breathing dragon, though scholars see various mythological and Christian symbolisms in the story. You can read a longer explanation of Beowulf and read a full translation here. The subjects of Old English poetry can sound cold to modern ears. Women are seldom mentioned and there is little romantic love, humor, or sex; at best there are riddles with dirty answers. The Anglo-Saxons certainly fell in love—or there would be no more Anglo-Saxons—but our modern fixation on boy-meets-girl stories is not common to all societies. To the Old English poets, the fraternal love between warriors and their lords, and the willingness to battle until death regardless of odds, were all higher and more beautiful themes. Not everyone actually lived out such a role, but these are the ideals which animate Beowulf. Beowulf and Old English Poetry   Poetic metre isn't the most exciting topic for most people. It should not be the first heading on your resume. I promise to be brief. Old English poetry is not primitive and barbaric, but rather so rule-bound and sophisticated that it was becoming stagnant. To get a feel for it, read some Dr. Seuss. Whereas modern poetry is mostly based on rhyming lines, Old English poetry used alliteration for its effect. It was meant to be read out loud, and Anglo-Saxon poets were good at playing with words and stringing sounds together to give the verse a euphonic, percussive sound. Poems such as Beowulf are thought to have been read by a bard to the king's men at night-time beer parties as entertainment. These warriors would be astonished to hear that nowadays people view poetry as effeminate and associate it with greeting cards. Most Old English poetry followed a fairly regular rhyme scheme whereby each line would have a short pause in the middle. Each line would also have two or three words which alliterated (Peter Piper picked a peck of..) rather than rhyming with the next line. Notice the alliteration in each line in the sample, such as 'g' in 1, 's' in 4, and 'm' in 5. Modern poetry is usually iambic, which means that the latter half of each beat receives emphasis: I wan-dered lone-ly as a cloud. In Old English, the first syllable of the word is usually stressed, and the same is true of the poetry.

 

Middle English About 1100 - 1500

 

Just as the Germans had invaded England, so did the Vikings, who were also Germanic Scandinavians. The Vikings began as occasional traders or smash-and-grab artists who would zoom into an inlet (called a wick, thus wick-ing—Viking, as well as towns ending in wic like Norwich) and take off in their boats with some loot and girls before a militia could be raised. Over time the Danes began to permanently settle, and so English began to become infused with Danish words in addition to Latin. The Normans who conquered England in 1066 on the pretext of a succession dispute were really just post-Viking Danes who lived in northern France. However, the Normans spoke French, and this had an enormous effect on English and the culture of England. The Anglo-Saxons did not have castles or knights, and their kings were more like chieftains. The Normans built in stone and instituted the familiar medieval system of feudalism, where a food chain ran from the king down through aristocrats and knights who served him in exchange for land rights, down to the peasants who worked the land. Very often the peasants spoke English and their lords spoke French, so that the peasants raised pigs, cows, and sheep, and their masters ate pork, beef, and mutton—English-word animals and French-word dishes. English nearly disappeared as a written or court language over the next two centuries. Yet by the time of the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453) the Normans had become so alienated from the European French and their language that French became a secondary tongue in England along with Latin. By Chaucer's time the court is speaking English again, and in Shakespeare's Henry V even the king is stumbling through his French. But during those 200 years English had changed so much that Chaucer probably wouldn't have been able to read Beowulf even if he had known of it. The language was full of new words from French. The centuries of missionaries, Danes, and Normans running around England had seemed to cause English a grammar nervous breakdown. The inflections were confused and simplified as English absorbed countless foreign speakers. Word order became more rigid as prepositions, determiners, and articles stepped into the breach. Grammatical gender gave way to the natural gender of pronouns for men, women, and things. Modern English has a few romantic expressions where objects are personified, such as the way we say "she's a nice ship," but these aren't necessarily OE holdovers; OE scipu (ship) was neuter.

	Havelock the Dane About 1285
Listen to it

Herkneth to me, gode men - Wives, maydnes, and alle men - Of a tale that ich you wile telle, Wo so it wile here and therto dwelle. The tale is of Havelok imaked: Whil he was litel, he yede ful naked. Havelok was a ful god gome - He was ful god in everi trome; He was the wicteste man at nede That thurte riden on ani stede. That ye mowen now yhere, And the tale you mowen ylere, At the biginnig of ure tale, Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale; And wile drinken, her I spelle, That Crist us shilde alle fro helle.

Pay attention to me, good men, Wives, maidens, and everyone else To a tale that I will tell you For whoever wants to stay and hear it. The story is about Havelock, Who when he was little went half-naked. Havelock was a good man, The best in every company. He was the bravest man in need Who might ride on any steed! So that you may hear me, And so that you might know the tale, At the beginning of our story, Fill me a cup of your best ale. And let's drink, while I tell it, That Christ might shield us all from Hell!

 

Middle English isn't easy and still requires training, but it's certainly easier than Old English. The vocabulary is looking more familiar because of the French loanwords, and the word order is more "normal." There are recognizable connecting words like and, a, the, and the pronouns are the same as in Modern English. Middle English still pronounces everything, and the vowels seem to sound all wrong, but it's less impenetrable than Beowulf. Havelock the Dane is about another heroic Dane but demonstrates how English culture is changing under the Normans. Havelock is a mighty warrior and his wife displays a masculine firmness in a dangerous world, but the poetry is in rhyming couplets and the poet also emphasizes that Havelock is gentle around children, loves his wife, and acts politely even to enemies, all courtly and Christian attributes of feudalism. Again, real knights likely didn't always have such sensitive morals, but such ideals were evidently real enough to populate most English romances of this period.

	The Wife of Bath (Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) About 1386
Listen to it

Experience, though noon auctoritee Were in this world, is right ynogh for me To speke of wo that is in mariage For, lordynges, sith I twelve yeer was of age Thonked be God that is eterne on lyve Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve If I so ofte myghte have ywedded bee And alle were worthy men in hir degree.

Even if there were no other authority in the world, experience would be enough for me to tell you about the woes of marriage! For, gentlemen, since I was twelve years old— May God be thanked, who lives eternally— I have had five husbands at the church door, if I might have been married so often. And all were worthy men in their own way.

 

Middle English isn't a monolithic period. By Chaucer's time, 1343?-1400, feudalism is fading as a credible system in England, weakened by a disastrous plague in 1348-51 which led to a labor shortage and a peasant's revolt in 1381, and by the beginnings of a modern economy based on trade and capital. Chaucer is not only a gifted poet for his depictions of human life, but he's really funny and at his best when he's making fun of the values of his day, or himself. Part of my dissertation argued that "Sir Thopas" is partly a gentle laugh at the pomposity of the medieval romances but also a joke on Chaucer's seeming inability to make his own story of a heroic knight and a swooning lady.

Early Modern English About 1500 - 1850

 

The clichés about the "dark ages" that depict a lost era of ignorance and repression are as tiresome as they are untrue. By the end of the middle ages Europe is a place of advanced literature, culture, architecture, and metallurgy. Yet its sciences, mathematics, and medicine were backward and its philosophy limited to theological issues. Europe was ready for new influences from the Arabic and Middle Eastern world. What we call the renaissance is, like the decline of western Rome, a very gradual process of growth in the humanities and sciences, spurred partly by printing and partly by the growth of trade and the influx of Greek scholars after the end of the eastern Roman empire in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453. By the time of Early Modern English, French has faded in use outside the aristocracy and diplomacy, and Latin is confined to church use. Although British universities also teach in Latin, some modern scholars are beginning to write in English, which has become increasingly powerful due to its constant absorbing of foreign words. While students will say that Chaucer sounds "odd," by the 1500s the English in plays such as Everyman start to look very familiar. Shakespeare's texts may have difficult meanings but the words themselves are mostly recognizable. One of the benefits of printing is the standardization of the different dialects in English, which helps establish the modern-sounding London area English as the standard. Because printing presses at first come from Europe with European-language letters, the last uniquely English letters are lost—ð, þ, and 3 (yogh, the end sound of "yecch"). For a while, printers try writing þe (the) as ye, but it soon becomes modern the. (The ye in "Ye Olde Souvenir & Internet Shoppe" was never pronounced /jiː/.) Because first-person ic (I) has shrunk to i, it is printed with a capital I to avoid confusion with other words. There are not many big grammatical innovations in EME, although the use of dual respect/intimacy pronouns is fading. Middle English used thee/thou for friends and children and you for superiors. This surprises modern English speakers, who feel that thee and thou sound pompous, but the writers of the King James Bible were trying to emphasize God's intimacy with man in using thee and thou in their translations. Even in 1611 the style was slightly old-fashioned. I won't try to render Shakespeare's English, although I really dislike the overdramatic, constipated Victorian accent his lines are always given in movies and television. As far as it had come, even in Shakespeare's day English was a little unseemly a language compared to elegant French and thoughtful Latin. There still were few or no silent letters, most suffixes were pronounced separately, and the language likely had a slightly gutteral, melodic sound like someone with an Irish or Scottish brogue.

Hamlet (William Shakespeare) About 1600

BERNARDO Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story What we have two nights seen. HORATIO Well, sit we down, And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. BERNARDO Last night of all, When yond same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one— (Enter Ghost) MARCELLUS Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again! BERNARDO In the same figure, like the king that's dead. MARCELLUS Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

Did Shakespeare write his own plays? Every once in a while a new scholar has "proof" that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone else, whether another poet, an aristocrat, the queen, or space aliens. Like most conspiracy theories, the fact that there's no evidence— makes it true! But there is a great deal of text and evidence showing that Shakespeare existed and wrote his plays; the cliché that "we don't know much about Shakespeare" is less and less true. Yet one of the problems with this issue is the definition of write. Walt Disney did not "write" Cinderella or Snow White; he took them from popular folktale and adapted them for an audience, and Shakespeare did the same, making use of traditional stories and history. His genius was in how he improved and deepened those stories. American students may have read the US constitution or related bills, but this sort of archaic legalese doesn't really reflect how English likely sounded in the 1700s or early 1800s. Here's an excerpt from Austen's Pride and Prejudice from 1813 showing a fairly recognizable English, albeit one with a few now lost vocabulary words.

 

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) 1813

 

Present-Day English About 1850 -

 

Facts to Bore Your Friends With

 

Alexander Graham Bell proposed that people answer his telephone with Ahoy, as Hello was not common until the 20th century; it was usually used to express surprise. God save ye or Good day were more typical greetings, or even What! Thank you is related to think, meaning that one's thoughts are of gratitude. Goodbye has also developed from the habit of Londoners to slur words; originally one said God by ye. There are few if any acronyms before the 18th century, when few people had the reading skills necessary for them to make sense. The 'F-word' is not an acronym, but a medieval Dutch verb which refers to animals mating. We say the words uppercase and lowercase because, for early printers, these metal letters were kept in either an upper or a lower case. One explanation for the expression "watch your p's and q's!" is that these letters were easily confused as they had to be laid backwards into the bracket for printing. Some people mistakenly complain that the word history is sexist (i.e. his-story). The word derives from Greek (στορία), which did not use the word his to mean male. Old English doesn't have the words his or story— it has tale instead. Man was also a fairly gender-neutral term in Old English. A male specifically would be referred to as a wer or guma. These are now dead words, although they do survive in the words werewolf and bridegroom. Why do we spell words? In the day of the Anglo-Saxons, the few people who could write had an air of power and magic about them, and so being able to record what people said on paper was like casting a spell. Because literacy was low in the middle ages, taverns would put up pictures of animals or objects on their doors to mark them. This is why so many British pubs have names like "The Crown" or "The Dog and Duck." Your science and engineering friends are making fun of you for being an English major? Tell them that the Indo-European root-word *skei (split, dissect) evolved into the word science— but also the word shit.

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