The English Language History

From the British Islands English spread all over the world. But English has not always been the language of these islands' inhabitants.

In the first century of our era Britain was inhabited by the Celtic tribes and until the V century only the Celtic languages were spoken.

In the middle of the V century the British Isles were invaded by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who spoke dialects of the language which was the ancestor of the present day English and which is now known as the Old English.

During the 15 hundred years that have passed since the Anglo — Saxon invasions English has changed considerably. Firstly, it was influenced by the language of the Danish invaders, Vikings (VIII— X centuries). A lot of the Danish-origin words penetrated into English: fellow, husband, law, bush, yacht, landscape, weapon and many others. Besides, English also borrowed many words from the other Sandinavian languages: sky, window, take, call, wrong, saga, etc.

Then, between XII-XVI centuries, English was strongly influenced both in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary by the Norman French — the language of the people who conquered England in 1066. Among numerous borrowings there were such words as: machine, power, people, dinner, supper, table, arm, bank, victory, brave, nation, government, court, duke, prince, parliament, glory and plenty of others.

Lastly, during the Renaissance (XIV-XV1 centuries), there came «peaceful invasion* of numerous Latin and Greek words which were adopted into English: paragraph, problem, expensive, physics, superior, minimum, catalogue, semester, memorandum, seminar, sempathy, veto, velocity, harmony, diagram, diameter, tragedy, etc.

From time to time English was filled up with numerous borrowings from many other languages: parade, sombrero, embargo, guitar, mustang, fiasco, piano and many others — from Spanish and Italian; tomato, potato, maize, lasso and others — from the language of the American Indians; nickel, hamburger, bankrupt, iceberg, zigzag, waltz and others — from German; madeira, portwine, tank— from Portuguese, etc.

The first words from Russian began penetrating into English since XVI century, after establishing diplomatic relations between our countries. English travellers used the Russian words in the English spelling. Thus, many phonetic borrowings were created: shuba, rouble, troika and others. Later there appeared some new borrowings created by means of transliteration: cossaks, sputnik, perestroika, kvass and many others.

Of course, there are many other borrowings in English. The language keeps on changing and it's natural: languages are always changing.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29