“Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going” a quote by Rita Mae brown summing it up, for all of us. We don’t need to be a grammar Nazi or use fancy words in order to stand out, because standing out is not a human tendency. Man was never alone, and alone man was never known. When the society was on the initial stage of it’s formation, a man with no tribe was vulnerable enough to loose his life any moment, because man grew food, man made tool, and man created War.
To know English is good, but knowing just grammar and vocabulary will never help us see the horizon. A narrow perspective will definitely lead our sight to the horizon but that would be at the cost of an obstructed view, a view hindered by vague knowledge.
The English that we know today is something that is spread like a wild fire. Which is justified from the view of a historian, men are fighting since ages, they fought to prove their superiority over everything. Which gave birth to many wars, hitherto which are sung by many and are engraved in many legends. English, winning a battle is just a continuation of a legacy that is running from perpetuity, so deep that the depth is also lost in Oblivion.
The English Origin History : From Old to Modern
“This war of English saw death of many of it’s brethren.” English started growing along mid 5th century. The English used then is now termed as Old English. It was not static and thrived for 700 years. Old English grew from, Anglo Frisian dialects which was spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as Angles, Saxons and Jutes. The language was brought to great Britain with Anglo-Saxon settlers the settlement in Britain is a process that changed the, language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. Making Old English grammar similar to modern day German, therefore Old English should not be regarded as a single monolithic entity, just as modern English.
In 11th century, history saw a Norman conquest of England, an invasion led by Duke William II of Normandy. This conquest replaced English with Anglo-Norman a relative of French giving an end to old English era. The conquest also affected the English and this and gave birth to Middle English. The switching of the language to English is also what many consider “Celtic language death in England”.
All these changes led to the growth of modern English. Early modern English is what we find in the writings of Shakespeare from 1500. Modern English borrowed many of it’s features from Latin, Ancient Greek and other European languages, including French, German and Dutch.
Birth of Proper Modern English in Early 17th Century
Proper modern English was established by 17th century as a result of “great vowel shift” a series of change in the pronunciation. This was not just responsible for changes in pronunciation but also standardization of English spelling. By the end of 17th century English was good to go and then was spread to many parts of the world by the British colonizers. India being one.
Indians writing in English are criticized, but to add more to the history of English. No matter, where it grew English was first taught in India as a formal course. Making it as Indian as any other language our country. So rather than taking it as a language brought by some outsiders we should take it in a view that it grew here similarly like at England during Anglo-Saxon conquest.
These things are not just mere facts, but something that gives us a glimpse of, how important a language is and not just from it’s usage point of view.
We know so much was changing since the language just begun, differences in language, differences within language. A constant war to find the superiority of one language, created a chaos, equivalent to the one in space before the universe came into being, these lingual crusades ended up giving us some 5000 languages and millions of spelling which is still thriving, like earth but at a stable rate.
Today we know a language called “English” which is spoken by 1.5 billion people out of the total population of 7.5 billion. With new development comes new study and Language bought a many field of study.
Keep exploring EnglishBix to learn more fascinating information of English language.