The Evolution of the English language into Today’s Modern English and
The Most Widely Used Language in the World
Research
Question: How did English evolve to become the English spoken today and the
most widely used language in the world out of a second-rate language?
May 2015
WRITTEN BY : MEHMET GÖKSU KAYAALP
ABSTRACT
This essay
will explore and discuss how and why the English language developed to become
today’s Modern English and the world’s most widely used language from a
second-rate peasants’ language. To answer this question, a wide research is
done and a variety of sources are read, examined and compared. The essay will
first talk about the birth of the English language and its roots starting from
the Anglo-Saxon migration to the British Isles, the influences of other
languages on English, the changes it went through and the major periods when it
spread most rapidly around the world. Not only will it give a short summary of
the language’s history, it will also give specific word examples from different
eras and draw conclusions and generalizing statements from these examples and
the history of English. Furthermore, the essay will compare English to other
world languages at some points according to some aspects such as grammar
complexity, vocabulary richness in order to fully investigate why it has
evolved to become the most widely used one in the world. conclusion drawn from
this research would be that the English language is the most widely used
language in the world because of Britain’s history of colonization and the
impact of the Industrial Revolution, America’s economic and political dominance
from the 20th century onwards, its grammatical simplicity,
flexibility, its richness in vocabulary due to its amazing word borrowing
tradition.
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………..4
Anglo-Saxons……………………………………………5-6
Vikings…………………………………………………...6
Normans………………………………………………….7
Latin……………………………………………………..8
Grammatical Simplification and Inflection…………...9-11
The British Empire and Colonization…………………11-12
The Industrial Revolution……………………………..12-13
The Dominance of the US……………………………...13-15
Opposition………………………………………………...15-16
Conclusion………………………………………………..16-17
Bibliography……………………………………………..18-19
INTRODUCTION
English is a West Germanic language which is
the most widely used language in the world. Apart from having the richest
vocabulary by far, it is the language with the most non-native speakers, the
lingua franca of international business, education, science and politics. It is
the most published language and the official language of no less than 58
sovereign countries and spoken primarily in many others (de facto language) ("Field
Listing Languages."). Then the rise
of this particular question is inevitable: How did English evolve to become
today’s English and the most widely spoken language in the world from a
second-rate language of peasants? In this essay I will try to answer this
question starting from the Anglo-Saxon migration to the British Isles, taking
history, sociology and linguistics in consideration. According to the research
I did, I reached the conclusion that the reasons behind the evolution of
English can be discussed and summed up in a few points such as the richness of
vocabulary brought by the numerous influences from other languages, grammatical
simplicity, adaptability and flexibility, Britain’s history in colonization and
the Industrial Revolution and America’s political and economic power in the
last century.
ANGLO-SAXONS
First of all, I believe it is vital to talk
about the origins of the language as well as the influences other languages
have had on English to fully understand what it has evolved to today. The
modern English language has been influenced by countless languages (including
Native American languages and other tribal languages) (‘Major Periods of
Borrowing’) and the richness of vocabulary has been attributed to this
flexibility and borrowing tradition of English by scholars and linguists (Bryson
73). Among all these influences, there are three major ones: Old Norse, Norman-French,
Latin, and Anglo-Saxon (which is not really an influence but basically the core
of the language). According to Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist, these
influences are "Three super structures, as it were, that came to be
erected on the Anglo-Saxon foundation, each of them modifying the character of
the language, and each preparing the ground for its successor.’’(Bryson 50).
Therefore to begin, the birth of the language and its origins that date back to
the 5th century have to be mentioned, the times where large groups of
people from Germanic tribes (mostly Angles, Saxons and Jutes) migrated to
Britain. Britain was later dominated by them. The origins of these people are
today’s Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands (Woods 3).
As I mentioned, English has the richest vocabulary;
there are more than 615,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, the closest
number in vocabulary to English is thought to be French (around 100,000 words)(Bryson
13 ). Starting from the time when Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain, ‘’there
have been few periods when borrowing became unfashionable, and there has never
been a national academy in Britain, the U.S., or other English-speaking
countries to attempt to restrict new loanwords, as there has been in many
continental European countries.’’ (‘Major Periods of Borrowing’ 9).
‘Old English’ was really different from Modern
English, but many modern English speakers would not think it was the same
language if they heard it spoken. Nearly half of the words in Modern English
root from Old English, but their forms have changed. Around 4,500 Old English words have survived
until the present. Although it is such a small part of the huge Modern English
dictionary in number, those are the most basic words, such as love, drink, sleep,
eat and man (Bryson 58).
VIKINGS
Later, in the 8th century, Britain
suffered invasions from the Vikings. Viking invaders spoke Old Norse which is
also a Germanic language. So Old English and Old Norse were similar since they
both root back to the same language. It is noted by many sources that people
who spoke Old Norse and Old English could understand each other to some extent.
Starting from 793 AD, words of Scandinavian origin were introduced to English,
and this period opened the doors to a lasting interaction between Old Norse and
English (Levick 10). Most of the words that were introduced to English in that
first period of interaction were words about the sea and the Scandinavian
administrative system. ‘’ Some examples of these borrowings are law, take
and as well the verb form 'are'. They
also introduced many new names as they founded new settlements with endings
such as –scale and –beck (Woods 9-11). By the 9th
century, Viking descendants controlled almost all of the eastern part of
England, the ‘Danelaw’. This period left
a deep-rooted impact on the English language.
There are words that are borrowed from Old Norse in many areas of life
such as: names (people and places), many verbs (even simple ones such as ‘get’)
and words that reflected the Viking lifestyle such as skate, ski, walrus, and syntax (Merriam Webster: the
way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form
constituents). The three pronouns they,
them and their were also borrowed from the Vikings. Bill Bryson noted that ‘This
borrowing of basic elements of syntax is highly unusual, perhaps unique among
developed languages, and an early demonstration of the remarkable adaptability
of English speakers.’ (Bryson 53).
NORMANS
Later, in 1066, the Norman, William the Conqueror
succeeded in becoming the king of England. After William started to rule,
Anglo-Norman became the language of the ruling class. Normans spoke a ‘langue
d’Oil’ dialect of French (a north dialect). Thus their version of French was
different from the French spoken in Paris and became more different over time
(Bryson 55).
In their three-hundred-year rule, Normans
contributed around 10,000 words to English, and three fourths of it is still in
use. As I had stated, Norman French was installed as the official language (Bryson
55). Bill Bryson notes that ‘Norman society had two tiers: the French-speaking
aristocracy and the English-speaking peasantry. ‘’ (Bryson 54). So with the society divided
into two different language-speaking classes, words of Anglo-Saxon origin and
of French origin were used in different areas. The words the English borrowed
from the Normans were words regarding the matters of jurisdiction, government,
fashion and high living. For simple professions like a baker, a miller or a shoemaker mostly Anglo-Saxon words were
used, meanwhile for more educated professions like mason or painter, French
names were used. Likewise, for animals like cow,
sheep or swine Anglo-Saxon names were used; they came from the peasant
farmers. However, ‘once cooked and brought to the table, they were generally
given French names such as beef and bacon (Bryson 55).
To conclude, other than helping the grammatical
shifts that happened in English during the Middle English period as I will
mention in a few paragraphs later, the Norman influence made the English
vocabulary vastly richer. As Bill Bryson stated, ‘’Alongside the Old English
motherhood, we now had maternity,
with friendship we had amity, with
brotherhood, fraternity.’’ (58)
LATIN
The other major influential language in the
development of English is Latin. The influence of Latin on English occurred in
different ways and in different periods. Latin words entered English either
directly or through other Romance languages, however in this part I will focus only
on the words directly borrowed from Latin.
There were a few periods in which words from
Latin entered English. Some words such as cheese and wine were introduced even
before the Germanic tribes (who would later create the English language) migrated
to Britain (Bryson 50), while some like bishop
and altar were introduced as a result
of Christianization (‘History of the English Language’ 21).
Another period in which a significant number of
Latin words were introduced to English was the Renaissance. Because the Renaissance began and flourished
in Italy, the English language was affected significantly both by Latin and
Italian when the Renaissance movement arrived in Britain (English Renaissance;
c.a from late 15th century to early 17th century). ‘’Renaissance
also brought a contingent of Italian words. Thanks to its economic riches,
military strength, technological and scientific advances, and cultural
supremacy, Italy dominated almost every field of endeavor. So it is no surprise
that many in England were fascinated by this country. Between 1500 and 1650,
the English borrowed heavily from Italian: bandit,
bankrupt, cavalier, cornice, Madonna, opera, partisan, populace, carnival,
disgrace.’’(‘History of the English Language’ 59).As
a result of being affected by the Italian Renaissance, the enthusiasm for
classical languages (Latin and Greek) and the translation of classical texts to
English, during the English Renaissance, from around 1500–1650, some 10,000 to
12,000 words entered the English lexicon.
Naturally, the influence and the introduction
of many Latin rooted words enriched the English vocabulary significantly and
again proved the strong tradition of borrowing from other languages and the
adaptability of English.
GRAMMATICAL
SIMPLIFICATION AND INFLECTION
Language is defined as ‘’a system of
communication used by a particular country or community’’ in the Oxford English
Dictionary. All languages, more or less, aim for the same thing; exchanging thoughts
and emotions. Despite that, they accomplish it in countless different ways. ‘’It
appears there is no feature of grammar or syntax that is indispensable or
universal. The ways of dealing with matters of number, case, gender and the
like are wondrously various from one tongue to the next.’’(Bryson 35). While
some languages torment themselves with complexities, some languages get along
fine without complex grammatical features. For example, Polish is regarded as
one of the most difficult languages in the world in many studies. Its
difficulty is attributed to its extremely complex grammar and pronunciation.
Another example is Finnish in which there are fifteen case forms, which means
there are fifteen different ways of spelling a word according to the case that
the sentence is in (accusative, nominative etc.). As Bill Bryson states, imagine
learning fifteen ways of spelling cat, dog or house(35) Modern English, in
contrast to Polish, Finnish and other languages, case forms are largely
abandoned alongside conjugation and grammatical gender (Bryson 56).
Old English was regarded as a language that was
‘rich in possibilities’ by the celebrated linguist Otto Jespersen (Bryson 50).
When literacy was brought to their language, it flourished and in a short
period of time England became a center of culture. Another factor that helped
the English language develop was the Norman invasion (Bryson 50-56). Since English didn’t have an official status
and was not standardized, it was chaotic. ‘’Early Middle English texts give the
impression of a chaos of dialects, without many common conventions in pronunciation
or spelling, and with wide divergences in grammar and vocabulary.’’(C. L.
Barber 152) Because English was treated as the inferior language of the
peasants and was not official; many grammatical simplifications were done more
easily. ‘’Its lowly position almost certainly helped English to become a
simpler, less inflected language.’’(Bryson 56). And as Albert Baugh and Thomas
Cable wrote ‘’By making English the language of mainly uneducated people, the
Norman conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward
unchecked.’’ (Bryson 56).
Grammatical gender is a system of noun
classification in which every noun has a natural gender. In almost all of the
widespread languages in the world, it exists. In most, the gender of a noun is
decided arbitrarily. Grammatical gender is seen when parts of speech related to
nouns such as adjectives or pronouns change their forms in order to fit with the
gender of the particular noun ("Grammatical Gender.").
Grammatical
gender existed in Old English, a classification in which ever noun was treated
as masculine, feminine or neuter. Since English was a Germanic and
Indo-European language, it was no surprise that it was a complex language. However,
with the help of different factors, it fell out of use during the 12th
century. It started to be abandoned in
the 10th century and it completely disappeared around the 14th
century (Wagner 38).
The factors behind the loss of grammatical
gender are not exactly known. In conclusion, the loss of the grammatical gender
system is regarded as the part of the disintegration of the English inflection
system. Today, Modern English is not regarded as language with grammatical
gender (Wilton 6).
The loss of grammatical gender made the
language significantly easier and helped its spread as an international
language. It is definite that the mostly arbitrary gender-based noun
classification system makes the modern continental European languages notably
difficult to learn for the non-natives and even to speak by natives; by making
them memorize the genders that have no absolute logic behind them and change
the other parts of speech accordingly.
Grammatical conjugation, also called the
inflection of verbs, is the creation of verb forms that change according to
tense, person, number, gender, aspect, mood or voice. (‘Inflection’ )In other
words, conjugation refers to when a verb changes form according to its usage in
a sentence. For example, in a sentence where the subject is the first person
singular and the tense is present simple, the root ‘be’ becomes ‘am’. This is
basically conjugation. (‘Grammatical Gender’)
Old English is regarded as a moderately
inflected language, which means words other than verbs as well changed forms
according to grammatical categories. In Old English, most of the verbs were
highly inflected and they even changed consonants from one form to the next (Bryson
56).
These were systematically standardized and
there is only one remaining exception today which is was/were. Modern English today is regarded as a weakly inflected
language, it has few inflected words (plurals and pronouns, inflected verb for
third person singular) and regular verbs have only four forms. Modern English
has largely abandoned inflection in verbs and cases as well except with
personal pronouns (Bryson 56-57).
Surely
largely abandoning the inflection of verbs caused the language to simplify notably;
making everyday communication significantly easier as well as making foreigners
learn the language easier. Moreover, the decay in inflection was not restricted
to only verbs or grammatical gender; it was an extensive process in which the
English language got simpler in many aspects.
THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND COLONIZATION
Apart from all the factors, grammatical
simplicity, adaptability and flexibility, British colonization had a huge role
in English’s becoming the most widely spoken language in the world. The naval strength of the British Empire and
the geographical discoveries enabled Britain to colonize almost everywhere in
the world, interact with countless cultures and spread the English language and
culture. At its peak, Britain ruled almost one fourth of the earth’s surface. (Luscombe
1)
Prior to the global spread, there had been some
minor expansions; to Scotland and Ireland, but the global spread of English
began in the 16th century. From the 16th century onwards
the English language spread to different continents thanks to England’s
colonial education policy. English was taught because it was seen as a tool to
strengthen the British rule and the spreading of the English culture. Apart
from this motive, many colonists thought teaching English meant bringing
civilization and order to the less developed world (Spichtinger 8-9).
The story of the spread of English to former
British colonies is different everywhere. English colonists in general, unlike the other
nations, wanted to settle in the New World permanently rather than just looking
for the riches of the land. They wanted
to live there for good while preserving the culture and the language they brought
with them from England. That mentality
was a vital factor in English having absolute dominance in North America. The famous German statesman Otto von Bismarck
would later note that the most significant fact of the 20th century
would be the fact that North Americans speak English. Although there had been
large migrations from different countries in Europe to America (Italians,
Poles, Swedes, Germans etc.), all these groups largely forgot their mother
languages and started to speak English after a few generations (Mastin ‘Late
Modern English’ 5-22).
Similarly, English became the main influential
language and spread to many different areas caused either by migration from
Britain (such as Australia or South Africa).As a result, English is the
official language of 54 countries and 27 non-sovereign entities, as well as the
source of many versions of English and pidgins ("Field Listing Languages").
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Colonialism was first step in the process of
spreading English around the world and the next major factor was the Industrial
Revolution. 400 years ago power meant political and military power whereas
later in the 18th and 19th centuries it became
technological power. England had both. So with England playing a leading role
in colonialism after the 17th century and in the Industrial
Revolution, the spread of the English language was enormous. England was the dominant economic power which
crushed the foreign markets with its cheap and large-scale manufactured goods (Mastin,
“Late Modern English”).
The Industrial Revolution was a process rather
than an event and it is divided into three phases. It began in England in the
late 1700s with some vital inventions in textile manufacturing and steam machines.
England was the initiator and the absolute leader of the first era of the
Industrial Revolution. In that era, countless inventions were invented in
England. As a result, other countries, colonies and countries in continental
Europe needed English to access advanced technology. They had to learn English
and to learn the necessary technological vocabulary. Approximately 50 percent
of the significant scientific and technological output between the late 1700s and
1900 was written in English (Mastin, Late Modern English 1-5).
From the late 19th century onwards,
the United States took over England’s lead in the Industrial Revolution. Vital
inventions were made by American inventors during the 19th century
and the early 20th century. An example is the first telegraph system
in which the language they used was English. After that, they made English the
international language for all telegraphs. Among other very important American
inventions are the light bulb, the telephone and the sewing machine. All these
inventions caused the spread of English as the international language for science,
technology and business (Mastin, Late Modern English 1-5).
DOMINANCE
OF THE US FROM THE 20TH CENTURY ONWARDS
After the US took over the lead thanks to its plentiful
resources and liberal policies, it became the most powerful country in the 20th
century. America was the strongest in terms of its military power and economy. Besides,
its dominance in the media and popular culture made it definite that English
would remain the most widespread language (Mastin, ‘Late Modern English’ 55-65).
The US was the game changer in the two world
wars, and showed its absolute dominance as early as the First World War, when
president Woodrow Wilson released the Wilson Principles, in which were some
principles about how the world should and would function after the world war
(new borders, war debts, war crimes).
Aside from that, during this period in history,
when people wanted to establish international organizations they had to utilize
one language because it was difficult and costly to do multi-lingual
operations. Also, the League of Nations that was founded after World War I, and
the United Nations which replaced it after World War II both had their
headquarters in New York. Because of job
opportunities, the United States was a very popular destination for immigration
and the huge population also helped the spread of English as the one
international language (Amador 7-9).
In addition, the advertising that was done in
English everywhere helped the spread of the English language significantly. Besides,
starting from the late 20th century, the explosion in the
development in computer technology and the invention of the internet multiplied
the speed of the spread of English and the American cultural dominance in the
world, almost forcing everyone to learn at least a few words in English and
embrace the popular American culture (Mastin, 20th Century and
Present Day).
The film and the music industries were really
important in the spread of English. The center
of the film industry shifted to Hollywood. The US and England dominated the
recording industry as well. All the major record companies were either in
America or in England. English-speaking artists of the late 20th
century such as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones dominated
the music world. With music, English spread so rapidly among non-native
speakers. It became the popular, ‘cool’ language (Amador 11-14).
As a result of historical events in the 20th
and 21st century in the globalized world, English is the lingua
franca in many areas of life and it is used almost everywhere. It is nearly
impossible not to know at least a few words of English.
OPPOSITION
As there are opposing point of views to every
idea or thesis, there are opposing arguments about English’s level of
simplicity as a language or the reasons behind its spread around the
world. While everyone seems to agree on
the fact that English is the most widely used language in the world, some argue
that it is not an easy language to learn and has more exceptions and idiosyncrasies
than it has rules.
While, English has
undergone many simplifications both in grammar and spelling and has become a
much less inflected language, for some it is still a relatively complex
language by world standards. The first argument is the existence of more
exceptions than rules and non-native speakers who just began studying English have
difficulty deciding the right way to pronounce or to spell the words. An
example of this is the pronunciation differences between the words ‘heard’ and
‘beard’ or ‘five’ and ‘give’ which have very similar spellings. (Bryson 84-85)
It is claimed that exceptions can be found no matter which linguist tries to
write down rules for spelling in English. Because in English, there is not
always one way to pronounce a particular letter, most of the time the pronouncing
of the letter changes from word to word usually arbitrarily and sometimes
depending on the letter next to it. Therefore linguistically English is highly
non-phonemic, in other words spelling is not regular and written symbols
(letters in this case) do not always correspond to specific spoken sounds of
the language.
An example that shows the difficulty and
absurdity of this is the way in which English-speakers are taught about the
alphabet and the spelling of other highly phonemic languages; for example,
Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet. In the Cyrillic alphabet there is only one
way to pronounce every letter. When learning this alphabet, English speakers
are told that this particular letter ‘Ж’ they are told that it is pronounced
like the ‘s’ in ‘pleasure’, or for this letter ‘Ю ю’ it is the ‘u’ in the word
‘use’. This happens because there isn’t a single way to pronounce the letters
‘u’ or ‘s’. English spelling is based on etymology, meaning that the spelling
of a word is caused by the language that it is borrowed from (French,
Anglo-Saxon etc.) ("Russian Alphabet"). Another difficulty regarding pronunciation
are the stresses. The meaning of a
sentence can be changed if where you put the stress (on different parts of
speech) changes. Another problem about stress is that in English, the right way
to pronounce a word is based on the syllable where you put the stress. However
stress on words does not exist in every language and therefore makes it
difficult for non-native English speakers to learn English or to use it
correctly (Bryson 95-96).
Another argument about the difficulty of
English is the ‘complexity of the grammar’ because its grammatical rules are
based on Latin. This causes contradictions and ambiguities constantly since a
language based on the rules of a language from another language family is
absolutely absurd (Bryson 137).
Furthermore according to some, the irregular
conjugations and the cases leftover from Old English make the language complex.
While I mentioned the loss of gender, simplification of conjugations and the
decline in inflection as a positive thing, it is just a positive thing in
comparison to other Indo-European languages, among all world languages there
are languages with a lot simpler grammar in other language families.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, English
has evolved to become the most widely used language in the world out of a language
initially used predominantly by uneducated peasants mainly because of its
richness in vocabulary, grammatical simplicity, and England and America’s
dominance in the world in the last few centuries. The story of the English
language dates back to the 5th century, when Germanic speaking
tribes migrated to Britain and it has survived through many difficult periods
and is now the lingua franca of international business, politics, and science,
the official language in many countries and the most studied language in the
world by far.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The author was born in İzmir,Turkey in 1996 and is now living in Milan, Italy. He is currently studying International Economics and Management at Bocconi University. His fields of interests are history, politics and languages , and he is generally interested in social sciences. He speaks Turkish, English, Italian and a little bit of German and Russian. He started this blog in order to share his thoughts with people, to reach people who share similar interests and to create a platform for discussion. You can reach him via e-mail.
E-mail: goksukayaalp96@gmail.com
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![Map of Europe during the Interwar Period, 1930. [1015 × 927]](http://i.imgur.com/5XWdTpJ.png)
Bildiğimiz gibi iki dünya savaşı arasındaki dönem (1919-1939), Avrupa ve Dünya açısından önemli gelişmelerin meydana geldiği, 1. Dünya Savaşı öncesi dünyasının ekonomik, siyasi ve sosyal anlamda hatırı sayılır bir biçimde değiştiği 20 yıllık bir dönemdir. Ara dönemde Avrupa ülkeleri ve diğer ülkelerde bu süreç 1. Dünya Savaşı’nın hasarlarını kapatmaya çalışma ile geçmiş, dolayısıyla yokluk ve sefaletle boğuşmayı ve buna bağlı olarak uç ideolojilerin yükselişini beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu ‘ara dönem’de yaşanan en önemli olaylar (veya süreçler) sosyalizm ve faşizmin yükselişi (özellikle Mussolini ve Hitler ile) ile 29 Ekonomik Bunalımı’dır. Nitekim savaşlar arası bu dönem Avrupa için bir kargaşa ve 2. Dünya Savaşı’na doğru ilerleyiş dönemi olarak özetlenebilir. Ara Dönem’de yaşananları öncesinde Sanayi Devrimi’nden 1. Dünya Savaşına kadar olan dönem hazırlamıştır ve Ara Dönem’in de günümüz dünyasının taslağını oluşturduğu söylenebilir.
