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1.0 INTRODUCTION
English is a language that is widely used all over the world, and English as a language has
developed through history, and it has changed from its basic origins, when it was referred
to as 'Old English' to the modern English that is used today, which is known as 'Modern
English'. What is important is that the language displays continuity through the ages, and
this adds to the interest about the evolution of English as a language.
We speak English but do we know where it comes from? We did not know until we
start to study on this subject and we learn where it comes from and how it has developed.
How two individuals of Malaysian and American communicate with each other? What
language should they use? If we look into the history of Malaysia, traders of China and
India spoke Bahasa Melayu to communicate during trading. It is because at that era,
Bahasa Melayu was a trade language and was known as Lingua Franca: a language
systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue in
particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons mother tongues
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_ Franca_(magazine). For example, the English language is
the Lingua Franca of Asia (www.catchwordbranding.com/resources/glossary.php)
There are also other languages that serve as lingua franca. Once, French was the
lingua franca of Diplomacy and Latin was the Lingua Franca of the Roman Empire and of
western Christendom for a millennium ( Fromkin.V,Rodman.R and Hyams,N,2003 ) .
Hence, what is the Lingua Franca of the whole world? It is none other than English. It is
because that nowadays, half of worlds business deals are conducted in English. Two
thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of all posts/mails is written
and addressed in English. We might be asking ourselves what is so special about English?
This question can be answered by looking into the history of English and how it is
developed until today.

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2.0 ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

It must be remembered at the very outset that English is a member of the Indo-European
family of languages, which is a family that includes a large number of European languages
being spoken today. The branches of this Indo-European language include Latin and the
modern Romance languages, the Germanic languages, the group of Indo-Iranian
languages, which would include Hindi and Sanskrit, the various Slavic languages, the
Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian, but not Estonian, Greek, and other Celtic
languages. The influence that the original Indo-European language is obvious even today,
even though there is no written record to prove it. For example, when the word for 'father'
in English is taken, it is 'pitr' in Sanskrit; it is 'vater' in German, 'pater' in Latin. These words
are all referred to as cognates, meaning that they are all similar words in different
languages that share the same root of origin.
The history of English begins a little after 600 AD. The ancestors of the language
were wandering in the forests of northern Europe. Their language was a part of Germanic
branch of Indo European Family. The people talking this language spread to the northern
coast of Europe in the time of Roman Empire. Among this people, the tribes called Angels,
Saxons, Jutes which is called Anglo Saxons came to England

crossing the North Sea

to invade Britain. Before their arrival, the Romans ruled the country which was inhabited
by the Celtics that spoke a Celtic language. Eventually, during the Romans colonization,
many Celtics became

Romanized while others became rebels. When the Romans

withdrew from Britain right after they were attacked by the Goths, this language was
quickly displaced.
Settlements of most of Britain by Germanic people( Angles,Saxons, Jules and some
Frisians) brought along with them West Germanic dialects descended from ProtoGermanic. These dialects were distantly related to Latin but also had a sprinkling of Latin
borrowings due to earlier cultural contact with the Romans on the continent. The first Latin
effect was in that period. It effected the language with the merchants travelling the tribes.
Most of the Celtic speakers were sent away to Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group
migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic
Language of Breton today. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxons who were originally sea-farers
settled down as farmers, exploiting the rich English farmland. By 600 AD, the Germanic
speech of England comprised dialects of a language distinct from the continental
Germanic languages.

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When the Anglo-Saxons were Christianized in 597 CE, they started to learn Latin.
Examples of Latin words are like kettle, wine cheese and butter. It is believed that due to
the process of learning Latin, the history of English Language was affected, in which the
history of the language was divided into three parts.
Before the Saxons, the language used in what is now England was a mixture of
Latin and various Celtic languages which were spoken before the Romans came to Britain
(54-5BC). The Romans brought Latin to Britain, which was part of the Roman Empire for
over 400 years. Many of the words passed on from this era are those introduced by
Roman merchants and soldiers. These include win (wine), candel (candle), belt (belt),
weall (wall).

3.0 DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN BRITAIN

English has undergone many stages of substantial changes and development over a long
period of time before it becomes the language that we speak today. The changes and
development of the language can be seen through its history which has been traditionally
divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English. The diagram
below shows the summary of the three periods which will be explained briefly in the
following pages.

Diagram 1 Summary of the three English main periods

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3.1 OLD ENGLISH (450 1100 AD)

During the 5th Century AD three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to the
British Isles from various parts of northwest Germany as well as Denmark .The Angles
were named from Engle, their land of origin. Old English was developed in Britain by the
Germanic tribes when they invaded the isle of England. Through the years, the Saxons,
Angles and Jutes mixed their different Germanic dialects. This group of dialects forms
what linguists refer to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The word "English" was in Old
English "Englisc", and that came from the name of the Angles. The influence of Celtic(early
inhabitants of Britain) upon Old English was very little. In fact, very few Celtic words have
lived on in the English language. But many places and river names have Celtic origins like
Kent,York,Dover,Cumberland,

Thames

Avon,

Trent

and

Severn.

According to the history of England, when England was established by the AngloSaxons, there were seven kingdoms namely Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Wessex, Sussex,
Essex and East Angles which were set up by the Germanic tribes. Of all the seven
kingdoms, three great ones rose to unify the large areas. They were Northumbria, Mercia
and Wessex. During the 7th and 8th centuries , Northumbrias culture and language were
practised and used all over Britain once it became dominant.
The arrival of St. Augustine , a Roman missionary in 597 and his introduction of
Christianity into Saxon England brought more Latin words into the English language and
remained in its writing system. They were mostly fond of naming the Church dignitaries,
ceremonies and etc. Some, such as church, bishop, baptism, monk, eucharist and
presbyter came indirectly through Latin from the Greek.
Around 878 AD,

Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, invaded the country

after many years of raids between the European kingdoms. As the result of the invasion,
the Norsemen ruled the east coast of the island. Only Wessex (west Saxon) remained as
an independent kingdom . During their ruling, their famous king, Alfred the Great opened
schools and translated (or the reason for translation) many books from Latin into English.

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By the 10th Century, their dialect became the official language of Britain. Written
Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called Runic,
derived from the Scandinavian languages brought by the Vikings. They spoke a language
called Old Norse which was quite similar to the old English. Their language, had given a
great effect on the sound structure and the grammar of English language. As a result,
English got many Norse words into the language. Many pairs of English and Norse words
gave the same or slightly different meanings as in the examples shown below in table 1.
Norse
anger
nay
fro
raise
ill
bask
skill
skin
dike
skirt
scatter
skip

English
Wrath
No
From
Rear
Sick
Bathe
Craft
Hide
Ditch
Shirt
Shatter
Shift

Table 1 Comparisons of Norse and English words

Several written works have survived from the Old English period. The most famous
is the oldest heroic epic poem called "Beowulf" which is notable for its length - 3,183

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lines. Experts say "Beowulf" was written in Britain more than one thousand years ago but
the writer is unidentified.

Diagram 2 Part of Beowulf in Old English

The invaders of the Germanic tribes brought similar languages to Britain which
had developed into what is called Old English where this language did not sound or look
like English that everyone uses today. Even the Native English speakers would not
understand the old English. However, about half of the most commonly used words in
modern English have old English roots like be, strong and water. This old English was
spoken until around 1100 AD.

3.2 MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100 1500 AD)

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Many important changes occurred within this period. One of it was that Old English
became Middle English. Middle English is known for its mixture of the English and French
language. By the end of 14 th century, English dialect became important again when Britain
got to rule back and it started the era of Middle English .
For 300 years since the invasion of William the Conqueror who was the Duke of
Normandy(part of Modern France), the French Norman kings and nobles used French
language which was brought by them where it was soon known as Anglo-Norman. This
political event effected very much the administration system and language of Britain as the
Normans

made their Anglo-Norman language used officially in the royal court,

administration as well as propertied class. French language became the official written
language whereas English was used by the lower classes of peasants and slaves.
Churches and monasteries gradually was filled by French speaking functionaries who
used the language for keeping records . After a while, the Anglo-Saxon was no longer
kept up. More French words are added to the English vocabulary and more pairs of similar
words arose like in the table shown below:
French
close
reply
odour
annual
demand
chamber
desire
power

English
shut
answer
smell
yearly
ask
room
wish
might

Table 2 Comparison of French and English words

It is believed that during the govern of the Normans, the English poor cooked for the
French nobles and as for that many words of the mixture of English and French were used

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like the name of domestic animals had English words like ox,cow,swine and deer
whereas words like beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon and venison were French. The
invasion of the Normans had also displaced some of the Germanic form of plurals as seen
in the table 2 below. However, there are a few words of that have retained their Germanic
plural: men,oxen,feet,teeth and children
GERMANIC

FRENCH PLURAL

WORD

PLURAL

FORM (-S)

House
Shoe

FORM (EN)
Housen
Shoen

Houses
Shoes

Table 3 Comparison between the Germanic and the French plural form of words
By about 1200 AD, England and France had split. England became the dominant
power again. King Henry 1V who was the ruler became the first king of England and
emerged English to be the standard dialect in the country. The Old English was again
used in courts with more and more English books written. English had changed a lot with
many French words added because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for
about 300 years back,. Most of the words embedded in the English vocabulary are words
of power, such as crown, castle, court, parliament, army, mansion, gown, beauty,
banquet, art, poet, romance, duke, servant, peasant, traitor and governor.
The Middle English is also described as the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift. It
was a very serious sound change affecting the long vowels of English. Basically, the long
vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the
mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel
Shift occurred during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. This was the era when more
books were printed rather than handwritten. It was done by William Caxton an English
merchant, a diplomat and a writer. He is believed to be the first English man to work as a
printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England.

The most famous example of stories of Middle English is "The Canterbury Tales",
a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. It was about a group of thirty people

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who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England. The portraits that he painted in his Tales
reflect the life of England in the Fourteenth century especially about society and the
church.

Diagram 3 An example of Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer

Even though the English language in this era was very much influenced by the
French, it was still a Germanic language which differed from Old English in so many ways.
People at that time started to rely more on word order and its structure to express their
meaning rather than the use of the case system. This situation still made present native
English speakers faced problem in understanding the language.

3.3 MODERN ENGLISH(1500 PRESENT)

Modern English can be categorized into two eras. They are Early modern English and Late
Modern English. The difference between these two is the amount of vocabulary.

3.3.1 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH(1500-1800 AD)

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Early modern English began around the 16 th Century and it was the era where a large
number of Latin and Greek borrowing words and neologisms took place as shown in Table
4. From Greek, they received Grammar, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and
Music terms. Apart from that, the era is recognized by the linguists as the period of a
sudden important change in the pronunciation with richer lexicon of the English language.
One example of the changes is when the th of some verb forms became s (loveth- loves,
hath-has). The auxiliary verbs also received some changes (he is risen he has risen)
English became more organized and began to reflex the modern version as in the
sentence, the Old English "To us pleases sailing" became "We like sailing." It was
easier for the people in that period to understand the language despite the difference of
the word order and sentence construction were still slightly different.
Animals

Clothing

Giraffe, tiger, zebra

Food

Pyjama, turban, shawl

Scientific and Mathematical terms

Spinach, chocolate, orange

Drinks

Algebra, geography, species

Religious terms

Tea, coffee, cider

Sports

Islam, Jesus, Nirvana

Vehicles

Checkmates, golf, billiards

Music and Art

Chariot, car, coach

Weapons

Piano, theatre, easel

Political and Military terms

Pistol, trigger, rifle

Astronomical names

Commando, admiral, parliament

Saturn, Leo, Uranus

Table 4 List of some Greek and Latin borrowed words

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This era is sometimes referred to as "the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan
era".The Elizabethan era was the epoch(one of the important events) in English history of
Queen Elizabeth I's reign (15581603). Historians describe it as the golden age in English
history. The symbol of Britannia(ancient name of Great Britain) was first used in 1572 that
marked the Elizabethan age as a Renaissance that inspired national pride through
classical ideals, international expansion, and naval victory over the hated Spanish foe.
This golden age also represented the apogee or the most successful event of the English
Renaissance and saw the flowering Greek and Latin words of poetry, music and literature.
The era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed
plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre.
During the era of Renaissance where most Greek and Latin words entered English,
the invention of the printing press made more books for the people as it was cheaper.
Printing also brought standardization to English. The Bible and some valuable manuscripts
were also printed like King James Bible. The first dictionary ever to be published is the
Table Alphabeticall by Robert Cowdrey. It is the abbreviated title of the first monolingual
dictionary in the English language. Although it was important in being the first collection of
its kind, it was never considered as a very useful work. At only 120 pages, it listed 2,543
words along with very brief (often single-word) definitions and in most cases, it was little
more than a list of synonyms.
3.3.2 LATE MODERN ENGLISH(1800 PRESENT)
Pronunciation, grammar and spelling are almost the same between Early and Late Modern
English but the latter

has more words. For example, from Early English to Modern

English, Lyf became Life, Deel became Deal, Hoom became Home, Mone became Moon,
and Hous became House. This was the result of two big developments in the world: the
Industrial Revolution and the British Colonialism.
England began the Industrial Revolution (18th century) and this had an effect on the
development of the language. England had to rely on new or modified Greek and Latin
words to cope with the rapid changes in technology. New technical words were added to
describe the new creations and discoveries. These words were named after the inventor or
given the name of their choice (trains, engine, pulleys, combustion, electricity,
telephone, telegraph, camera etc)

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Britain was an Empire for 200 years between the 18th and 20th centuries and
English language continued to change as the British Empire widen its colonisation across
the world like USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, Asia and Africa. The rulers sent their
people to settle and live in their conquered places where they interacted directly with the
natives. To communicate with each other, new words were added to the English
vocabulary. For example, 'kangaroo' and 'boomerang' are native Australian Aborigine
words, 'juggernaut' and 'turban' came from India.

4.0 STANDARDIZATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DURING EARLY ENGLISH

The early part of the modern English period saw the establishment of the standard written
language that we know today. The printing press, the reading habit, and all forms of
communication are favorable to the spread of ideas and stimulating to the growth of the
vocabulary. During that period, the central government felt that in order to conduct their
business, to keep important

records of their administration, as well as communication

among the people of the land, standardization of the language should be done. John H.
Fisher (1977, 1979) argues

that

standard

English was first used in the Court of

Chancery, founded in the 15th century to give prompt justice to English citizens and to
consolidate the King's influence in the nation.
In the era of Renaissance, the rulers had encouraged their people to read and seek
knowledge. As for that, more reading materials should be made with a standardized
language. This was to ensure that everyone was able to understand and share the same
knowledge with others rather than creating misunderstanding among them as we know
from history that the language varied. With the invention of the printing press (Johann
Gutenberg had originally invented the printing press in Germany around 1450), one of the
worlds great technological innovations, that was first introduced into England by William
Caxton in 1476 , a lot of books had been printed. The first book printed in the English
language was Caxton's own translation, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye( actually
printed in Bruges in 1473 or early 1474). Up to 20,000 books were printed in the following
150 years, ranging from mythic tales and popular stories to poems, phrasebooks,
devotional pieces and grammars.

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Printing had helped

Caxton became quite rich (among his best sellers were

Chaucers Canterbury Tales and Thomas Malorys Tales of King Arthur). As books were
produced in a large quantity, they became cheaper and more commonly available, and
soon English books became even more popular than books in Latin. So, it was then taken
up by early printers, who adapted it for other purposes and spread it wherever their books
were read, until finally it fell into the agencies, hands of school teachers, dictionary makers
and grammarians together with social consciousness work actively toward the promotion
and maintenance of a standard, especially in grammar and usage. (Albert C. Baugh and
Thomas

Cable,

History

of

the

English

Language.

Prentice-Hall,

1978).

At the time of the introduction of printing, there were five major dialect divisions
within England - Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands (a region which extended down
to include London), Southern and Kentish - and even within these demarcations, there was
a huge variety of different spellings. For example, the word church could be spelled in 30
different ways, people in 22, receive in 45, she in 60 and though in an almost unbelievable
500 variations. The -ing participle (e.g. running) was said as -and in the north, -end in
the East Midlands, and -ind in the West Midlands (e.g. runnand, runnend, runnind). The
"-eth" and "-th" verb endings used in the south of the country (e.g. goeth) appear as "-es"
and "-s" in the Northern and most of the north Midland area (e.g. goes). With all these
vague differences, they were all standardized by respective Chancery.
The Chancery of Westminster made some efforts from the 1430s onwards to set
standard spellings for official documents, specifying

instead of ich and various other

common variants of the first person pronoun, land instead of lond, and modern spellings of
such, right, not, but, these, any, many, can, cannot, but, shall, should, could, ought,
thorough, etc, all of which previously appeared in many variants. Chancery Standard
contributed significantly to the development of a Standard English, and the political,
commercial and cultural dominance of the "East Midlands triangle" (London-OxfordCambridge) was well established long before the 15th Century, but it was the printing
press that was really responsible for carrying through the standardization process.

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With the advent of mass printing, the dialect and spelling of the East Midlands (and,
more specifically, that of the national capital, London, where most publishing houses were
located) became the de facto standard and spelling and grammar gradually became more
and more fixed. One such example is the use of the northern English they, their and them
in preference to the London equivalents hi, hir and hem (which were more easily confused
with singular pronouns like he, her and him). Caxton himself complained about the
difficulties of finding forms which would be understood throughout the country, a difficult
task even for simple little words like eggs. But his own work was far from consistent (e.g.
booke and boke, axed and axyd) and his use of double letters and the final "e" was
haphazard at best (e.g. hadde, wel, whiche, fellow/felow/felowe/fallow/fallowe, etc). Many
of his successors were just as inconsistent, particularly as many of them were Europeans
and not native English speakers.
Standardization was well under way by around 1650, but it was a slow and halting
process and names in particular were often changed in a variety of ways. For example,
more than 80 different spellings of Shakespeares name have been recorded, and he
himself spelled it differently in each of his six known signatures, including two different
versions in his own will!
To conclude, standardization of the Modern English played a very important role to
our world because today, we are still using this form of language with more and more new
term introduced to the language.

5.0 CONCLUSION
English continues to change and develop, with hundreds of new words created from time
to time. Compared to other languages, English vocabulary is the largest. The beauty of
the language has never been doubtful. Even though English has undergone massive
changes overtime and with all the borrowings from many other languages ,the heart of the
English language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English.
More recently still, English has became a Lingua Franca, a global language,
regularly used and understood by many nations for whom is not their first language. Like
how English remembers its root, we too need to remember ours because by only doing
that, we would learn how to appreciate.

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REFLECTION
I had to do a lot of references to do this assignment by reading up books and get the
resource from the internet. I also had to refer my experience friends in the school on order
to get a clearer view of the chosen topic. I did not have a lot of chances to get more books
inspite of the work burden in school. It really limit my time.I too got a lot of help from my
husband through opinions and views.
The materials that I got were sometimes differed especially in the event of Great
Vowel Shift. Talking about it, I would like to thank Puan Hadzra(hope she doesnt mind of
the name) who texted a very brief info about it. Due to the variations of history, I had to use
my own explanation through my reading of understanding. I could presume that different
writers had different kinds of opinions of the history.
I had to search more websites to fulfil the task. The most challenging was the one
on the events of standardizing the language. A lot of readings and comparisons had to be
done in order to get clearer view.
With my self patience and moral suspect from friends and family, I finally managed
to come out with a course work that fulfilled the requirement needed. When doing this
assignment, I really got a lot of information about the history of the language. I will try my
very best to be a good English teacher. I will use all the information gained to upgrade my
standard of teaching in order to help or educate my children in school.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my gratitude to the following people who had given me a helping hand towards
my assignment.. Without them, I am sure that I will not be able to finish my assignment on time.
To my lecturers,
Puan Hadzrawiah bt Abu Kasim
Encik Lim Chin Chye
Thank you for such a short but brief explanation on linguistic as well as the assignment.
To my course mates,
Thank you for texting me regarding the assignment and also meaningful advices as well as tips as to how
to carry out the assignment..
Last but not least, to my husband and family who had supported me in any way and also for the moral
support that I got while doing my assignment.
For all the help that I got, only God will repay you.
TO ERR IS HUMAN
TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE

BIBLIOGRAFI

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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language
http://www.krysstal.com/english.html
http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm
http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_early_modern.html
http://www.anglik.net/englishlanguagehistory
www.blcu.edu.cn
www.davidcrystal.ccom
Victoria Fromkin.,Robert Rodman&Nina Hyams(2011)An Introduction to Language.
Canada: WADSWORTH Cengage learning