Henry Nguyen

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Research Paper: Final Draft
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The English Language... In English

What the fudge?!?! You don’t know where profanity came from? Well, profanity

(a.k.a. swearing) has been used for over centuries by everyone around the world! Oh, so

you only want to know about English profanity? Fine. I was only going to talk about that

kind of swearing anyways. Like most of the English language, many of these

inappropriate words came from Europe about 400 years into the past. Back in the 17th

century, oath-swearing was often used as an oath to god, “To swear an oath was to

compel God to pay attention to your promise – and to do so in vain was to dishonour God

and risk eternal damnation” (Leith, Sam. The Guardian. 23 January 2016.

<http://www.theguardian.com/books/), but as time passed, swearing was used more

frequently and some people disliked using the terms in public language because some of

them related to a disrespectful act to god or were just very disrespectful and rude. Not

only did profanity change over the years, but the whole English language was shaped and

changed. Many words, including profane ones, were added to this block of clay that is the

English language and has been molded into an even more complex and incomprehensible

language. People would agree that our language is strange and awkward, but its weird

qualities are nothing compared to the unusual dawn of English.

If I asked you, “Where did English come from?” you may have thought, “I know

where English came from - England obviously!” Well, for sure, England was definitely

not the only country that contributed to English’s creation. English originated from the

three Germanic tribes (the Saxons, Jutes and Angles) that attacked the British in 500 C.E.
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Research Paper: Final Draft
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Their Germanic language was later interpreted by the (invaded) British. This form of

English is typically referred to as “Old English,” since it’s the oldest form of English. The

Germanic tribes and Britain were not the only influences on today’s English. The Latin

alphabet also contributed to the formation of English by giving it some letters of the

alphabet. Capital letters in our English language first came from an Old Roman cursive,

also known as “uncial,” and was the foundation of Latin. After a while, the language of

Latin had been slightly modified and soon became one of the ingredients for our English

alphabet soup. After Latin, we adapted a different style for our letters from the Greeks

(called “miniscule”) that incorporated capitals to emphasize specific words. We use this

form of writing daily, when we capitalize proper nouns and the beginnings of a sentence

to accent them. In the olden days, when people had to write with quills, they did not write

with their quills the way people do today with their newfangled pens and pencils. If

everyone back then did pick up the quills for every individual letter, the ink would

splatter everywhere and make a mess. People eventually got tired of this and invented

cursive. The art of cursive utilized the connected letters in words for ease and fanciness

when writing with a quill. Along with the development of the English language came the

darker side of the language: the return of profanity.

As you may already know, profanity is often used when adults (especially young

ones) are conversing or when they are under large amounts of stress, but few know where

these outlandish words came from. Most are usually from very offensive words created

with the English language that were slowly modified into modern profanity. For example,

one idea for the word cr*p was that there was a man named Thomas Crapper and he had
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Research Paper: Final Draft
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popularized the toilet; people then tied the man and the contents put inside the toilet

together to form the well-known swear. This ridiculing language was not the only English

component that evolved over the years. Grammar was morphing as well, but it has only

become more inconsistent; there was not a large focus on proper grammar. Although

grammar rules acted like a fickle police officer bothering random people, Shakespearian

plays somewhat standardized the rules of grammar. Since his pieces of writing were very

popular, people started using the grammar rules Shakespeare used in his plays.

Nowadays, there are many books written by grammarians on proper grammar, but most

Americans are too lazy to follow them. Shakespeare had more to do with the English

language than just affecting our grammar; he was also a major influence on the language.

English has been influenced by different places and people, the greatest perhaps

being, the one and only, Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote many famous plays and his fans

took phrases from those plays, and incorporated them into everyday language. Other

people later heard of these phrases and soon, these phrases spread among people like the

common cold. The phrases included “the green-eyed monster,” “catch a cold” and “what

the dickens!” Not only did he make us sound more intelligent when people used phrases

from his plays, but he also added over 15,000 words to the English language such as

swagger, bedroom and skim milk. That’s a huge chunk of English, so without him, we

would have a much more basic vocabulary.

England in the age of Shakespeare was not the only place where English was

being popularized. More recently, English itself has become more well-known than ever

before. English’s popularity comes from three main factors: the British empire, music and
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trade. American and British music had become extremely popular, with hit artists like the

Beatles, Chris Brown and Michael Jackson. Their lyrics were primarily in English, and

their fans’ deep love for these artists drove the fans to learn English so they could sing

the lyrics of the song. Some of these artists’ ancestors came from the British Empire. The

empire’s main goal, which they achieved, was to trade. This empire traded with almost

every civilization in the world already, and goods were not the only things exchanged.

Language is often exchanged during trade, and Britain had traded frequently, which

resulted in a lot of communication and more trade opportunities.

The British Empire no longer exist, but English is still being shaped today. Social

media is one of the major shapers of the English language where over hundreds of

words/abbreviations of slang have been added to the English language. Words like

“LOL” and “photobomb” are relatively young, and they have become a part of everyday

language. These abbreviations are generally used on Twitter (or just all social media), so

Twitter users do not go over the limit 140 characters in their tweets. The English

language is very unique from other languages, and it is also quite difficult for new

speakers to learn.

English is a very strange, but interesting language. A reason English is difficult to

learn is that the rules in the English language typically have exceptions, like how the past

tense of verbs should end in -ed except for the many irregular verbs. You may be

wondering, “Why is this language a rule book that contains do’s and don’t’s for each

rule?” In the 16th century, the foreign spellings of words were often neglected and

modified to be more “English,” but in the 19th century, people had grown respect for the
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unusual spellings of words, so the original foreign words were kept as they were before.

In other words, some words have a more English composition while others have a

stronger foreign root, thus forming a language of both more English and more foreign

words. Not only is it hard for normal english-speakers to remember the rules, but it's even

harder for new english-speakers.

Another reason English is difficult to learn is that there are many confusing words

and misconceptions to be made when we hear English words for the first time. For

example, people say hamburger, even though there is not ham inside a hamburger or how

we have a goose and a moose (which are both singular), and we do have geese, but we

don’t have meese, which should be both plural. Not only is that strange, but we can have

multiple unrelated definitions for one single word. The word “can” can have many

different definitions, whether it's relating to the ability to do something or a cylindrical

object used for storage. The reason why we have so many definitions for a single word

was actually researched by scientists. They concluded people do this to be more efficient.

The simple syllable and pronunciation of a word makes the word easy to say and

remember than having a different word for the definition and creating a lot of confusion

and difficulties, but without context it is even more confusing. Even though the language

can be considered difficult, I feel as though this form of communication should be seen as

an exotic plant that humans have nurtured and grown.

The English language is strange, unique communicating tool, and it is of a decent

(approximately 1500 years old) age, but it is about as common as the clothes we buy that

are made in China. The language can be compared to a gorgeous, unusual apple tree. The
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tree itself, if it was an unusual species of apple trees is quite common in the United

States. It provides fruit or assistance for living, and can have seeds that travel hundreds of

miles. The language had been altered over the years, causing its special qualities to grow.

Like most of our culture, it came originally from the Europeans. You may be thinking,

“Why is the history about the English important?”, but like Sir Francis Bacon once said,

“Knowledge is power,” so the more you know, the better. From knowledge comes

inspiration and even more knowledge. The English language will continue to form and is

already molding into something different today, but it is also still possible for the

beautiful and unusual apple tree to wilt, cease to exist and become the next dead

language.