HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGLISH
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ASSIGNMENT ON HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

HANOI,2020
REFERENCES
1.Itc-english.com
2.oldenglishteaching.art.gla.ac.uk
3.linguisticsociety.org
4.en.wikipedia.org
5.The book: Assignment on history and development of the English
language.

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 CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION
1.1.Rationale
English spread everywhere under colonialism during the prosperous period of
the British Empire, from the British Islands to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong,
New Zealand, the United States and some places where English became a
"second language".The most important and increasingly used by the learners,
English has evolved over a period of more than 1,400 years with two periods
of "Old English and Modern English". Since then there have been a lot of
changes between 2 periods, so I chosed this topic to show the difference
between the two periods: ancient English and modern English.
1.2.Aims and objectives of the study
-Finding out the differences between the 2 stages of English development
Through vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar ....
1.3.Reseach questions
1.How did Old English differ from Modern English? Can you explain this
with reference to both grammar and vocabulary?
2. Based on what you know about the development of English from its
earliest inception, can you speculate on how the English language might
develop in the future? What kinds of changes might we expect to see and
what factors affect the extent to which you can make such predictions?
1.4.Methods of the study

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Method of theoretical research: Based on the information and database
available in documents and documents to draw scientific conclusions for the
research problem. Including methods: Methods of analysis and theoretical
synthesis.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1.Old ENGLISH

Old English or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English

language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early
Middle Ages. It was probably brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon
settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date
from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was
replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a
relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era,
as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-
Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English.

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Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects
originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their
language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a
Celtic language, and Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old
English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West
Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English
period,[3] although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would
develop mainly from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of
England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule
and settlement beginning in the 9th century.
Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives
are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is very
different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to
understand without study. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives,
pronouns and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, and word
order is much freer.The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a
runic system, but from about the 8th century this was replaced by a version of
the Latin alphabet.
2.2. Modern English
Modern English (sometimes New English or NE (ME) as opposed to Middle
English and Old English) is the form of the English language spoken since the
Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was
completed in roughly 1550.
With some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such
as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are

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considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as
using Early Modern English or Elizabethan English. English was adopted in
regions around the world, such as North America, the Indian subcontinent,
Africa, Australia and New Zealand through colonisation by the British
Empire.
Modern English has many dialects spoken in many countries throughout the
world, sometimes collectively referred to as the anglosphere. These dialects
include American English, Australian English, British English (containing
English English, Welsh English and Scottish English), Canadian English,
Caribbean English, Hiberno-English, Indian English, Pakistani English,
Nigerian English, New Zealand English, Philippine English, Singaporean
English, and South African English.
According to the Ethnologue, there are almost 1 billion speakers of English as
a first or second language. English is spoken as a first or a second language in
many countries, with the largest number of native speakers being in the
United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and
Ireland; there are also large populations in India, Pakistan, the Philippines and
Southern Africa. It "has more non-native speakers than any other language, is
more widely dispersed around the world and is used for more purposes than
any other language". Its large number of speakers, plus its worldwide
presence, have made English a common language ("lingua franca") "of the
airlines, of the sea and shipping, of computer technology, of science and
indeed of (global) communication generally".

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CHAPTER 3: Old English Differ from Modern English
Old English happened to be a very highly inflectional language; but then Old
English underwent a series of changes, as a result of which Modern English is
almost devoid of inflections.Old English and New ( or Modern ) English are
not two different entities. Old English kept on changing until it became what
today we call Modern English. So, Modern English is merely a continuation
of Old English ( It is the same thing with any other language), and Old
English was the precursor of Modern English. Just to give you a crude
analogy, I am the same person as I was forty years ago; only I changed
physically, and intellectually.
3.1 Grammatical differences
-The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English,
predominantly by being much more inflected. As an old Germanic language,
Old English has a morphological system that is similar to that of the
hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections
thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including
constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as the
umlaut.
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fully inflected with four
grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), and a vestigial
instrumental, two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and three
grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). First- and second-
person personal pronouns also had dual forms for referring to groups of two
people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms. The instrumental
case was somewhat rare and occurred only in the masculine and neuter
singular. It was often replaced by the dative. Adjectives, pronouns and

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(sometimes) participles agreed with their antecedent nouns in case, number
and gender. Finite verbs agreed with their subject in person and number.
-Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of Indo-
European in favor of analytic constructions. The personal pronouns retain
morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the
more extensive Germanic case system of Old English). For other pronouns,
and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only
by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive or English
possessive".
Eight "word classes" or "parts of speech" are commonly distinguished in
English: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions, and conjunctions. Nouns form the largest word class, and verbs
the second-largest. Unlike many Indo-European languages, English nouns do
not have grammatical gender.
3.2 Differences in Vocabulary
3.2.1 Old English
Surviving vocabulary of Old English (OE) is relatively small. The Thesaurus
of Old English (TOE), with which you will be working, contains almost
34,000 different word forms, whereas a modern desk dictionary might contain
80,000. . An example of multiple meaning or polysemy is OE ecg,
pronounced in the same way as its Modern English (Mod. E.)
Much of the vocabulary of Mod. E. derives from OE. This applies particularly
to our core vocabulary: common words in everyday use for fundamental
concepts. Examples include the natural world (earth, sea, wind, fire, water;
sun, moon, star); people (man, woman, child, father, mother, brother,
daughter); the body (hand, arm, elbow, finger, foot, nose, mouth); and other
basic concepts such as food, drink; heaven, hell; friend, neighbour; love,

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good, evil; hot, cold; after, over, under. However, not all words which look
alike necessarily refer to the same thing – such misleading words are often
called false friends. An example pair is OE bēor / Mod. E. beer. Although
both refer to alcoholic drinks, the nature of the drink is quite different.
3.2.2 Modern English
In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning
ancient Greek and Roman classics. This is known in history as the
Renaissance.
In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions.
It can be concluded that English has evolved from a synthetic language (Old
English) to the present analytic language. Compare the following examples:
　　Old 　　Middle 　　Modern
　　eorn- ian lern- en 　　learn
　　mon- a 　　mone- e moon
　　stan- as 　　ston- es　　stones
　　sun- ne 　　sun- ne 　　sun
　　sun- u 　　sun- e 　　sun
- Creation refers to the formation of new words by using the existing
materials, namely roots, affixes and other elements. The major means of
word-building will be discussed in the chapter to follow. In modern times,
this is the most important way of vocabulary expansion, e.g.:
supercomputer ,super-rich ,super-fit ,colaholic ,chocaholic ,newscast
sportcast.

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CHAPTER 4: ENGLISH CHANGING AND DEVELOPING IN
THE FUTURE
4.1 The Changes of English
Yes, and so is every other human language! Language is always changing,
evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad thing; if
English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to
modems, fax machines, or cable TV. As long as the needs of language users
continue to change, so will the language. The change is so slow that from year
to year we hardly notice it, except to grumble every so often about the ‘poor
English’ being used by the younger generation! However, reading
Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult. If you go
back a couple more centuries, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very tough
sledding, and if you went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it
would be like reading a different language.
4.1.1 Why does it change?
Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of
its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences
require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting:
originally it was called text messaging, because it allowed one person to send
another text rather than voice messages by phone. As that became more
common, people began using the shorter form text to refer to both the
message and the process, as in I just got a text or I'll text Sylvia right now.
Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young
adults. As young people interact with others their own age, their language
grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are different from
those of the older generation. Some have a short life span (heard groovy
lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole.

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4.2 The Development of English
As the world develops in terms of educational standards, more and more
people are choosing to study English as a second language. In this day and
age, the opportunities that are available to you if you can read, speak, and
write in English are much more desirable than other languages. The potential
for jobs, to expand on your knowledge, and to generally speak with more of
the world’s population will all improve when capable of communicating in
English.
English is also gaining popularity thanks to advancements in technology and
computing. English dominates the technology industry, with the majority of
software’s, operating systems, websites and programmes all written in
languages based off of English. With technology playing more and more of an
important role in our lives, English will become more and more important.
English has so many diverse people learning it around the globe, making it
almost a “must-know” language these days. With the influence the English
language already has across the world, its easy to see English becoming a
universal language of the future.

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 CHAPTER 5:CONCLUSION

English is the largest language by number of speakers, and the third most-
spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is
the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or
one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more
people who have learned it as a second language than there are native
speakers. It is estimated that there are over 2 billion speakers of
English.English is the majority native language in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of
Ireland, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa and
South Asia. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European
Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the
most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of
speakers of this Indo-European branch. English has a vast vocabulary, though
counting how many words any language has is impossible. English speakers
are called "Anglophones".
Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical
Indo-European dependent marking pattern, with a rich inflectional
morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with
little inflection, a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order and a complex
syntax. Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the
expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive
constructions, interrogatives and some negation. The variation among the
accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions—in
terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, idioms,
grammar, and spelling—can often be understood by speakers of different

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dialects, but in extreme cases can lead to confusion or even mutual
unintelligibility between English speakers.
The English language has shaped the world in a positive way, allowing useful
and easier communications between people, parties and businesses. Most of
the top universities in the world are in English speaking countries and are
very desirable to attend. Most of the time, to study abroad in an English-
speaking country, you need to take a lengthy test that will ensure that you can
communicate fluently and won’t require a translator for your studies.
As English becomes a global language, its importance will only increase.
Some countries have even made it mandatory for English to be taught as
second language in school.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Chapter 1:Introduction……………………………..3
1.1 Rationale……………………………………….3
1.2 Aims and objectives of the study………………3
1.3 Reseach questions……………………………...3
1.4 Methods of study……………………………….3
Chapter 2:Literature review……………………….5
2.1 Old English……………………………………5
2.2 Modern English………………………………..5
Chapter 3:Old English Differ from Modern English
……………………………………………………..8
3.1 Grammatical differences………………………8
3.2 Differences in vocabulary……………………..9
Chapter 4:English Changing and Developing in The Future
……………………………………………………11
4.1 The changes of English………………………11
4.1.1 Why does it change?.....................................11
4.2 The development of English…………………12
Chapter 5:Conclusion…………………………….13

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