WHAT IS A HISTORY OF ENGLISH

(This paper is prepared to fulfill the assignment of the History of English subject)

Lecturer: Dr. Fahriany, M. Pd

Arranged by:
AHMAD SYAHRUL MUBARAK - 11200140000073
SISKA LISMAWATI PUTRI - 11200140000082
PUTRI ALFIANA AMALIA – 11200140000090

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY JAKARTA
2021
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Paper
B. Problem Formulation
C. Purpose of Paper

CHAPTER II: CONTENT

A. History of English
B. Old English (450-1100)
C. Middle English (1100-1500)
D. Modern English
1) Early Modern English (1500-1800)
2) Late Modern English (1800-Present)
E. A Brief Chronology of English

CHAPTER III: CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Paper
In times of globalization cross-cultural communication is becoming increasingly
important. In the world where everything is interconnected and interdependent, people
from diverse cultural backgrounds are supposed to interact, i.e. to communicate and
cooperate by sharing ideas, values, traditions, and beliefs. Cross-cultural communication
is not new, though. It appeared when people from different cultures began to come into
contact with one another, and since then different languages have interacted and
influenced one another as well as people who speak them. As for the English language, it
was affected by many languages throughout its history, such as Germanic, French, Latin,
Greek, etc.
English has a rich literature with a long history. This is an attempt to tell the story
of English literature from its beginning to the present day. The history of English writing
begins very early in the Anglo-Saxons period and continues Middle English, and Modern
English which is divided by two, Early Modern English and Late Modern English.
The aim of this paper is to give general description about the history of English
which is divided into three periods, Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

B. Problem Formulation
1. What is history of English?
2. How was the situation in Old English period?
3. How was the situation in Middle English period?
4. How was the situation in Modern English period?

C. Purpose of Paper
1. To know the explanation of history of English.
2. To describe the situation in Old English period.
3. To describe the situation in Middle English period.
4. To describe the situation in Modern English period.
 CHAPTER II
CONTENT

A. History of English

To many people it might seem a relatively straightforward matter to write a

history of the English language, for one simply starts at the beginning and carries through
until the modem day. A history of the English language, however, does raise the
questions of what one means by 'English' and what a history of it should seek to
accomplish.

To most people today 'English' indicates the variety of the language known as
Standard English a variety characterised by the written form which is highly regulated. If
one was seeking to learn English today, the appropriate goal would be to aim at a mastery
of this variety. Consequently, a history of the English language might be thought to
explain how Standard English arose and has developed since then. But in addition to this
standard there are many varieties of English. In England itself there are numerous
regional dialects, both rural and urban. There are also varieties found in Wales, Scotland
and Ireland. When one looks abroad, one finds a whole range of other Englishes.

The Standard American variety differs from Standard British English in various
aspects, and within the United States there are many regional varieties. Most countries
which were settled from or colonised by the English use English as their first language or
as an approved, sometimes an official, variety. Even outside these countries, English is
used widely as a lingua franca for purposes of commerce and science, because English
has virtually achieved the status of a world language.

For those who want to learn a second language, English is often their first choice.
The result is not only that English is spoken in a plethora of different countries, but also
that the differences among the speakers of English extend over an enormous range. In
addition, each speaker of English has a number of different registers or forms of the
language which are used for various social occasions. The English one uses for an
interview will differ in vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax from the English that person
might use in a more intimate social situation. It is clear that a history of English could not
encompass the development of all varieties and registers of the language which have
existed and which still exist. Many of these are in any case not well documented, because
until recently the information which survived was available only in written English and
that meant in practice in a standard form.

There is the additional difficulty of deciding when 'English' began. English is a

branch of the West Germanic family of languages which was brought to these islands
from the 5th century AD onwards by the Germanic people known collectively as the
Anglo-Saxons. Three Germanic tribes, the Jutes, Saxons and Angles were seeking new
lands to conquer, and crossed over from the North Sea. It must be noted that the English
language we know and study through various English language courses today had yet to
be created as the inhabitants of Britain spoke various dialect of the Celtic language.

When they arrived in England, they consisted of a number of tribes and tribal
groupings, each of which probably spoke a different variety of their language even if the
varieties were mutually intelligible. The previous occupants of the country were
Romanised Celts and it was many years before the Anglo-Saxons conquered the country
and established their own political system. It was several centuries before the various
tribal groups, each with their own dialect, united politically under a single monarch, and
even longer before they could be said to have accepted that there was a single language
variety for the country as a whole. Indeed, some people might think this position has not
been reached even today.

Traditionally histories of the English language have divided their account into
three major periods: Old English (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon), Middle
English and Modern English. The last period is sometimes divided into two to give Early
Modern English and Late Modern English. The reasons for this division are as much
political as linguistic.
B. Old English

The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different
dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon, or
now more commonly Old English. It displaced the indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the
Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the
Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages remained in most of Scotland, Wales and
Cornwall, and many compound Celtic-Germanic place names survive, hinting at early
language mixing.

Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue
to be found in dialects of Modern English. The four main dialects were Mercian,
Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon the last of these formed the basis for the literary
standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and
Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian.

Old English was first written using a runic script called the futhorc, but this was
replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 8th
century. Most literary output was in either the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great's
time, or the Late West Saxon (regarded as the "classical" form of Old English) of the
Winchester school inspired by Bishop Æthel wold of Winchester and followed by such
writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham ("the Grammarian"). The most famous
surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf, composed by an
unknown poet.

The introduction of Christianity from around the year 600 encouraged the
addition of over 400 Latin loan words into Old English, such as the predecessors of the
modern priest, paper, and school, and a smaller number of Greek loan words. The speech
of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse influence
due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century (see below).

Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though
about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots.
The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined
 with freer word order, and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern
German. The language had demonstrative pronouns (equivalent to this and that) but did
not have the definite article the.

The Old English period is considered to have evolved into the Middle English
period some time after the Norman conquest of 1066, when the language came to be
influenced significantly by the new ruling class's language, Old Norman.

C. Middle English
Middle English was the language spoken in England from about 1100 to 1500.
The opinions about the exact chronological boundaries vary: in some sources, the
beginning of the Middle English is dated 1066, i.e. the Norman Conquest of England; in
others it is about 1050, when the synthetic character of Old English starts to change.
The Norman Conquest had an irreversible effect on the linguistic situation in
Britain. As the Normans emerged victorious after the battle of Hastings on October 14,
1066 and a new French-speaking king, William the Conqueror, came to the throne,
French together with Latin became the languages of state, law, army, and church.
Intellectual life, teaching and writing were in the hands of French-speakers; that is why, a
good deal of the English population were gradually becoming bilingual. English, despite
being disregarded by the state, remained alive in the streets as the language of common
people. Being almost exclusively a spoken language, English was therefore more open to
various kinds of changes as well as external influences and could develop without any
constraints. On the whole, we can suppose that during the first centuries after the
Conquest, English faced a potential threat of being engulfed by the predominant
language, but it was not the case. For over three hundred years, until the time came for it
to reemerge as the language of the nation, it continued to evolve and change in the form
of different dialects and resist the danger of disappearance.
The Norman Conquest created a new situation as many of the principal officers of
church and state were no longer English or English-speaking. The invaders brought with
them their own version of French as well as the motivation to reinvigorate the educational
system in England by incorporating it more firmly within the West European tradition.
This meant that England experienced a renaissance of Latin learning which had already
got under way in other parts of Europe. This did not happen immediately. Three
languages became available for use in England: Latin, French and English. From the
twelfth century onwards it was Latin that was in most respects the standard language of
the country, and where Latin was not appropriate French was used. The pull of Old
English was still strong and at first survived as an ideal. Many Old English manuscripts
were copied in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the concept of Old English must
have been the inspiration behind the development of the local standardised forms of
English that we find at this time.
About 1400 the importance of French and Latin began to wane, and the need for a
new standard in English emerged. In this era, the existing literature shows a more recent
consolidation of the English language. The version of English became the standard
language used in literary writing, taking over from French and Latin. This English
version is also the origin of the Chancery Standard. The language (dialect) that exist is
very different from Old English and quite different from English-Norman in the 12 th
century.
This period is marked by the literary life of Geoffrey Chaucer (lived about 1343
to 25 October 1400). Chaucer was known as a poet and fiction writer. In the 14 th century,
Geoffrey Chaucer was very dominant compared to other writers in England. This is why
this period is called the “Chaucer Age (Chaucerian Age)”. His masterpiece is THE
CANTEBURY TALES, which was written since the 1380s. THE CANTEBURY TALES
is a collection of stories narrated by fictional pilgrims travelling to the Cathedral in
Canterbury. These stories later helped form the English literature. The end of this era was
marked by the introduction of printing technology for the first time.
Middle English period has affected the most important linguistic developments.
Two very important linguistic developments characterize Middle English are grammar
and vocabulary. In terms of grammar, for instance, Middle English gradually developed
from a highly synthetic to analytical language, relying more on word order than on
inflectional endings to express relations between words. The range of inflections peculiar
to Old English was drastically reduced, and the Middle English systems of noun, pronoun
and adjective declension were hugely simplified. In terms of vocabulary, English
 became much more heterogeneous, showing many borrowings from French, Latin, and
Scandinavian. Large-scale borrowing of new words often had serious consequences for
the meanings and the stylistic register of those words which survived from Old English.
Eventually, various new stylistic layers emerged in the lexicon, which could be employed
for a variety of different purposes.

D. Modern English
Modern English in general divided into two periods, those are Early Modern English
and Late Modern English.
1) Early Modern English

The Early Modern English period was from 1500-1800. Towards the end of
Middle English, there was a change in pronunciation and the words were stressed
shorter. this meant that many new words came to the English language. The initial
time of the Early Modern English started with the Great Vowel Shift. The Great
Vowel Shift is a radical change in the pronunciation, in which the vowel sounds are
higher and longer finally separating the English words from their foreigner
counterparts.

Towards the end of Middle English, the changes in the English language during
this period occurred from the 15th to mid-17th Century, and signified not only a
change in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar itself but also the start of
the English Renaissance. The Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural
development initially inspired by the desire to revive Greek and Latin culture, as
indicated by its name, meaning ‘rebirth’. The Renaissance also fostered scientific and
scholarly inquiry and a humanistic world view. It was associated with the rebirth of
societal and cultural movements, and while slow to gather steam during the initial
phases, it celebrated the heights of glory during the Elizabethan Age.

It was William Caxton’s innovation of an early printing press that allowed Early

Modern English to become mainstream. The Printing Press was key in standardizing
the English language through distribution of the English Bible. Caxton’s publishing
of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (the Death of Arthur) is regarded as print
material’s first bestseller. Malory’s interpretation of various tales surrounding the
legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in his own words, and
the ensuing popularity indirectly ensured that Early Modern English was here to stay.

It was during Henry the VIII’s reign that English commoners were finally able
to read the Bible in a language they understood, which to its own degree, helped
spread the dialect of the common folk. The end of the 16th century brought about the
first complete translation of the Catholic Bible, and though it didn’t make a markable
impact, it played an important role in the continued development of the English
language, especially with the English-speaking Catholic population worldwide.

The end of the 16th and start of the 17th century would see the writings of actor
and playwright, William Shakespeare, take the world by storm. Shakespeare started
writing during a time when the English language was undergoing serious changes
due to contact with other nations through war, colonisation, and the likes. These
changes were further cemented through Shakespeare and other emerging playwrights
who found their ideas could not be expressed through the English language currently
in circulation. Thus, the “adoption” of words or phrases from other languages were
modified and added to the English language, creating a richer experience for all
concerned.

It was during the early 17th century that we saw the establishment of the first
successful English colony in what was called The New World. Jamestown, Virginia,
also saw the dawn of American English with English colonizers adopting indigenous
words, and adding them to the English language. in 1604, Robert Cawdrey's Table
Alphabeticall published, was the first single-language English dictionary ever
published. It lists approximately 3000 words, defining each one with a simple and
brief description. The constant influx of new blood due to voluntary and involuntary
(i.e. slaves) migration during the 17th, 18th and 19th century meant a variety of
English dialects had sprung to life, this included West African, Native American,
Spanish and European influences.
 Meanwhile, back home, the English Civil War, starting mid-17th century, brought
with it political mayhem and social instability. At the same time, England’s
puritanical streak had taken off after the execution of Charles I. Censorship was a
given, and after the Parliamentarian victory during the War, Puritans promoted an
austere lifestyle in reaction to what they viewed as excesses by the previous regime .
England would undergo little more than a decade under Puritan leadership before the
crowning of Charles II. His rule, effectively the return of the Stuart Monarchy, would
bring about the Restoration period which saw the rise of poetry, philosophical
writing, and much more. It was during this age that literary classics, like those of
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, were published, and are considered relevant to this age.

2) Late Modern English

The Late Modern English started with the industrial and scientific revolution. The
advances and discoveries in science and technology during the Industrial Revolution
saw a need for new words, phrases, and concepts to describe these ideas and
inventions. Due to the nature of these works, scientists and scholars created words
using Greek and Latin roots such as, oxygen, nuclear, protein, bacteria, caffeine,
electron, train, electricity, camera, telegraph and many others.

Another crucial point during this period was the colonialism and the British
Empire. During this period, Britain ruled almost one quarter or 200 years between
the 18th and 20th centuries. Colonialism brought with it a double-edged sword. It can
be said that the nations under the British Empire’s rule saw the introduction of the
English language as a way for them to learn, engage, and hopefully, benefit from
“overseas” influence. While scientific and technological discoveries were some of
the benefits that could be shared, colonial Britain saw this as a way to not only teach
their language but impart their culture and traditions upon societies they deemed
as backward, especially those in Africa and Asia.
 The idea may have backfired as the English adopted a large number of foreign
words that have now become part and parcel of the English language and from its
colonies, such as boomerang and kangaroo from
Australia, thug, jungle, candy and shampoo from India, yoghurt from Turkish,
carnival, design, piano and fiasco from Italian and many other words.

E. A Brief Chronology of English

55 BC Roman invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar Local

inhabitants
speak
Celtish

AD 43 Roman invasion and occupation. Beginning of Roman rule

of Britain

436 Roman withdrawal from Britain complete

449 Settlement of Britain by Germanic invaders begins

450-480 Earliest known Old English inscriptions Old

English

1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invades and

conquers England

c1150 Earliest surviving manuscripts in Middle English Middle

English

1348 English replaces Latin as the language of instruction in most

schools

1362 English replaces French as the language of law. English is

 used in the Parliament for the first time.

c1388 Chaucer starts writing The Canterbury Tales

c1400 The Great Vowel Shift begins

1476 William Caxton establishes the first English printing press Early
Modern
English

1564 Shakespeare is born

1604 Tablet Alphabetical, the first English dictionary, is

published

1607 The first permanent English settlement in New World

(Jamestown) is established

1616 Shakespeare dies

1623 Shakespeare’s First Folio is published

1702 The first daily English-language newspaper, The Daily

Courant, is published in London

1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his English dictionary

1776 Thomas Jefferson writes the American Declaration of

Independence

1782 Britain abandons its colonies in what is later to become the

USA

1828 Webster publishes his American English dictionary Late

Modern
 English

1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation is founded

1928 The Oxford English Dictionary is published

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

From the explanation was described above, we can conclude that:

1. The history of the English language begins with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who
invaded England in the 5th century AD. These tribes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. And in
the pre-Old English era, the British people spoke a Celtic language. And the origin of the
 word "England" and English comes from the name of the Angles tribe, and their language
is called the English language. The most recognizable history of the English language is
divided into three main periods, they are: Old English, Middle English, and Modern
English.
2. Old English period was from 450-1100 AD. Old English didn't sound or look like English
today. Native English speakers will now have great difficulty understanding Old English.
However, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old
English roots, Old English was spoken until about 1100. Old English is famous for the
era of King Alfred, who was the one who set the policy about its creation Saxon English
as a daily medium of instruction. This period ended marked by the death of King Alfred,
and ended the Old English era, then began the middle English era.
3. Middle English period started in 1100-1500. In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of
Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new
conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a king of French, which became the
language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a
kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper
classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but
with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the
language of the great poet Chaucer.
4. The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is
vocabulary. The Early Modern English period was from 1500-1800. Towards the end of
Middle English, there was a change in pronunciation and the words were stressed shorter.
this meant that many new words came to the English language. The invention of printing
also meant that there was now a common language in print so spelling and grammar
became fixed. There is a large influence of Latin and Greek borrowings. Shakespeare
also had invented many words (over 1 thousand) so many words came to the English
language. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published. The Late Modern English
has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial
Revolution and technology created a need for new words phrases, and concepts to
describe these ideas and inventions. Due to the nature of these works, scientists and
scholars created words using Greek and Latin roots such as, oxygen, nuclear, protein,
bacteria, caffeine, electron, train, electricity, camera, telegraph and many others.
Secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and
the English language adopted foreign words from many countries such as boomerang and
kangaroo from Australia, thug, jungle, candy and shampoo from India, yoghurt from
Turkish, carnival, design, piano and fiasco from Italian and many other word.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blake, N. (1996). A History of the English Language. London: Palgrave.

Durkin, P. (2012, August 16). Middle English-an overview. Retrieved from Oxford English
Dictionaries : https://public.oed.com/blog/middle-english-an-overview/#historicalperiod.

L.M. Ikalyuk, U. T. (2015). Middle English: English or Frenglish? Journal of Vasyl Stefanyk
Precarpathian National University, 2(2-3), 23-24. doi:doi: 10.15330/jpnu.2.2-3.22-28.

Robert DeMaria, Jr., Heesok Chang, Samantha Zacher (eds.), A Companion to British Literature,
Volume 2: Early Modern Literature, 1450-1660, John Wiley & Sons, 2013.