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UNIVERSITÉ ALASSANE OUATTARA Academic year: 2022-2023

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

LICENCE 1

Prof. Vamara KONÉ

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PREREQUISITE: Sound knowledge of the English language acquired in Grammar school

METHODOLOGY / TEACHING ACTIVITY: Lecture
LEARNING ACTIVITIES: Students are encouraged to make research individually and
work in small groups.
TESTS : Final exams (first and second sessions) will be organized by the department of
English

COURSE OBJECTIVE:
This course introduces students to the development of the English language from its Anglo-
Saxon roots to its present status as the World's dominant language. At the end of this lecture,
students should get a better insight into the origin or history of the English language, its
linguistic enrichment and progress.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is essentially a lecture on the history of the English language. It presents the most
significant ways and periods which have marked the growth of English language. More
specifically, it describes how the English language has changed over the 1600 years since the
Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribes begin to settle on the island of Britain.

COURSE CONTENT
Part I: Old English
This part includes the invasions of Germanic Tribes, the Coming of Christianity and Literacy,
the Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language, the Vikings, Old English after the Vikings
Part II: Middle English
This part includes including Norman Conquest, French (Anglo-Norman) Influence, Middle
English after the Normans, Resurgence of English, Chaucer and the Birth of English Literature.
Part III: Early Modern English
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It concerns Great Vowel Shift, The English Renaissance, Printing Press and Standardization,
The Bible, Dictionaries and Grammars, Golden Age of English Literature, William
Shakespeare, International Trade.
Part IV: Late Modern English
It takes account of the Industrial and Scientific Revolution, Colonialism and the British Empire,
The New World, American Dialect, Black English, Britain’s Other Colonies, Language
Reform, Later Developments, 20th Century.

Part V: English Today

This part explores the practice of English language today.

IMPORTANT TO KNOW :
- What is history ?
• Study of past events.
• The bodies of knowledge about the past produced by historians
- What is language ?
• Language (French langage < Latin lingua, the tongue) signified originally expression of
thought by spoken words, but now in its widest sense it signifies expression of thought by any
means; as, the language of the eyes, the language of flowers. As regards the use of
words, language in its broadest sense denotes all the uttered sounds and their combinations into
words and sentences that human beings employ for the communication of thought, and, in a
more limited sense, the words or combinations forming a means of communication among the
members of a single nation, people, or race. Speech involves always the power of articulate
utterance; we can speak of the language of animals, but not of their speech. A tongue is
the speech or language of some one people, country, or race. A dialect is a special mode of
speaking a language peculiar to some locality or class, not recognized as in accordance with
the best usage; a barbarism is a perversion of a language by ignorant foreigners, or some usage
akin to that. Idiom refers to the construction of phrases and sentences, and the way of forming
or using words; it is the peculiar mold in which each language casts its thought. The great
difficulty of translation is to give the thought expressed in one language in the idiom of another.
A dialect may be used by the highest as well as the lowest within its range; a patois is distinctly
illiterate, belonging to the lower classes; those who speak a patois understand the cultured form
of their own language, but speak only the degraded form, as in the case of the Italian lazzaroni
or the former negro slaves in the United States. Vernacular, from the Latin, has the same

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general sense as the Saxon mother tongue, of one's native language, or that of a people; as, the
Scriptures were translated into the vernacular.
- In short, language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting
of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.
-As a system of communication used by a particular country or community. language is
culturally acquired. Any language has its characteristics and its history.

INTRODUCTION
English language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and its history can be traced
back with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD.
According to historical sources and traditions, the tribes—the Angles, the Saxons and the
Jutes—crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time
the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed
west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The
Angles came from "Englaland" [sic] and their language was called "Englisc" - from which the
words "England" and "English" are derived.

PART I: OLD ENGLISH (450-1100 AD)

The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what
we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English
speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half
of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be,
strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around
1100.

PART II: MIDDLE ENGLISH (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 kind 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 Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) whose book, Canterbury Tales
continues to be the most studied and read of the time, but it would still be difficult for native
English speakers to understand today.

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PART III: EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1500-1800)

Early Modern English was developed out of the borrowings from many European languages
such as Latin, Ancient Greek, German, Dutch and French. Indeed, towards the end of Middle
English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with
vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact
with many peoples from around the world. This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning,
meant that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also
meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people
learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became
fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In
1604 the first English dictionary was published, A Table of Alphabeticall (the abbreviation title
of the first monolingual dictionary in English, created by Robert Cawdrey).
-Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" lines, written in Early Modern English by William
Shakespeare (26 April 1564 baptised-23 April 1616).
-The first authoritative and full featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English
Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary
standardised both English spelling and word usage.

PART IV: LATE MODERN ENGLISH (1800-PRESENT)

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary.
Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the
Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; 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.

VARIETIES OF ENGLISH
From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a
distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when
they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare
than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in
fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in
Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn;
another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with
words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that
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entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through
Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English
(and so, to an extent, British English).

In short, here are the origins of some English words used today:
English words of Germanic and Dutch origin: again, good, bad, boy, girl , house, bread, food,
brother, above, again, and, apple, cake, eat, drink, head, eye, mouth, …
English words of Greek origin: academy, android, basic, cinema , climate, geography, econoimics,
history, idea, philosophy, democracy, politics, technology,
English words of Latin origin: human, animal, dental decimal, digital ; military, library, military,
solar, manual, lunary, science, factory, station…..
English words of French origin: people, beef, pork, veal, continue, journey, liberty, justice, very..

PART V: ENGLISH TODAY

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance of cinema,
television, popular music, trade and technology (including the Internet). But there are many
other varieties of English around the world, including for example Australian English, New
Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean
English. In fact, if the widely diffused English-speaking community is fairly stable in the British
Isles, North America, and Australia, its future remains uncertain and unpredictable in Africa,
the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. People who speak English fall into three groups:
those who have inherited it as their native language; those who have acquired it as a second
language within a society that is largely bilingual; and those who are driven by necessity to use
it for some practical purpose ―administrative, professional, or educational. One person in
seven of the world’s entire population now belongs to one of these three groups.

CONCLUSION
English has now achieved global status. Whenever we turn on the news to find out what is
happening in East Asia, or the Balkans, or Africa, or South America, or practically anywhere,
local people are being interviewed and telling us about it in English. To illustrate the point when
Pope John Paul II arrived in the Middle East recently to retrace Christ's footsteps and addressed
Christians, Muslims and Jews, the pontiff spoke not Latin, not Arabic, not Italian, not Hebrew,
not his native Polish. He spoke in English. Indeed, if one looks at some of the facts about the
amazing reach of the English language many would be surprised. English is used in over 90
countries as an official or semi-official language. English is the de facto working language of

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98 percent of international research physicists and research chemists. It is the official language
of the European Central Bank, even though the bank is in Frankfurt and neither Britain nor any
other predominantly English-speaking country is a member of the European Monetary Union.
It is the language in which Indian parents and black parents in South Africa wish their children
to be educated. It is believed that over one billion people worldwide are currently learning
English. Thus, it can be asserted that English has without a doubt become the global language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bragg, Melvin. The Adventure of English” (Sceptre, 2003)

• Bryson, Bill. Mother Tongue. London: Penguin Books, 1990
• Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981.
• Crystal, David. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995
• ――――― English as a Global Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997
• ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA : Fifteenth Edition, USA: Encyclopædia, Britannica,
Inc.1985

WEBLIOGRAPHY

• The Origin and History of the English language (KryssTal):

http://www.krysstal.com/english.html . Last consulted on 04 november 2022
• What Are the Origins of the English Language (Merriam Webster):
http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/history.htm. Last consulted on 04 november
2022
• English History and Its Language Development (English Word Information):
http://wordinfo.info/unit/4218?letter=E&spage=4 . Last consulted on 12 October 2021