The English Language

Chapter 1
Mazel Joy Sy
 The English Language
Language is a fundamental human faculty used for the expression of
our thoughts and creative ideas, face-to-face communication,
scientific inquiry, and many other purposes.

The word "English" has a number of widely different meanings.

How to define English:

Through its origins and
history
To compare it to other
languages and earlier stages
What i'll discuss
The origins and history of
English
Modern English compared
to earlier English and other
languages
External and internal
change
Conclusion
The origins and history of English
British Isles have been inhabited by different people for a
long time and before they were islands.

The excavation at Boxgrove in southern England show

that early humans were present possibly 500,000
years ago in what we now call England.

After the ice age, humans again start to occupy Britain

around 10,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago sees the
construction of Stonehenge
 The Latin influence continues
Figure 1.1 Map of Germanic migrations starting 1,500
through medieval and years ago (from Millward 1996:78)
renaissance times.

English officially starts in 499

The Frisians, the Angles, the

Saxons, and possibly the Jules
- oocupied the British Isles

The word English derives from

one of these tribes - The Angles
Figure 1.2 Text marked for loanwords, adapted from Lutz's Doublespeak (1990:1)
Table 1.1 Percentages of English word origins
Modern English compared to earlier English
and other languages
Major differences among languages on three levels:

Sounds, words, and sentences

Caedmon's Hymn-737

The Old English sentence (1) contains five

words, whereas the Modern English one has
twice as many.
Sounds

Modern English has 13 or 14 different vowels: bit, beet,

bait. bet, bat, bye, boy, boat, boot, bout, bath, and bore
Inuit have three vowels: i, a, u
Navajo have four vowels: i, e, a, o
Hawaiian and Spanish have five: a, e, i, o, u
English consonants: at least 25
Polish: 35
Hawaiian: 8
Finnish: 13 (not counting the ones used only in loanwords)
English syllable structure is complex: there are English
words as strike and splits, where three consonants at the
beginning of the syllable/word and two at the end.

Example: zmrzlina- ice-cream

Strike-Suturaike. With the clusters broken up, Spanish

speakers will adapt an initial sk-sound as in school, to
eskol
 Figure 1.3 Keep off as Key Poff

Sounds need to be combined into words and words into

sentences
Languages differ in how they mark these functions - through endings on the
verbs and nouns or through word order and grammatical words (prepositions
and pronouns)
 Modern English is more like Chinese since no marking on the
verb (or the noun) is required to understand a sentence

1. Her gave Mary and I a cake

Old English is more like Navajo because it has a number of

endings.

Old English: The endings are on the nouns and the verbs.

Navajo: The endings are only on the verbs

Table 1.3 Some terms for styles and varieties of English
External and internal change
Politically, geographically, and socially
motivated change - known as external change -
and linguistically motivated change, or internal
change

External and internal change are sometimes

ascribed to 'chance' and necessity', respectively
(Lightfoot 1979:405)
Table 1.4 Examples of external and internal change
Figure 1.4 'Eh' as a marker of identity. c2005 Jan Eliot. Reprinted with
permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Figure 1.5 New words throughout history, from the OED the Oxford English Dictionary
Figure 1.6 External influences on English and pre-English (C stands for century)
Table 1.5 Periods of English
 Conclusion
In this chapter, we explored definitions of English. It can be defined as the language
of a group of Germanic tribes after they arrived in Britain. It can also be defined as
the grammar and words a speaker knows and uses to construct Engleographical ish
sentences. We also discussed the fact that the structure of Modern English is
significantly different from that of Old English and other languages in that English
has a lost many endings and aquired grammatical words. The reasons for the
changes are many but can be divided into two categories: internal and external.
Internal causes have to do with linguistic reasons; for example, it is easier to say an
apple than a apple. External causes have to do with social, economic, geographical,
political, and historical reasons such as migrations and trade contacts and internal
cause with the way children (and others) learn a language.