Prepared by :

Dai Chaima
Benkhdim Nihad
Bougherara Bouthaina
Abadlia meriem
Hamdadou Rania
Kemmach Heddi
I. Historical background
of English
II. Old Enlglish
III.Middle English
IV.Early modern English
V.Late modern English
• English is an indo-eurpean language that belongs to
the west germanic group of the west germanic
laguages .
• Originated from anglo-frisian dialects that are
brought to britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries by
anglo-saxon settlers along with other groups:
• - Celts - Romans -Vickings (norse)
• - Normans - French and other latin groups
• It is the earliest historical form of English
language spoken in England and southern and
eastern sctoland in Early middle ages .
• It has been influenced by gremanic tribes
(saxons, angles, jutes) as well as danemark .
• These tribes mixed their dialects to from what is
known now as old English.
• It was a mixture of Latin and various Celtic
languages spoken befor the roman occupation
(54-55B.C)
.
• The Celts influenced old English .
• Christianity spread in saxon england in 597
which brought latin language with it .
• Vickings came in (878 A.D) whom spoke (old
norse) exp : egg , sky ,odd ,flat …etc.
• Main dialectal forms:
-mercian -kentish
-north-humbrian - west saxons
• The oldest and most famous literary work is
‘’Beowulf’’ .
How old english sounds like :
• A form of English spoken during the
norman conquest in 1066-5th century.
• French affected middle English and
loaned from it over 10000 words .
• This era brought many grammatical and
structural changes into the language .
• Most famous literary works are of
Geoffery chaucer’s ‘’Canterbury Tales’’.
The switch from old to middle English:
• Anglo-saxons got affected by the vickings who
spoke old norse.
• Increase of the use of affixes and inflectinal
endings.
• The french influence reduced because of the
growing influence of latin on English.
• Latin affected language ,religion ,science,and
literature.
• The pronunciation changed and brought new
contrastive phonemes.
How middle English sounds like :
• It began from the tudor period till the
restoration period (late 15c –late 17c).
• It influenced the spoken and written forms of
speech (grammaticaly&orthographicaly).
• The change in plural forms,gender,pronouns,
adjectives,and verbs
• The age renaissance appeared in England in
1500A.D with a burst of literary works.
• The growing use of greek and latin words (e.i :
democracy ,orbit,rythm,library…etc).
• In this period the bible was translated from latin
into English.
• Literature developed with famous writers like :
William Shakespear,Christopher Marlowe…etc.
• The Start of the scientific revolution served
English with new wave of words and terms .
• During this period English borrowed new words
from various origins(spanish,french,german,
italian,arabic,african…etc).
• It dates from 1800-present.
• The result of industrial
revolution and the rise
of the British empire.
• The growth of loaned words
from greek and latin origins.
• In 1607 the English development took place in
other colonies mainly U.S.A .
• The number of native English speakers grew
all over the british colonies.
• John Adams & Jacob Grimm: ‘’English will be
the language of the world’’.
 Black English:
• In 1619 slaves grew in number from 2 to 4 million.
• Slaves were deported from many places (i.e:
nigeria,south africa, ghenia,senegal,ghana…etc).
• Black people combined their various native languages
with English to create a pidgin.
• Therefore they developed their language in
accomodation to English to be able to speak with
white people.
• This affected the usual stucture of English ex:
- we are on tape >>
we on tape.
- nobody has time for that >>
ain’t nobody got time fo’dat
Other colonies:
• Australia: (1770-today)
- known as terra australis incognita back then .
- people from ireland and london settled in autralia
which affected their accent and dialect and produced
new words known as slangs (i.e swag , crack , chum ,
digger , cobber…etc).
• America : (1776-today)
- after the independence americans wanted to change
their english to be distinguished from britain .
- the vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling changed ex:
mum > mom cinema > movie theatre
grey > gray car park > parking lot
Languege Reformulation:
• To be distinguished from
british English americans
decided to reform their
language .
• In 1809 Noah webster created
the AMERICAN SPELLING
BOOK
• The consequences were like
the following examples :
colour > color
(sch)edule > s(ch)edule
/ch/ /sk/
honour > honor
• Writers took literature to the next level that
acomodated the language reformulation.
• Some words used in the shakespear era were
removed and toned down ex:
(strumpet,devil,and other curse words).
• The vocabulary and grammar go modernized and
simplified.
• Using correct grammar and style was a necessity
• Using non standard vocabulary or grammar was
seen as vulgar and should be avoided.
• Most famous writers of this era :
-Lewis Caroll -Virginia Woolf
-James Joyce - T.S Eliot