The occurrence and development of English

Historical background of British and American English

The history of English is divided into three periods: the period from 450 to 1 150 years is called old English. It is described as a period of complete inflexion, because during most of the period when the case of nouns ends, the antithesis (combination) of adjectives and verbs is not worn out. Old English is a deeply influenced language. It has a complete system of morphological changes. There are four situations and antithesis. Therefore, old English grammar is different from modern English grammar in the following aspects.

1 150 This period is called Middle English Period. This is the so-called periodic change. This period is marked by great changes in English. Norman conquest was the cause of these changes. The changes in this period have a great influence on grammar and vocabulary. During this period, many old English words disappeared, but the method of borrowing words from French and Latin appeared in English vocal music. In Middle English, grammatical gender (sex). Disappeared, grammatical gender was completely replaced by natural gender.

The modern English period has lasted from 1500 to this day. The period of early modern English extended from 1500 to 1700. The main influence of this period is the great humanistic movement in the Renaissance. Latin and Greek have a great influence on English. The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed the rapid development of English vocal music in the history of English language.

The development of English in the United States can be divided into three periods: the first period is from the establishment of Jamestown in 65,438+0,607 to the end of the colonial era. During this period, the population of the United States was about 4 million, of which 90% came from Britain. The second period includes the expansion of the original thirteen colonies. This time may be said to be close to the civil war, probably 1860. This period was marked by the arrival of new immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The third period, since the civil war, is marked by major changes in the sources of European immigrants. They come from northern and southern Europe in large numbers.

With the passage of time, English on both sides of the Atlantic has gradually changed. Americans have absorbed many words from foreign languages and created a large number of new words to meet their different needs.

American English began in the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the 0/7th century, English was brought to North America by British colonists. They used the language spoken by the British, that is, Elizabethan English, the languages used by Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan. At first, the language was consistent with the language used in Britain, but slowly, the language began to change. Sometimes, the English spoken by Americans has changed, but sometimes the language spoken in this place remains the same, while the language spoken in Britain has changed.

After the independence of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, john adams and Webster and other celebrities began to consider that the United States should have its own language. American English has formed its own characteristics, reflecting the life, natural environment and social environment of the American people.

Selected from Lin's Introduction to English Lexicology

Two. A glimpse of English history

Traditionally, the history of English can be divided into three periods, namely, Old English (or Anglo-Saxon English), Middle English and Modern English, which may be a little too concise. The earliest period began with the migration of some Germanic tribes from the European continent to Britain in the fifth century A.D., although there was no record of their language before the seventh century, it lasted until the end of the eleventh century or a little later. At that time, Latin, Old Norwegian (the language of Viking invaders), especially Anglo-Norman French (1066), which was dominant after Norman conquest, had begun to have a substantial impact. In terms of vocabulary (morphology) and the well-developed inflectional system representing old English grammar, it has begun to collapse. The following is a short example of old English prose, which illustrates several important aspects that changes have brought such great changes to English, so we must look for the assembly point without worry. The language of the tenth century and our own language. It is taken from Herverie's "On the Preaching of Santigregori the Great", which tells a famous story about how the Pope sent missionaries to convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys sold as slaves in Rome.

Some of these words will be recognized (consistent) with their modern equivalents (corresponding words) in spelling, such as he, of, him, for, on, and other similarities with familiar words can also be guessed. Where are we going? But only those who have studied old English can understand this article. It means as follows: "He (Santigregori) asked them again whose name they came from. Someone answered him that they were named angels. Then he said, "It is natural that they are called angels, because they have the beauty of angels. They are angels' companions in heaven. "Some words in the original text have been preserved by changing their forms, including axode (q), hu (how), rihtlice (correct), engla (angel), habbae (have), swilcum (like this), heofonum (heaven) and beon (yes). However, some other words have disappeared from our dictionary, and most of them have disappeared without a trace, including several words that are very common in old English: eft. E "said, and gehatene cried, naming the appearance, beauty and companion of" wlite ". The recognition of some words will naturally be hindered by two special characters, T is called "thorn" and E is called "edh", which are used in old English to indicate the pronunciation spelled with th now.

Other noteworthy points include that in the late tenth century, the pronoun system did not include the third-person plural forms beginning with th-:hi, which appeared where we would use them. Seven aspects (aspects). The confusion of word order will also make readers feel strange. Is the subject and verb inverted after an adverb -Tacw? He E's "then say he"-this phenomenon is not unknown in modern English, but now it is limited to some adverbs, such as never, and the auxiliary verb do or have is needed. In the clause of the main sentence (compound sentence), the active word must be at the end, so the object or preposition can be placed in front of it in an unnatural way: te hi of comon "Where did they come from?" Because they are as beautiful as angels. "

Perhaps the most obvious difference between old English and modern English reflected in Alfred's sentences is the complex (subtle) inflectional system, and now we only have some remnants. Nouns, adjustments and even definite articles are all influenced by gender, case and number: e? Reeeode "(of) the people" is feminine (female), kind (cordial) and singular, angle“angles "is masculine (male), accurate (objective) and plural, and Swiss“that" is masculine, basic (case) and plural. The influence system on verbs is also more subtle than ours: for example, Habbae "have "ends with the -AE suffix of the plural demonstrative verb. In addition, there are two imperative forms, four subjunctive forms (two for the present tense and two for the past tense) and seven forms that we no longer have. Even though modern English is still an influential small category, its forms often change. The present participle of old English ends in -ende not -ing, and the past participle is prefixed with ge- (as geandwyrd "answered" above).

The Middle English period roughly (possibly) lasted from the 28th century to the 5th century. The influence of French (and Latin, usually through French) on vocabulary continued during this period, the loss of some influences and the reduction of others (usually not stressed at the end) accelerated, and many changes also occurred in the phonology and grammar system of the language. Especially the works in the later period of that period will not be as exotic as Alfred's prose for us; But it will not be mistaken for a contemporary work. The following short passage is taken from a work called The Travels of Man De Ville at the end of14th century. This is a novel covered with travel literature, and because it was intentionally written by an English knight, it was originally written in French and later translated into Latin and English. In this excerpt (excerpt), mandeville describes the land of Bactria, which is obviously not a completely invited place, because it is prohibited by "completely Yue Le [evil] folk and completely crull".

According to modern standards, spelling is usually standardized, even inconsistent (inconsistent) in their fever (for example, contré and contree, o [griffoun] and a [gret hors], tanne and tan). In addition, in the original text, there is another ancient character 3 besides thorns, called "yogh," which makes it difficult. It can represent several sounds, but it can be considered as equivalent to Y here. Even older spellings (including the spelling of U for V and vice versa) can be recognized, but only a few words, such as "hippo" in ipotaynes and "time" in sithes, have completely withdrawn from the language. We may notice that the meanings of some words and phrases are no longer common, such as byttee“salty ",o this half" on this side of the world ",at the poem" to hand "and the influence of centuries-long rule (rules). The lack of vocabulary in French is obvious. Among many familiar words, words such as contree, ryueres, plentee, egle and lyoun can't appear in the works of Aelfric even if his theme allows.

Generally speaking, the current word order is very close to that of our time, although we notice structures like "bigger body" and "bigger three seats". We also notice that there are still plural forms of tense verbs, such as beren, dwellen, han and ben, and although the nominative tei has replaced the hi of aelfric in the third person plural, the object form is still hem. Nevertheless, the inflections of nouns, adjectives and verbs have been greatly reduced. In most respects, mandeville is closer to modern English than to old English.

The period of modern English lasted from the 16th century to today. The early period of this period witnessed the completion of a revolution in English phonology, which began in the late Middle English and effectively dispersed the appearance of vowels and phonemes. Similar to their current model. To us, mandeville's English may not sound as familiar as it seems. Other important early developments include the stable (fixed) influence of printing on spelling and the beginning of the direct influence of Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek on vocabulary. Later, with the contact between English and other cultures in the world, and the development of unique dialects in many areas of British colonization, other languages made small but interesting contributions to our vocabulary.

The historical aspect of English has indeed encountered (including) more than the three stage of development just considered. English also has a so-called history (prehistoric). As we have seen, our language does not simply appear suddenly; It was brought from the content by German tribes, who had no written form and left no records. A linguist (linguist). I know they must speak a dialect of a language called West Germanic. Other dialects of this unknown language must be the ancestors of German, Dutch, Low German and Frisian. They know this because there are some systematic similarities between these languages, but Danish does not. In any case, they already have something to rebuild the language in terms of vocabulary (morphology), phonology (phonology), grammar and semantics (semantics), because they can use classified (advanced) comparison techniques, which were first (mainly) developed in the last century. Similarly, because ancient and modern languages, such as old Norwegian, Gothic, Icelandic and Norwegian, have something in common with old English, old German, Dutch and English, but have nothing in common with French or Russian, it is obvious that an earlier unrecorded language can be simply called Germanic and must be reconstructed in the same way. Earlier, Germanic was only a dialect of the traditionally designed Indo-European language family (the ancestors of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit were three other similar parts), so English was only a relatively young member of an ancient language family, and its descendants (descendants) covered a considerable part of the earth.

Selected from Eleston's home page

Three. English history

These web pages provide a quick look at English and some changes it has undergone. Including your reading pleasure is a short trip to old English and medieval English. Besides, I have some interesting projects and related links at the end.

The following is the birth of Jesus according to the excerpt from Luke's gospel, first old English, then middle English (two versions, about 225 years apart). If you look at them carefully, you will find their similarities-and significant (obvious) differences. People who know German or Scandinavian can understand why English is called the sister language of German. In addition, in the old English period, Scandinavian (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) and English could understand each other. Of course, English is a language that is further separated from the other four languages (Scandinavians can still understand each other's dialects well), but the powerful influence of Latin (mainly through churches and scholars) and the invasion of Normans. Like many minor influences, British colonial rule brought great changes to English.

The birth of Jesus was chosen because the Gospel is available in three languages.

Old English. Also known as anglo-Saxon

Sotlis on Tam Dagum W? What does this mean? Really? About Tomakod. Teos tomearcodnesw？ s？ ryst geworden fram tam deman sy rige ci Rino。 Ile Heyerdon, Cindric Fordon. Who is your father? In Nazareth, Jerusalem, seo was named Bethleem because he was Jewish? Dauides huse and hiredet? Won't he marry him? S, and w Skiano Sotelis w? How are you? Ron, hire dagas w? Ron gefield t? Hello. There are two more sons, one son, one son, one son and one son. Fdon rum from Cumene Lake. And Hyrdas W. Ron versus Tan ylcan, Rice waciende, and nihtw? He is in good health. He combs his hair high, God bless him. Hello, his name is Maisler Iger Adrian. Let him listen to cw? e，Nelle ge eow adr？ Dan; One day, my body became soft. For tam to d? g eow ys H？ Borrow one, she is a crystal, on her mother. This is the last time he said goodbye: is he a good man? Glum bewunden, and in binne Alaide. And ta w? s f？ ringa geworden mid tam engle myce nes heofenlices werydes，God heriendra and tus cwetendra，Gode sy wuldor on heahnesse，on eorean sybb mannum godes willan。

middle english

(translated by john wycliffe, about 1380-83)

This was announced by Tang at a grand banquet for the emperor in August. The first discovery was made by Madd in Sirian and iustice in Sirian. All the people go to his own city to be professors. Yue Se went from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to a city of Dowd, namely clepid Bethleem, because he was Dowd's family and meyne, he schulde knouleche and Mary, his wijf, and we made hym greetings and got pregnant. When I was away, it was Don, the kid. Mr. Sha gave birth to Bolenson and Peter Laporte? Hin, living in Grotti; Ryder? Hin, live in Grag, because there is no place for Hin to live. Not in the same village as scheepherdis, wakynge and Kepingygt's watches are in her flok. Look! The angel of the Lord stood in Bezekiah, and the angel of God stood on their right and left. I'm with Gretel Ryder. And unger Side to Hum, Nilai Yedred; For lo! Give you a greeting look, which is a blessing to everyone. Because for you, you are a saint, and that is Lord Crist, in the city of Doyle. This is a little something for you. Look, a child is lying in the cradle wrapped in clothes. Su Dengli and his aunts attended a series of religious ceremonies. She called God a saint, glory to God, and nobility to kind people.

(King James Version, c. 1604)

At that time, Caesar Augustus issued a decree to levy taxes on the world. This is the first time when Gulinai was governor of Syria. Everyone went to their own cities to collect taxes. Yue Se also went from the city of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, and came to the city of Doeder, whose name was Bethlehem, because he was a Doeder, and he was registered with his wife Mary. In this way, when they were there, the day when she should give birth was over. She brought her first son to Fowles, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and put him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. In the same country, there are shepherds who live in your fields and watch over the sheep at night. The angel of the Lord came before them, and the glory of the Lord shone on them all around, and they were very afraid. The angel said to them, "Don't be afraid. Look, I give you good news of great love, which concerns all peoples.". Because today you were born in Deutschland, a warrior, and he is the Lord Christ. This is the mark for you. It is easy to find a baby lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. Suddenly a large crowd of saints praised God with the angel, saying, Glory to the most high God and peace to the people on earth.