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Study Guide in ELS 102 – History of the English Language Module No. 1

STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. 1

THE BACKGROUND OF ENGLISH

MODULE OVERVIEW

Before we can understand a language, it is important to be acquainted with its root and its
relationship to the language that we know today. English, as we know it, developed in Britain and more
recently in America and elsewhere around the world. It did not begin in Britain but was an immigrant
language, coming there with the invading Anglo-Saxons in the fifth century. Before that, English was spoken
on the Continent, bordering on the North Sea. And even longer before, it had developed from a speech way
we call Indo-European, which was the source of most other European and many south-Asian languages. We
have no historical records of that prehistoric tongue, but we know something about it and the people who
spoke it from the comparisons linguists have made between the various languages that eventually developed
from it.
In this module, we will discuss the discovery of the different Indo-European Family of languages and
its relationship to Sanskrit. We will also include the different Germanic languages and the source of Sanskrit.

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Describe the discovery of the Indo – European Family of Languages;

2. Distinguish the different Indo-European Family of Languages;

3. Discuss the relationship of Sanskrit to the Indo-European Family of Languages;

4. Identify the different Germanic Languages; and,

5. Explain the discovery and the source of Sanskrit.

LEARNING CONTENTS (title of the subsection)

1.1 Indo-European Origins

The following is the discussion about the beginnings of the Indo – European languages drawn from
Algeo, J. 2010. The Origins and Development of the English Language. 6th ed. Cengage BBS pdf.

Indo-European is a matter of culture, not of genes. The contrast between our genetic inheritance and
the language we speak is highlighted by some recent discoveries in genetics. Scholars used to think of early
Europe as inhabited by a Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people who were hunter-gatherers but whose culture
was replaced by Neolithic (new Stone Age) agriculturalists. The latter were supposedly replaced by a Bronze
Age culture (beginning between 4000 and 3000 B.C.), spread by a sweeping invasion of technologically more
advanced people from the east. Recent genetic studies, however, have established that most modern
Europeans (and of course the Americans descended from them) owe only about 20 percent of their biological

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inheritance to the later peoples and 80 percent to their early Paleolithic ancestors. It looks now as though the

genetic characteristics of Europeans have been remarkably stable, despite the striking changes that have
overtaken European culture between earliest times and the beginning of recorded history.
Linguists have also long thought that the Indo-European languages, of which
English is one, were spread across the Continent by the invading Bronze Age hordes, who came in chariots
and wiped out the native populations and cultures. More recently, however, it has been posited that Indo-
European languages were spread throughout Europe very much earlier, and that the Indo-European
expansion did not follow a simple east-to-west path, but was far more complex and included a south-to-north
migration of early Celtic and Germanic peoples from Spain and southern France. At the present time all that
can be said confidently about the early history of the Indo-European languages is that we know less than we
formerly thought we did. Yet we do know some things.

1.1.1 Indo-European Culture

On the basis of cognate words, we can infer a good deal about Indo-European culture before it
spread over many parts of Europe and Asia. That spread started no later than the third or fourth millennium
B.C. and perhaps very much earlier. Indo-European culture was considerably advanced. Those who spoke
the parent language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, had a complex system of family relationships. They
could count. They used gold and perhaps silver also, but copper and iron only later. They drank a honey-
based alcoholic beverage whose name has come down to us as mead. Words corresponding to wheel, axle,
and yoke make it clear that they used wheeled vehicles. They were small farmers, not nomads, who worked
their fields with plows, and they had domesticated animals and fowl.
Their religion was polytheistic, including a Sky Father (whose name is preserved in the ancient Vedic
hymns of India as Dyaus pitar, in Greek myth as Zeus patēr, among the Romans as Jupiter, and among the
Germanic peoples as Tiw, for whom Tuesday is named). The cow and the horse were important to their
society, wealth being measured by a count of cattle: the Latin word pecus meant ‘cattle’ but was the source of
the word pecūnia ‘wealth,’ from which we get pecuniary; and our word fee comes from a related Old English
word fēoh, which also meant both ‘cattle’ and ‘wealth.’ So we know things about the ancient Indo-European
speakers on the basis of forms that were not actually recorded until long after Indo European had ceased to
be a single language.

1.1.2 The Indo-European Homeland

We can only guess where Indo-European was originally spoken—but there are clues, such as plant
and animal names. Cognate terms for trees that grow in temperate climates (alder, apple, ash, aspen,
beech, birch, elm, hazel, linden, oak, willow, yew), coupled with the absence of such terms for
Mediterranean or Asiatic trees (olive, cypress, palm); cognate terms for wolf, bear, lox (Old English leax
‘salmon’), but none for creatures indigenous to Asia—all this points to an area between northern Europe and
southern Russia as the home of Indo-European before its dispersion. And the absence of a common word for
ocean suggests, though it does not in itself prove, that this homeland was inland.

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The early Indo-Europeans have been identified with the Kurgan culture of mound builders who lived
northwest of the Caucasus and north of the Caspian Sea as early as the fifth millennium B.C. (Gimbutas,

Kurgan Culture). They domesticated cattle and horses, which they kept for milk and meat as well as for
transportation. They combined farming with herding and were a mobile people, using four-wheeled wagons to
cart their belongings on their treks. They built fortified palaces on hilltops (we have the Indo-European word
for such forts in the polis of place names like Indianapolis and in our word police), as well as small villages
nearby. Their society was a stratified one, with a warrior nobility and a common laboring class. In addition to
the sky god associated with thunder, the sun, the horse, the boar, and the snake were important in their
religion. They had a highly developed belief in life after death, which led them to the construction of elaborate
burial sites, by which their culture can be traced over much of Europe. Early in their history, they expanded
into the Balkans and northern Europe, and thereafter into Iran, Anatolia, and southern Europe.
Other locations have also been proposed for the Indo-European homeland, such as north-central
Europe between the Vistula and the Elbe and eastern Anatolia (modern Turkey and the site of the ancient
Hittite empire). The dispersal of Indo-European was so early that we may never be sure of where it began or
of the paths it followed. (Algeo, 2010)

1.1.3 How Indo-European Was Discovered

Even a casual comparison of English with some other languages reveals similarities among them.
Thus English father clearly resembles Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish fader, Icelandic faðir, Dutch vader,
and German Vater (especially when one is aware that the letter v in German represents the same sound as
f). Although there is still a fair resemblance, the English word is not quite so similar to Latin pater, Spanish
padre, Portuguese pai, Catalan pare, and French père. Greek patēr, Sanskrit pitar-, and Persian pedar are
all strikingly like the Latin form, and (allowing for the loss of the first consonant) Gaelic athair resembles the
others as well. It takes no great insight to recognize that those words for ‘father’ are somehow the “same.”
Because such similarity of words is reinforced by other parallels among the languages, we are forced to look
for some explanation of the resemblances.
The explanation—that all those languages are historical developments of a no longer existing source
language—was first proposed several centuries ago by Sir William Jones, a British judge and Sanskrit scholar
in India. The Indo-European hypothesis, as it is called, is now well supported with evidence from many
languages: a language once existed that developed in different ways in the various parts of the world to which
its speakers traveled. We call it Proto-Indo-European (or simply Indo-European) because at the beginning of
historical times languages derived from it were spoken from Europe in the west to India in the east. Its
“descendants,” which make up the Indo-European family, include all of the languages mentioned in the
preceding paragraph, as well as Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Romany, and many
others.
Nineteenth-century philologists sometimes called the Indo-European family of languages Aryan, a
Sanskrit term meaning ‘noble,’ which is what some of the languages’ speakers immodestly called themselves.
Aryan has also been used to name the branch of Indo-European spoken in Iran and India, now usually
referred to as Indo-Iranian. The term Aryan was, however, generally given up by linguists after the Nazis

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appropriated it for their supposedly master race of Nordic features, but it is still found in its original senses in
some older works on language. The term Indo-European has no racial connotations; it refers only to the
culture of a group of people who lived in a relatively small area in early times and who spoke a more or less
unified language out of which many languages have developed over thousands of years. These languages
are spoken today by approximately half of the world’s population.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 1

Learning Activity 1 Essay

After the face- to- face discussion on the Indo-European Origin, and with the provided
readings on the sub-topics on:
a. Indo-European Culture
b. Indo-European Homeland
c. How Indo-European was discovered
Reflect and write a 200-word essay about what you have discovered on the
background of English. Submit this output during the next face-to-face session. The
essay will be graded based on the following criteria:
Content (50%) - ideas developed through facts, examples and opinion
Organization (30%) - development of the paragraphs
Conventions (20%) - grammar, mechanics, spelling, usage and sentence
formation

LEARNING CONTENTS (title of the subsection)

1.2 Indo – European Family of Languages

To study the English language, we need to study the languages thus brought into relationship by
descent or progressive differentiation from a parent speech which is called a family of languages.
Various names have been used to designate this family. In books written a century ago the term
Aryan was commonly employed. It has now been generally abandoned and when found today is used in a
more restricted sense to designate the languages of the family located in India and the plateau of Iran. A
more common term is Indo-Germanic, which is the most usual designation among German philologists, but it
is open to the objection of giving undue emphasis to the Germanic languages. The term now most widely
employed is Indo- European, suggesting more clearly the geographical extent of the family. The parent
tongue from which the Indo-European languages have sprung had already become divided and scattered
before the dawn of history. When we meet with the various peoples by whom these languages are spoken
they have lost all knowledge of their former association. Consequently we have no written record of the
common Indo-European language. By a comparison of its descendants, however, it is possible to form a fair
idea of it and to make plausible reconstructions of its lexicon and inflections. The surviving languages show
various degrees of similarity to one another, the similarity bearing a more or less direct relationship to their
geographical distribution.

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Members of the following subgroups survive as living tongues: Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Hellenic, Italic,
Celtic, and Germanic. Albanian and Armenian are also Indo-European but do not fit into any of these
subgroups. Anatolian and Tocharian are no longer spoken in any form.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 2

Learning Activity 2. Reading Assignment

To be able to learn more and distinguish the different Indo-European Family of Languages,
continue reading pages 55 to 62 of The Origins and Development of the English Language (6th ed.)
by John Algeo

LEARNING ACTIVITY 3

Learning Activity 3. Concept Mapping

1. Make a concept map based on pages 20-30 of the additional reading material.
“The Indo-European family of Languages.” Retrieved from:
https://people.umass.edu/sharris/in/e412/ BC%202%20Indo-European.pdf

2. Submit concept map during the next face-to-face session. This will be graded according to content,
links and layout with the following points:
10 points – very few concepts are accurate and well linked
15 points – some concepts are accurate and are well linked
30 points – concepts reflected are accurate and well linked and easy to
understand
3. Prepare for a quiz on Indo-European Language next face-to-face meeting.

LEARNING CONTENTS

1.3 The Discovery of Sanskrit

In this lesson, during a face to face session you will watch a video entitled, “History and Origin of
Sanskrit” Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqEA12oolxI
This presents facts in the discovery of Sanskrit and how was it related to other languages.
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than Greek,
more copious than the Latin, and more refined than either, yet bearing to both in the roots of the verbs and in
the forms of the grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no

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philosopher could have examined them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common
source, which perhaps, no longer exists. (William Jones, 1785)

LEARNING ACTIVITY 4

Learning Activity 4. Reflection

After watching the video, answer the question, “Why Sanskrit is said to be
the mother of all languages?”
Prepare to present your answer in front of your classmates.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 5

Learning Activity 5. Assignment

To be able to understand more about the Discovery of Sanskrit,

a. Read the Nature of Sanskrit language, a power point presentation Retrieved
from: https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sanskrit.htm which deals with the
source, the discovery of its relationship to the languages of Europe, the
phonetic system and grammar.

b. Prepare to take the quiz on the discovery of Sanskrit during the face to face
session.

LEARNING CONTENTS

1.4 The Germanic Language

Germanic language is one of the largest subgroups of the Indo-European language family –
comprises 37 languages with an estimated 470 million speakers worldwide.
The Germanic languages today are conventionally divided into three linguistic groups: East
Germanic, North Germanic, and West Germanic. This division had begun by the 4th cent. AD The East

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Germanic group, to which such dead languages as Burgundian, Gothic, and Vandalic belong, is now extinct.
However, the oldest surviving literary text of any Germanic language is in Gothic.

The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian languages or Norse, include Danish,
Faeroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. They are spoken by about 20 million people, chiefly in
Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. These modern North Germanic languages are
all descendants of Old Norse and have several distinctive grammatical features in common. One is the adding
of the definite article to the noun as a suffix. Thus the book in English is expressed in Swedish
as boken, book-the ( bok meaning book and -en meaning the ). Also distinctive is a method of forming the
passive voice by adding -s to the end of the verb or, in the case of the present tense, by changing the active
ending -r to -s ( -st in Icelandic). This is illustrated by the Swedish jag kaller, I call ; jag kallas, I am
called ; jag kallade, I called ; jag kallades, I was called.

The West Germanic languages are English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, and Yiddish. They are
spoken as a primary language by about 450 million people throughout the world. Among the dead West
Germanic languages are Old Franconian, Old High German, and Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) from which
Dutch, German, and English respectively developed. (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2012)

The English language often has two words that mean roughly the same; one derives from Saxon
and the Germanic languages, the other from Latin and the romantic languages. Generally, the Saxon words,
which are typically older, are preferred. Saxon words tend to be shorter than their Latinate
equivalent. (Sutton, 2015)

1.4.1 A survey of the Germanic languages

The Germanic languages can be divided is the distinction between state and non-state languages.
The Germanic languages, relative to other language families of the world, include a high proportion of national
languages. These include some varieties of English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese,
Icelandic, Afrikaans and Luxembourgish, as well as some English-based creoles (Tok Pisin in Papua New
Guinea and Bislama in Vanuatu).
Other Germanic languages are non-state languages. These include Yiddish, Pennsylvania German,
Schwyzertu¨tsch, East Frisian and all of the varieties regarded as nonstandard “dialects” of the state
languages (including some sufficiently remote from the standard variety that they would count as separate
languages under different political circumstances).

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LEARNING ACTIVITY 6

Learning Activity 6. Taking down notes

1. To be able to learn more and identify other Germanic languages, continue reading pages
13- 19 of “The Germanic Languages” by Wayne Harbert and take note by identifying the
differences of the following:
a. East Germanic
b. West Germanic
c. North Germanic
2. Review this module, Background of English for a long quiz during the face-to-face session.

SUMMARY

Summary:
In this module, we discussed the background of English, what we have known about it and the truth
about it. We have learned that English came from the Indo-European family of languages and were spread
throughout Europe very much earlier and did not follow a simple path, thus its history did not became known
to everyone.
Based on the Indo-European culture which started very much earlier, they could count, they used gold
and silver which they have used in their communication with different people which has extended in different
parts of the European culture. They drank a honey-based alcohol beverage, they have lived their life and they
are not nomads. Their religion was polytheistic.
The home of the Indo-European is between Northern Europe and Southern Russia until they
expanded reaching Iran, Anatolia and Southern Europe. Thus, the discovery of the Indo-European is now well
supported with evidence from many languages.
In addition, the background of English is in depth as it is even originated from the Sanskrit language
which has been considered the mother of all language. Its relationship to the Germanic language has been
seen in different varieties of English.

REFERENCES

Algeo, J. 2010. The Origins and Development of the English Language. 6th ed. Cengage BBS pdf

Harbert, Wayne. The Germanic Languages. Cambridge University Press. 2007

https://books.google.com.ph/books/about/The_Germanic_Languages.html?id=bMH
VnQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

The Indo-European family of Languages

https://people.umass.edu/sharris/in/e412/BC%202%20Indo-European.pdf

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Watkins, Thayer. The Nature of the Sanskrit Language. San Jose State University
https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sanskrit.htm

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