HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

GERMANIC – (Proto – Germanic) is particularly important for us because it includes English. Over
many centuries, certain radical development occurred in the language spoken by those
Indo – European speakers living in Denmark and other regions thereabout.

W. GERMANIC The West Germanic languages are High German, Low German (Plattdeutsch), Dutch
(and the practically identical Flemish), Frisian and English. Yiddish developed from
medieval High German dialects, with many words from Hebrew and Slavic.

LOW GERMANIC Spoken primarily in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands, Low
German is a West Germanic language. The Russian Mennonite diaspora speaks the
Plautdietsch dialect as well.

ANGLO – SAXON The term Anglo-Saxon is also sometimes used for either the language of this period
(OLD ENGLISH) or its speakers. The date that Bede gives for the first landing of those Saxons is 449.
With it the Old English period begins. With it, too, we may in a sense begin thinking
of Britain as England—the land of the Angles—for, even though the longships
carried Jutes, Saxons, Frisians, and doubtless members of other tribes as well, their
descendants a century and a half later were already beginning to think of
themselves and their speech as English. (They naturally had no suspicion that it was
“Old” English.) The name of a single tribe was thus adopted as a national name
(prehistoric Old English *Angli becoming Engle).

MIDDLE ENGLISH The term middle indicates that the period was a transition between Old English
(which was grammatically very different from the language that followed) and early
Modern English (which in pronunciation was different from what had come before
but was much the same as our own). The two dates also coincide approximately
with some events in English history that had profound effects on the language. The
Old English long vowel sounds ē, ī, ō, and ū remained unchanged in Middle English
although their spelling possibilities altered: thus Old English fēt, Middle English fēt,
feet ‘feet’; OE rīdan, ME rīden, rӯden ‘to ride’; OE fōda, ME fōde, foode ‘food’; OE
hūs, ME hous ‘house.’
MODERN ENGLISH The history of English since 1800 has been a story of expansion—in geography, in
speakers, and in the purposes for which English is used. Geographically, English
was spread around the world, first by British colonization and empire-building, and
more recently by American activities in world affairs. English is the primary
language, an outer circle of second-language speakers in countries where English
has wide use alongside native official languages, and an expanding circle of foreign-
language speakers in countries where English has no official standing but is used
for ever-increasing special purposes.