History Of The

English Language
A BBC Documentary

Chrisha Caliso
• Successive invasion introduced and threaten to destroy the
English language.
• 1st For 300 years English was forced underground
• 2nd tells how it survived and how it fought back
• 3rd How the English language took on the power block of Church
and State
• 4th How it became the language of Shakespeare
• American, Caribbean, India, Australia
• Language of business in 21st Century
 GERMANIC FAMILY OF LANGUAGES
• There are words that we can recognize if we go to the Friesland,
Netherlands
• Modern Friesian and modern English can both be traced back to
the same family, the Germanic family of languages.
• Butter, bread, cheese, meal, sleep, boat, snow, see, storm
• The west Germanic tribes who invented these words were a war
like adventurous people. They’ve been on a move through
Europe (1000 years) but now had settlements in the Lowlands of
Northern Europe. Holland, Germany, and Denmark.
 500 YEARS BEFORE THE GERMANIC TRIBE
• The Germanic tribes weren’t the
first one to invade. More than
500 years before, the Romans
had also come by sea to impose
their will.
• But shortly there after, their
empire had crumbled and they’d
abandoned the Islands leaving
the native tribes, The Britons or
Celts, to their fate.
• Pevensey Castle- Roman Fort
 THE ARRIVAL OF THE GERMANIC TRIBES

• The arrival of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons in

the 5th Century in the Island of Tasheli. They also
took their language with them.
• 491- Germanic invaders laid siege and
slaughtered the Celts that had taken refuge in
the Pevensey castle. Other Celts did survived
the invasion though, a million or more of them
• The Germanic tribe (1500 years ago) used to
describe them as Willas or Welsh that means
foreigner and slave.
• The Celts became servants and followers.
They’re the second class citizens.
• The only way up is to become part of the
invaders tribes to adopt their culture and their
language.
 CELTS AND THEIR LANGUAGE WERE
PUSHED TO THE MARGINS

• Only a handful of words from the Celtic languages

survived into Modern English.
• Crag= rock and Combe= deep valley
• There are also traces in place-names like Torpenhow
(Tor= peak), Carlisle( Car=fortified place), Tamils, Aven,
Dover, and London. But these were fragments. The
language that prevailed was that of the victors.
 KINGDOMS OF THE 6TH CENTURY

• By the end of the

6th century these
Germanic tribes
occupied half of
mainland Britain.
• They have divided
into a number of
kingdoms.
 MODERN PLACE NAME

• Ing= The people of

• Ealing, Dorking, Worthing, Reading
• Ton= enclosure or village
• Bridlington, Wigton, Taunton, Chessington
• Ham= Farm
• Birmingham, Grantham, Cheltenham, Tottenham
• The Germanic tribes, now settled down on the
country, all spoke their own dialects. One
language will emerge from among them, the
Anglo-Saxons or the Old English.
• There are still a hundred of words from the Old
English language that you can hear today.
Keywords from family names to numbers.
• Nouns: Youth, Sun, Daughter, Field, Friend,
Home, Ground
• Prepositions: In, On, Into, By, From
• Verbs: Drink, Come, Go, Sing, Like, Love
• And, The
• All the Numbers
 IT’S SOUND A LITTLE DIFFERENT

• Sun- Suno
• Game- Gamun
• Ground- Grund

• “That’s not so very different” – Cassey Low

(Language Expert)
 REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY

• English took it’s first step away from it’s tribal roots
with revival of Christianity.
• 597- Friar Agustin led a mission from Rome to Kent.
Within a century Christians built churches and
monasteries dated from the 7th century.
• They’ve brought the international language of the
Christian religion, Latin. Latin terms became a part
of the English word horde.
• Altar, Apostles, Mass, Monk, Verse
• The layering of words taken from different source
languages- this would become a pattern of English.
• From Latin too the English took their script.
 THE RUNIC ALPHABET

• The Angles, Saxons, Frisians,

and Jutes brought runes.
• The runic alphabet was made
up of symbols formed mainly
of straight lines so the letter
can be carved into stones or
woods.
• Mainly used for short practical
messages or graffiti.
 LATIN ALPHABETS
• The Latin alphabet’s curves and bows- it allowed
words to be easily written using pen and ink onto
pages of parchment or velum. If gather together to
become a book so it could be widely circulated.
 THE GREAT ENGLISH MONK SCHOLAR

• At the monastery of St. Paul in Jairo, Bead

was born and educated in Northumbria. He
began writing the first ever history of the
English speaking people. He wrote of
course in Latin the language of
scholarship.
• The prevailing language
among the people was still
Old English. But Latin, this
powerful medium, was now
amongst them.
• Now Old English was written
down using the Latin
alphabet while retaining
some of the old Runes as
letters.
• From the 7th Century we find
• With writing: prayers were recorded, books of the bible
translated, and the laws of the land were written down.
• The language soon became capable of recording and
expressing and increasingly wide and subtle range of
human experience.
• And in the right hands, Old English is now powerful
enough to take you to imaginary world like poetry.
• Mid 7th and end of the 10th Century
• No one knows who composed the epic
Beowulf.
• It’s the first great poem in the English
language.
• The beginning of a glorious tradition that
will lead to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and
Bjorn.
• The poem celebrates the glory days of the
Germanic tribes.
• English at that time is a fully developed poetic
language. It’s capable of great elaboration.
(Terrific for telling what happened, action, and
description.
• It’s written to be read aloud (but scholars are
not sure if it was written but there’s a writer
dealing with a traditional oral language).
MAKING EXTRA LANGUAGE
 LATE 8TH CENTURY

• The Latin base scholarship which

have grown up and the cradle of Old
English faced extinction from across
the sea.
• It was the Vikings who sacked and
burned the religious center that
stood here before. (Ruins of a
Monastery in Lindisfarne)
• These pagan pirates was rampaging with their
long ships in 793 in the great center of Christian
piety and scholarship.
• Their arrival was a signal to many people of an
end to civilization.
• Next was an abbey in Jairo. This stronghold of
the Latin word where English was written down
was burned to the ground.
• A start of a 70 years of attack.
• The Viking savage the Eastern half of
the country. Few stories survived
because few were left to tell the tale.
• In 865 landed a great army in East
Anglia.
• Within 5 years the Viking invader
who are now called Danes controlled
the North and East of the country.
• Of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
only Wessex still held out.
• Old Norse, the language of the
conquerors was spreading
throughout the land. Old English
potentially faced the same fate as
the Celtic language.
KING ALFRED THE GREAT
• His statue stand in Winchester (the capital
of Wessex).
• Dubbed by the Victorians
• He’s the only monarch in the history to be
known as the “great”.
• Often hailed as a Savior of England.
• He was a great defender of the English
language.
 ALFRED’S BATTLE

• At first he can hardly hold the invaders back. In 878 have a

decisive battle at Chipinum and Mulcher. Alfred with only few
followers went on the run into the marshes of Somerset. He
was taking shelter in a poor woman’s cottage. But he proved
to be an enterprising warrior and a strategist. He discovered
an irregular warfare. Mounting guerilla attacks on the Danish
invader at Guthrun.
• Spring of 878 Alfred sent out a call for the men to join him.
Around 4,000 men from Wilshire and Somerset armed only
with battle axes and throwing spears responded to the call.
• The battle was a slaughter but
there is no doubt that Alfred
prevailed. His crown and
kingdom secured and the English
language.
• The Danes surrendered and the
leader was baptized as a
Christian. His victory was
memorialized in the land he’d
saved.
• Alfred signed a peace treaty with
the Danes which established a
border running up through the
country from the Thems to the old
Roman road of Watling street.
• The land to the Northern East to
be known as the Danelaw would
be under Danish rule. The land to
the south and west would be for
the English.
• No one was to cross the line unless to
trade.
• When Danes and English met they didn’t
do so to fight but to do business and
intermarry.
• Communities mixed and so did the
languages. And English, rather than being
 DANISH SETTLEMENTS
• Place names ending in:
• By (farm)- Swainby, Rudby, Faceby, Easby, Birkby, Newby,
Corby
• Thorpe (village)- Westthorpe, Nunthorpe, Fulthorpe,
• Thwaite (portion of land)- Huthwaite, Bassenthwaite

• Names ending in –son= a Danish way of making a name by

adding to the name of the father. (Dickinson, Harrison,
Gibson, Watson). These names are common in the Danish
 NORSE WORDS TODAY

• Some old Norse words stayed in a local dialect to

the north.
Beck-stream, garth-paddock
• All around the country overtime hundreds of Norse
words entered the mainstream of English and we
still use them everyday.
• Sk sound is a characteristics of old Norse. (Score,
sky) And a thousand others including bowl, anger,
freckle, knife, neck, root, skull, and window.
• When an old Norse and old English had a words for the
same thing both words lived on in English. Each taking
on a slightly different meaning.
• Old English= Craft, Hide, Sick
• Old Norse= Skill, Skin, Ill
(egg, law, husband, leg, ugly) (Pronouns: they, their,
them) (prepositions are also introduced)
 LATE 9TH CENTURY
• The scholars and monasteries had once made England the
greatest powerhouse of Christian teaching in Europe. But 150
years had passed and the scholarly traditions had declined.
• In all the country, Alfred could barely find a handful of Priest
who could read and understand Latin. And if they couldn’t
understand Latin, they couldn’t pass on the teachings of their
religious books that told people how to lead virtuous lives and
then they couldn’t save souls.
 PROMOTING ENGLISH LITERACY
• Alfred looked for a cure. One way was
to educate more clergy in Latin. But
that wasn’t enough. Alfred didn’t want
to do away with Latin but he realized
that it will be far easier to teach
people to read books written in the
language they spoke.
• The best scholars could then go on to
Latin and join holy orders. The rest
would still have access to scholarship
and spiritual guidance but it will be
 He had a plan on promoting literacy
and restoring the English language by
translating all the necessary book that
all men should know. There are five
books of religious instructions,
philosophy, and history translated from
Latin to English. A laborious and costly
undertaking. Copies were sent out to
the 12 bishops of his kingdom for their
wisdom to be spread as widely as
possible.
• Alfred sent a costly pointer
(used to underline the text) to
each bishop to emphasize the
importance and value of the
project. Discovered in 1693 in
Somerset and in now in show in
the museum in Oxford. Crafted
in jewel, enamel, and gold.
• Alfred the Great made the
English language the jewel of
his crown.
• Alfred established a publishing house in Winchester.
• One of the projects was the commissioning of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles detailing hundreds of years of
history.
• 899 Alfred died.
• By the middle of the 11th Century, English seemed
secure but now other invaders were waiting and
English was about to face it’s greatest threat ever.
1066 THE NORMANS
• William Duke of Normandy sailed with his
army to claim the English throne.
• The English King, Edward the Confessor,
had spent many years in Normandy and
in that time had come to regard William
as a brother or even a son and had
named him as his successor.
• Sensing of his impending death, the childless Edward had dispatched
Harold Godwinson (his wife’s brother) and his Earl of Essex (the riches
and most powerful of the English Lords) to Normandy to pledge loyalty to
William.
• This Harold did and swearing on two caskets of holy relics. But when
Edward did died Harold had himself crown in Westminster abbey
(supported by the English nobility) on the very day Edward was laid to
rest there.
• Invasion in maximum force was the only response by the ruthless
William.
• The armies met in near
Hastings. Harold fell and
was pierced through the
eye with an arrow.
• The site was later named
after the engagement. But
its name was not from the
English word (fight) but the
word from the language of
the Norman victor (battle).
• Harold will be the last English speaking king of England
for 3 centuries.
• On Christmas day on 1066. William was crowned in
Westminster Abbey. In a service conducted in both
English and Latin but William spoke French throughout.
• A new king and a new language were in authority in
England.
• Castle was one of the first French
words to enter the English
language. The Normans built a
chain on them to impose their
rule on the country.
• By blood, the Normans were from
the same stock as the Norse men
who’d invaded in earliest
centuries but they no longer
spoke of Germanic language
rather what we call old French
which have grown from Latin
• French is the language that spell out the new
architectural order.
• Crown, throne, court, Duke, baron, nobility, Peasant,
vassal, servant, governor.
• Liberty, authority, obedience, traitor.
• The Normans took law into their own hands
• Felony, arrest, warrant, justice, judge, jury, accuse,
acquit, sentence, condemn, prison, and jail
• In the 3 centuries after the conquest 10
thousand French words colonized the English
language.
• 500 words for food and eating
• City, market, porter, salmon, mackerel, oysters,
pork, sausage, bacon, fruit, orange, lemon,
grapes, tart, biscuit, sugar, cream, fry, vinegar,
herb, olive, appetite, plate, beef, mustard,
• Within 20 years of taking • The domesday book (2
control of the country, volumes) shows how
William sent his officers complete the Norman
out to take stock of his takeover of the English
Kingdom. land was. And how
• The monks of widespread their influence
Peterborough, who was still and their language.
recording the events of
history in English in the
Anglo-Saxon chronicle
noted disapprovingly that
not one piece of land
escaped the survey. Not
even an ox, a cow, or a
pig.
• The native ruling class (from before the conquest) has been
slaughtered, banished, or disinherited in favor of William’s followers.
• Half of the country was in the hands of just 190 men half of that was
just held by 11 men. And not one of these spoke English.
• French and Latin became the languages of state, law, the church, and
history itself in England.
• The writing in English became increasingly rare. Even the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle guttered into silence.
• In a country of 3 languages, English became a poor 3rd. The English
language was forced underground. It will take 300 years for it to re
emerge. And when it did it would’ve changed dramatically.