History of English

Hi,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language

This is the introductory article on pronunciation. It aims at shedding a little light in this so complicating issue by bringing to memory some important facts regarding the history of the language. I believe that, by understanding a little of what happened, you will be able to relate to it better – knowledge is power.

English is somewhat different when it comes to its birth. We cannot say it evolved from a specific language such as Latin, or that it suffered influence of another. In fact, it is a great mixture of languages at different stages of its evolution.

First we have the British Isles and their native inhabitants – many tribes that spoke many different languages. Then we have the Romans conquering the main island all the way up to Adrian’s Wall. Needless to say Latin began to catch on around there. Approaching the fall of the Roman Empire, the settlements began to grow defenseless until they reached the climax of waving goodbye to the Roman troops, which were called back to Rome to defend the Empire’s capital.

Without trained defensive forces, Roman Britain fell to the Germanic tribes of the north. Upon their conquering, the language again was heavily influenced by the variants of Proto-German, an ancient version of today’s German. A that time Old English and Proto-German were, obviously, similar. Hence the words bread – brot, beer – bier, etc.

In 1066 Normandy (today’s France) conquered England. As a result, the nobility and the military spoke French at first, then English. As the two languages influenced each other, with more changes occurring to English, the language of the people who lost, the tradition of regarding Latinized words as formal came about – it lasts to this day. Hence, cordial reception is formal and hearty welcome is non-formal.

What followed was the 100-year War, which brought the liberation of England. Nonetheless, the language would be marked forever.

Lastly, we have what linguists call The Great Vowel Shift. It was a natural linguistic process which happened in England from about 1200 to around 1600. It marks the transition from Middle to Modern English. What happened was that vowels whose sounds were similar to French, Italian, Latin and other “continental’ languages changed because of everyday use and other influences. For example, name was originally pronounced [na.me]. Today we say [neim]. Cut was pronounced [kut]. Today we say [kât]. Law was pronounced [lau]. Today we say [lóó]. As you can see, the Middle English pronunciation of these words resembles very much our Modern Portuguese pronunciation of the same vowels. Why? Portuguese is a “continental” language that evolved from Latin.

Basically, this is all I have to tell you for now. However, do not think this is all there is to learn about the evolution of English. This is only a small briefing.

If you are interested in this, you can get more information by checking the two links on the top of the article. A stroll into your neighborhood library would be a nice call too.

Knowledge is power.