ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE, MODERN ENGLISH
Trang 1HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
E-LEARNING CENTER
-ASSIGNMENT ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE (3)
TITLE: WRITE THE FOUNDATION OF ENGLISH IN ENGLAND THROUGH THREE PERIODS: OLD, MIDDLE,
MODERN ENGLISH
HA NOI, 2022
Trang 2TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1
I INTRODUCTION 2
II DEVELOPMENT 2
1 Foundation stage 2
2 Middle English 4
3 Modern English 5
4 English and its changes 7
CONCLUSION 8
REFERENCES 8
Trang 3I INTRODUCTION
English belongs to the Indo-European language family, which is currently spoken
by at least a billion people (about 1/7 of the world's population) Of these, more than 300 million people consider English their first language (in the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) English became a global language, used in international trade transactions, diplomacy, scientific research, information technology The Romans invaded Great Britain in 55 BC but could not impose it influence English; Both the Celts and their efforts met with similar failure Nevertheless, we can recognize Roman and Celtic roots in some of the UK's landmarks today
Trang 4II DEVELOPMENT
The ancestors of today's English "set foot" on the British Isles in the 400s, after the Romans had left And since then English has had three main stages of development:
1 Foundation stage
The emergence of Germanic groups, known as Old English, was related to the
"ancestor" of modern German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages The Beowulf epic is perhaps the most famous work written in Old English; like a foreign language, this work must be translated for modern English people to understand
Beowulf is one of the first European epics written in the vernacular (other than Latin) and is also one of the most important in the history of English literature This epic series tells the story of the hero Beowulf's long battle against monsters
Two important events influenced the development of Old English: the first was the introduction of Christianity, which brought with it the Latin alphabet and the Latin-based church language; and the second was the arrival of the Scandinavians some 300 years later, along with many new vocabularies At the end of this period, two pronouns "they" and "she" appears, making the distinction and use of pronouns clearer and easier
The oldest form of English is known as Old English or Anglo-Saxon (550–1066) Old English evolved from a set of North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken along
Trang 5the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jylland, and Southern Sweden by Germanic tribes called the Angle, Saxon, and Jute In the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England and the Romans withdrew from Great Britain By the 7th century, Anglo-Saxon languages had prevailed on Great Britain, displacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): common Britton, a Celtic language, and Latin brought to Great Britain by the Romans.[25][26][27] The two words England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc) come from the name "Angle" Old English is very different from Modern English and cannot be understood by 21st-century native speakers Its grammar resembles that of modern German, and its closest language is Old Frisian Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs all have multiple endings and inflections, and word order is much more liberal than in modern English Modern English preserves the grammatical form of pronouns (he, him, his) and a few verb endings (I have, he has), but Old English also modifies nouns based on manner and verbs more inflectional words based on person and number
English is an intermediate head-initial language Although the vocabulary contains most of the words from Latin, the grammar is still characterized by the Germanic language family with certain reductions such as:
o Does not distinguish noun gender All three noun varieties are reduced to a single article, the
Trang 6o The adjective stays the same without changing according to its role in the sentence structure
In the ancient Latin language, adjectives are divided into 3 genders, 2 quantities (many, few), and 4-6 ways (nominative, genitive, possessive, counterpoint) with a certain overlap in each case (Example: The singular and plural transformations are the same for German feminine in accusative nouns if no definite article is attached.)
• A relative clause always comes after the noun or noun phrase it supports and is led by a relative element, most commonly that Other relational prefixes can be used, such as who, which, whom, when, where, but need not be strictly modified An illustrative example is as follows:
I saw the police that had shot a black guy here
In the example above, the phrase that had shot a black guy is a defining relative clause
2 Middle English
Initially, waves of Norse colonization of the northern British Isles in the VIII-IX centuries brought Old English into contact with Old Norse, a North Germanic language The influence of Old Norse was strongest in the northeastern dialects around York (the area where Danelaw was applied), which was the center of colonization; These influences are still evident in Scots and Northern English today After William of Normandy from
Trang 7Northern France invaded England in the 11th century, Norman French, or rather Anglo-Norman, became the official voice of the ruling elite for nearly 300 years but did not replace it position of English in the majority of the population The conquerors even had
to learn English to communicate with the common people
Gradually the influence of French on English vocabulary also increased in areas where the French had influence such as government, law, army, art However, after England separated from Normandy in 1204, the Anglo-Norman language was cut off its roots and gradually faded, English restored its position as the language of government, the language of culture
After this Middle Ages, English vocabulary became richer and less deformed Adjectives do not change according to nouns, nouns are also singular and plural as they are today Geoffrey Chaucer's famous The Canterbury Tales was more like modern English
3 Modern English
The next period is Modern English (Early Modern English, 1500–1700) The Early Modern English period was distinguished by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), further inflection simplification, and the standardization of the language
Great Vowel Shift affects long stressed vowels This is a "chain transformation", i.e one sound is changed to affect other sounds Medium and open vowels are raised, and closed vowels turn into diphthongs For example, the word bite was originally
Trang 8pronounced like today's beet, the second vowel in about was pronounced the same as in today's boot The Great Vowel Shift causes many spelling disparities, as Modern English maintains much of the spellings of Middle English, and also explains why the vowel characters in English are pronounced very different from other languages
English became the dominant language under Henry V Around 1430, the Court of Chancery at Westminster began using English to write official documents, and a new standard form, called the Chancery Standard, was formed based on dialects into London and the East Midlands In 1476, William Caxton introduced the press to England and began publishing the first books, spreading the influence of the new standard form.[45] The works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I represent the literature of this period After the Vowel Shift, Modern English remained distinct from English today: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn SW/ in knight, gnat, and sword were still fully pronounced Characteristics that today's Shakespeare readers might find odd or out of date often represent features of modern English Middle English omitted the inflection system The distinction between the noun and the object is lost (except in pronouns), the modal instrument is eliminated, and the function of the possessive is limited The inflection system "normalizes" many irregular inflections, and gradually simplifies the union system, making sentence structure less flexible In the 1380s Wycliffe Bible, the Gospel passage of Matthew 8:20 is written
Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis
Trang 9Here, the plural presents tense suffix -n in the verb han (infinitive "haven", root ha-) is present, but in no grammatical way is expressed
By the 12th century, Medieval English was fully developed, incorporating both Old Norse and Norman influences; and continued to be spoken until about 1500, when it became modern English Medieval English literature includes works such as The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Le Morte d'Arthur by Malory
Believed to have been around since the 16th century, not long after the first prints appeared in England Represented by the works of Shakespeare, early modern English was not quite what it is today However, over more than 100 years, a series of changes in spelling and grammar were made, further simplifying the inflections and complicating the rules of syntax or word order The invention of printing also helped standardize the written language
By the 17th century, Great Britain became a powerful empire, with its language reaching out all over the world During the spread, English at the same time learned many new words from the colonies; and with each country it went to, English developed in different directions, each English-speaking country setting its standards Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, the arts, and education all contribute to making English the first truly global language English has also become the language of international communication Because Britain established many colonies, these colonies gained their independence and developed their way of speaking and writing English
Trang 10English is present in North America, India, parts of Africa, Australasia, and many other regions In the post-colonial era, new countries with many native languages often chose English as their official language to avoid having one native language stand above the others In the twentieth century, the growth and cultural and political influence of the United States as a superpower after World War II accelerated its global spread By the twenty-first century, more English is spoken and written than any other language in history
The works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned
by King James I represent the literature of this period After the Vowel Shift, Modern English remained distinct from English today: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn SW/ in knight, gnat, and sword were still fully pronounced Characteristics that today's Shakespeare readers might find odd or out of date often represent features of modern English
"By 1776, the English language had undergone most of the syntactic changes that distinguish present-day English (then PDE) from Old English (then OE) Older word order patterns with verbs at the end of a clause or in a second element Position has long been replaced by an unaccented order framed by the subject-verb-object sequence subject or subject-verb-complement A subject noun phrase is almost always required in simple clauses other than
Trang 114 English and its changes
English, like many other languages, is continuing to evolve and change New words come from prefix-suffix combinations, word combinations, immigrants, youth slang words, old words used with new meanings, even borrowed from other languages
In its history, English has received influences from many different sources, perhaps being one of the most "absorbent" languages As a result, English has by far the largest vocabulary in the world, around 750,000 words – almost half of which are of Germanic origin, nearly half are of Latin origin, in addition to a significant number of roots from all over the world
Simultaneously with borrowing, English also becomes a comfortable "lender" There was even a time when the French government tried to make it illegal to use English words in France
Trang 12CONCLUSION
English has evolved over more than 1,400 years The oldest form of English - a collection of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century - is called Old English The Middle English era began in the late 11th century when the Normans invaded England; this was the period when English was influenced by French/Norman The Early Modern English era began in the late 15th century with the arrival of the press in London and the King James Bible, followed by the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift.[8] Thanks to the global influence of the British Empire, Modern English spread around the world between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries Thanks to various types of print and electronic communication, as well as the emergence
of the United States as a superpower, English has become the leading language of international communication, the lingua franca in many regions and many dimensions specialized fields such as science, navigation, and law
Trang 13https://www.oxfordinternationalenglish.com/a-brief-history-of-the-english-language/