THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH

The history of English begins a little after A.D. 600. English is a Germanic Language of the Indo –European Family
History of English is divided into three:
Old English (7th century-1100): is a language rich with morphological diversity and is pronoun essentially as it is spelt.
Old English
Hie dygel lond
Warigeath, wulf –hleothu, windige
naessas,
Frence fen –gelid, there forge –steam
Under naessas genipap, neither gaited
Flod under foldan.
Modern English
Lonely and waste is the land they inhabit,
Wolf –cliffs wild and windy headlands,
Ledges of mist. Where and mountain
torrents
Downward plunge to dark abysses
And flow unseen.

Beowuef (printed in the modern alphabet)

Middle English(1100-1450/1500): The sound system & grammar wasn’t so effected but vocabulary was effected much.

Middle English
A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That un –to logik hadde longe y –go.
Modern English
A Clerk that is an Oxford scholar – who
Looked hollow to his bones, and threadbare, too.
Modern English (1500-now):the change was the elimination of a vowel sound and the Great Vowel Shift .

WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS FROM OTHER EUROPEAN LANGUAGES