History of English Language Paper
I. INTRODUCTION
Understanding Old English
Old English (OE) is the earliest form of English spoken today. Seeing it at first glance, we will recognize that the appearance and sound are roughly different from Present Day English. The form started emerging approximately in the fifth century, around 449 AD and used for over 600 years before the Norman Conquest 1066 AD. During those 600 years, it was going through a constant change. By 1100, it had been a completely different language compared to its earliest stage in terms of appearance and sound.
Then, a question ‘Why Old English is different from Present Day English?’ might come across our mind. The modest answer addressing this question is that language changes overtime, particularly when English was only regarded as spoken language almost a thousand years ago before it was standardized. McGillivray (n.d) explained two factors affected the linguistic change of English.
First major factor is the arrival of large number of people who spoke Old Norse in England from 850s onwards. This contributed a change to English simply because they did not assimilate into English-speaking population, rather maintained the use of them in daily basis even insisted on them. In the case of Norman conquest, people who spoke English were forced to learn and to prefer this language since it had high prestige than English at that time. Consequently, numerous kinds of linguistic mixture occurred in the phonological, lexical, and syntactic fields or other linguistic fields.
The second factor contributing to change in English is that the fact English was barely a written language two hundred years after the Norman Conquest. Written languages around that period were languages that regarded as prestigious, such as Latin and French. Without having a standard writing form, and having a great exposure to other languages, English surely often mixed up with others and ended up in a rapid change. When English achieved a prestigious status in
Understanding Old English
Old English (OE) is the earliest form of English spoken today. Seeing it at first glance, we will recognize that the appearance and sound are roughly different from Present Day English. The form started emerging approximately in the fifth century, around 449 AD and used for over 600 years before the Norman Conquest 1066 AD. During those 600 years, it was going through a constant change. By 1100, it had been a completely different language compared to its earliest stage in terms of appearance and sound.
Then, a question ‘Why Old English is different from Present Day English?’ might come across our mind. The modest answer addressing this question is that language changes overtime, particularly when English was only regarded as spoken language almost a thousand years ago before it was standardized. McGillivray (n.d) explained two factors affected the linguistic change of English.
First major factor is the arrival of large number of people who spoke Old Norse in England from 850s onwards. This contributed a change to English simply because they did not assimilate into English-speaking population, rather maintained the use of them in daily basis even insisted on them. In the case of Norman conquest, people who spoke English were forced to learn and to prefer this language since it had high prestige than English at that time. Consequently, numerous kinds of linguistic mixture occurred in the phonological, lexical, and syntactic fields or other linguistic fields.
The second factor contributing to change in English is that the fact English was barely a written language two hundred years after the Norman Conquest. Written languages around that period were languages that regarded as prestigious, such as Latin and French. Without having a standard writing form, and having a great exposure to other languages, English surely often mixed up with others and ended up in a rapid change. When English achieved a prestigious status in