The rise and diversification of the english language

Last edited by Arjun on Mon May 25, 2009 10:23 am; edited 3 times in total

THE RISE AND DIVERSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Basically languages are sounds. Different languages have different sounds. Sounds are the earliest development of spoken language. From spoken language written languages came. Sounds gave way to symbols. We call them characters for the written language.

All the symbols of a language are collectively called the alphabet. Some sounds are common in all languages.

Ratio of spoken sounds vs. characters in the alphabet decides whether a language is easy or not.

In English spoken sounds = 44 and characters of alphabet= 26

Thus the gap is large

Difficulties faced;

1. Not possible to read a written word as such.

Eg; ‘often’ which is read as ‘ofen ‘

2. Write something and read differently

Eg; ‘decision’ read as Di Si SHN

‘caution’ read as COH SHN

3. Same character becomes diff. sounds in diff. places. Eg : cAme, rAm, cAlm, cAt

gO, cOme, wOmen

4. mother tongue influence

Spoken sounds are written as characters, some sounds are found to be common in all languages, however others are absent and do not have the characters for those sounds.

Linguist: person who studies languages

Linguistics: study of languages

In this 20^th century, more than 4000 languages are present. Year after year, the no.s of lang. increases. In 100 A.D, 1500 lang.

Around 4000 B.C;, 200 lang.

Around 5000 B.C, 8-10 lang.

Beyond 5000 B.C, very difficult to interpret lang.

Out of the 8 languages, one was Sanskrit. “the language of gods” according to the priests of old.

New languages evolved as a result of conquering. All civilizations existed on river banks, land became insufficient, so they move to other places. The same lang. thus may change and become a diff. one, based on requirements.

Thus changes come in same language and the new languages seem to be completely diff. from mother lang.

Many lang. evolved as a result of interaction between diff. langs. German is very similar to Sanskrit. Latest theory suggests that there were 8 ancient languages at the root of all the modern languages.

English is a combination of seven to eight languages.

English lang had its origins around 6^th A.D, King Alfred, leader of the strongest tribe conquered other tribes and made a large kingdom, the language of his tribe became the most prominent one i.e official language.

Thus 28 languages all over the land were brought together by Alfred. Ultimately his lang became the lang of England, which remained until 11^th century.

Angels & Saxons were the most prominent tribes under him and their languages were brought together to form the anglo-saxon language. So till 11^th century, A-S was the main language. For convenience, A-S is called old English.

Thus the origin of the old English, is a combination of the langs. Of the angels, Saxons, celts, and Normans who were in England. The name England comes from the word angles, or land of angles.

France was a major threat to the empire of England but the angels drove them away repeatedly. However, ultimately, the French conquered England for the first time in 1066 A.D. thus till the year1450, England was ruled by French, of the tribe of Normandy. The king of Normandy, assumed English throne, called William. He was thus given title, of William the conqueror. Thus French became the official language of English.

The mixture of French in old English came to be called middle English.

OE

FULL OF WORDS FROM LATIN (LANG OF ROME)
RULING LANGUAGE FOR 8 CENTURIES
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF BIBLE (LANGUAGE OF GODS)
LANGUAGE OF INFLECTION i.e. NOUN MIXES WITH PREPOSITION\ADVERB\CONJUNCTION.
MAINLY ANGLO SAXON + LATIN + BALTIC + SLAVIC + CELTIC

ME
[font=Symbol]· [b]LOTS OF WORDS FROM FRENCH
LESSER INFLECTION

· PREPOSITION, ADVERBS AND CONJUNCTIONS WERE DIFF. WORDS

· OE + FRENCH

MODERN ENGLISH :

20^TH CENTURY ONWARDS [CALLED QUEENS ENGLISH]

Modern English has now become diversified and has split up into different languages as follows :

1910 – American English

1960 – Indian English

1950 – Canadian and Australian English

Lots of words from Indian English are absent in American eng. But have leaked into british English. Many words taken from Indian languages have been morphed into English words of the same meaning. E.g. Catamaran, which is a type of boat is derived from the Malayalam word KattaMaram

Likewise, Sanskrit words have also been incorporated into English. E.g dental is derived from Sanskrit word dantah

Development of culture directly influences development of language, that’s why American language is progressing very fast. Words like Fix is used in several contexts this is because language cannot develop as fast as the culture, so old words are used to mean new things.

Also different words are used for the same thing, for e.g. lift in british eng. Is the same as elevator in its American counterpart. Similarly, flat is called apartment. Sitting room is called living room.

CHANGES OCCURING IN A LANGUAGE

1. SOUND – SYLLABLE – WORDS : AT ALL THESE LEVEL, CHANGES CAN OCCUR. FOR EXAMPLE, THE SOUND ‘A’ USED TO BE READ AS ‘AAH’ IN OE, ‘E’ AS ‘EY’, ‘I’ AS ‘E’. LETTERS LIKE THETA ARE REPLACED BY TH, AND DELTA BY D. STRESS : Beauty in OE was pronounced without stress to the ‘ty’

2. SPELLING : CHANGES IN SPELLING OCCURRED E.G. FAIRY WAS SPELT AS FAERIE AND QUEEN AS QUEENE

3. pronounciation : U was pronounced as V and V was pronounced as U, similarly, yellow was called ello

4. Words : newly formed words, like television and telephone. Old words changed in meaning, eg. Computer. Earlier was meant to compute.

5. meaning of words : deer used to mean any animal with four legs, now it refers to a specific animal. Similarly fowl was used for all flying birds. Fellow earlier, was used to define members of the royal family in OE, in ME, this word was used to refer to highly educate people, king’s consultants and those who graduated from the oxford university. Words like villain earlier meant any able assistant of the king, and rich men. Now it means a person who is a bad man.

THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN COMPILED BY AMRITA P.K....... THANKS BLUELEY Very Happy

Subject: THANK U VIKI Wed Feb 18, 2009 5:03 pm

Thankyou for posting this article

ur notes seemed 2 b very good and useful........thanking u king

waw...........
these english posts are a means of survival 4 our cgc...

Webmaster Number of posts : 41 Age : 33 Propz : Registration date : 2009-02-15

You are right Priya.It will helpful for the juniors also