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England settled since c. 1000 BC. First inhabitants were Celts, spread throughout south and western Europe. Celts in England spoke Brittonic; its descendants include Welsh, Cornish, and Bretton.
Little Brittonic influence remains in English today; loanwords such as ‘brock’ (badger) and ‘coombe’ (a type of valley) remain. Grammatical influence is contested, but the use of “do” periphrasis ("Did you see?" instead of "Saw you?”) and the preference for a verb-second structure may be remnants. -
Germanic peoples move down from Scandinavia and spread over Central Europe in successive waves. Supplant Celts. Come into contact (at times antagonistic, at times commercial) with northward-expanding empire of Romans. Germanic languages pick up a variety of trade- and legal- related words
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One = ainaz
Two = twai
Three = θriːz
Four = feðwoːr
Five = fimf
Six = sehs
Seven = seβun
Mother = moːðeːr
Heart = hertoːː
Hear = hauzijanã -
Most of Britain is conquered by the Romans. Some Briton tribes continue to rebel, but most become Romanised over the course of Roman rule
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Roman conquest of England. People spoke British Celtic (Brittonic) or British Latin. Predictably, the more hospitable East and South (up until Hadrian's wall) sees more Roman influence. More places have Celtic names the further West you go. Brittonic was influenced by Latin speakers switching to it. Few Brittonic words remain in English
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The Germanic peoples who settled in England (and France and Belgium), were West Germanic. These dialects had typical West Germanic features, such as inflection. The language already included loanwords from Latin. An example of this is wine, from vinum
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One = ain
Two = twai
Three = θriju
Four = fewwur
Five = fimf
Six = sehs
Seven = seβun
Mother = moːdar
Heart = herta
Hear = haurijan -
Germanic tribes pushed west and south by invading Huns.
Sack of Rome by the Goths. Romans pull out of Britain and other colonies, attempting to shore up defences on the home front. Those taking over in Rome call themselves "Roman emperors" even though the imperial administration had relocated to Byzantium in the 300s. The new Germanic rulers adopted Arianism in contrast to Catholicism of the late Roman state, and evolved into the Holy Roman Empire. -
Old English came about as an amalgam of the West Germanic dialects spoken by the immigrants. It supplanted Brittonic and British Latin, with minimal influence from them. Later in its history it was influenced heavily by Old Norse-speaking vikings, bringing in Norse loan words and simplifying Old English Grammar
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a>æ, bake, esp. before nasal consonants
ā>æ, læran=teach
æ>e, thatch
e>i, rare due to earlier Germanic *e > *i before *i, *j
o>ø > e, øle > ele.
ō>ø̄ > ē fōt=foot, fø̄t > fēt=feet.
u>y y > e murnan, to mourn
ū>ȳ ȳ > ē mūs=mouse, mȳs=mice
ea>ie > y e eald=old eldra=older
ēa>īe > ȳ ē nēah=near nīehst=nearest
eo>io > eo rare. io>eo in later OE
ēo>īo > ēo rare. īo> ēo in later OE
io>ie > y io, eo *fiohtan=fight.
īo īe > ȳ īo, ēo līoht, līehtan īo>ēo in later OE, sēoþan seethe -
One = ān
Two = twā
Three = þrēo
Four = fēowor
Five = fīf
Six = six
Seven = seofon
Mother = mōdor
Heart = heorte
Hear = hēran, hȳran -
For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman, originating from a northern langue d'oïl dialect, which was another West-Germanic language. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French
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One = ɔːn (oon)
Two = twoː (two)
Three= θreː (three)
Four = fowər (fower)
Fiive = fiːvə (five)
Six = siks (six)
Seven = sevən (seven)
Mother = moːðər (mother)
Heart = hertə (herte)
Hear = hɛːrə(n) (heere(n)) -
The Great Vowel Shift took place, influenced by increased literacy, the printing press, and increased travel, especially to the New World. The Renaissance also led to borrowing from Latin and Greek. Loan words from Italian, German, and Yiddish come into use. Shakespeare, and the wide dissemination of his works, added a wide variety of words and expressions. The wide variety of loan words, in conjunction with standardisation affect the spelling of many words
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Long vowels became higher pitched and moved forward in the mouth; boats - boots, fate - feet, toe - to, weef - wife, moos - mouse, bayn - been, heer - her, beet - bite, mate - meet, boat - boot. This is part of the reason for English spelling. (I suspect the Northern English accents changed much less)
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The Renaissance brings focus back to Rome and Greece, and words from Latin and Greek flood into English. New concepts were often described in existing Latin and Greek terms, and many existing English words were supplanted. This led to the Inkhorn Controversy, so named for the inkhorns or wells of writers who imported florid and foreign terminology
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Influx of Latin and Greek inspired words: specimen, criterion, squalor, apparatus, antenna, paralysis, nausea, horrid, pathetic, pungent, frugal, explain, meditate, adapt, enthusiasm, complex, concept, invention, technique, capsule, system, habitual, insane, agile, fictitious, and many more. The derivational suffix -ise (based on Greek) is added to nouns and adjectives to turn them into verbs. The Inkhorn Controversy adds words that die out: revoluting, ingent, frugivorous, plumigerous, etc.
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He coined over 2000 words, not all his own, including academe, accused, addiction, advertising, arouse, assassination, backing, bandit, beached, besmirch, birthplace, blanket, barefaced, blushing, bet, bump, caked, cater, champion, circumstantial, compromise, courtship, countless, critic, deafening, discontent, dishearten, dwindle, epileptic, equivocal, elbow, exposure, eyeball, fashionable, fixture, frugal, generous, gloomy, gossip, etc. His floral style represents the fashion of the time
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One = oːn >! wʊn
Two = twuː > tuː
Three = θriː
Four = foːr
Five = fəiv
Six = siks
Seven = sevən
Mother = mʊðər
Heart = hert
Hear = heːr -
Question word order is inverted, and LM uses the periphrastic 'do' e.g. "What makes he heere?" (Othello) vs "What does he make here?"
Pronouns are used with imperatives e.g. "Then go we near her" (Much Ado about Nothing)
Using modal auxiliaries as main verbs "I can no more" -
Below shows the variation with time for the use of have and haue, highlighting the standardisation of spelling, particularly for v/u and i/j which were used interchangeably until the 1630s, influenced by teaching manuals. Apostrophes are only used for the possessive from the 1700s.
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Essentially begins with the Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. Words arising from the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire's contact with dozens of languages come into use. More recently, it has been affected by more recent technologies, particularly radio, television, and finally the internet
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The century begins with Austen and Napoleon, continues with Dickens, Queen Victoria and the Industrial Revolution, and ends with Rudyard Kipling and the height of Imperial power.
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New words introduced from other cultures, French influence due to Napoleon, Greek, Italian and Latin due to Classicism.
Sentence structure is dense, long and meandering, enabled by the use of semicolons and commas.
Generally more formal (use of passive voice and lack of personal pronouns, fewer contractions)