What is the History of English?

The history of English studies the major events in the historical development of the English language:

• the history of its phonetic structure;

• the history of spelling;

• the evolution of its grammatical system;

• the growth of lexis.

Modern English reflects many centuries of development. The history of English explains such discrepancy between letters and sounds as in knight [naIt] 6 letters 3 sounds

When Latin characters were used in Britain (7^th c.) writing was phonetic: the letters stood for the same sounds as in Latin. But later, when printing was introduced (the 15^th c.) the written form of the world became fixed but the sounds continued to change. In the 14^th century knight sounded as [knIx’t], root as [ro:t], tale as ['tRlq].

The history of the English language has been reconstructed on the basis of written record of different periods. The earliest written texts in English date to the 7^th c. and the earliest records in other Germanic languages go back to the 3^rd or the 4^th c. A.D. But the development of English began a long time before it was recorded.

Some information about the early stages of English and Germanic history is to be found in the works of ancient historians and geographers, especially Roman. The pre-written history of English was first studied by methods of comparative linguistics in the 19^th c. These methods help the linguists to discover the kinship of the Indo-European (IE) family of languages and to group them into Germanic, Slavonic, Celtic and others.

Now in addition to reconstruction which is based on comparing different languages the scholars use methods of internal reconstruction. It studies history from internal sources alone. The method is based on the assumption that every language is a well-organized and well-balanced structure of elements. If among the productive systems of the language there occur some non-productive systems one can say that they are relics of preceding stages of development.

e.g. Modern forms “oxen”, “teeth” are isolated now, but they were found in larger groups of nouns in earlier periods.

Peculiarities of Germanic Languages

1. Indo-European Family. The Germanic group of languages:

   1. East Germanic

   2. North Germanic

   3. West Germanic

2. Linguistic peculiarities of Germanic languages:

   1. Word stress

   2. The Germanic Vowel Shift

   3. The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law)

   4. The Second Consonant Shift (Verner’s Law)

   5. Germanic Rhotacism

Recommended Books

Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. – M., 1983. – P. 24-34

Blake N.F. A History of the English Language. – New York: New York University Press, 1996. – P. 47-74

Костюченко Ю.П. Історія англійської мови. – Київ, 1963. – С. 10-39

1. Indo-European Family. The Germanic group of languages.

The historical (genealogical) classification of languages groups them according to their origin from a common linguistic ancestor. English belongs to the Germanic group which is one of the twelve groups of Indo-European (IE) family.

The Germanic languages in the modern world are:

• English (Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries);

• Danish (Denmark);

• German (Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Switzerland);

• Afrikaans (South African Republic);

• Swedish (Sweden);

• Icelandic (Iceland).

The history of the Germanic group begins with the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. The Proto-Germanic is the linguistic ancestor or the parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE languages between the 15^th and 10^th c. B.C. PG is an entirely pre-historical language. It was never recorded in written form. In the 19^th century it was reconstructed by methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages.

The Old Germanic languages form 3 groups:

• East Germanic;

• North Germanic;

• West Germanic.