Where did English come from?
The English language as we speak, read and write today has evolved over the years and has come into being. It has changed and been edited and omitted several times in order to become what we know it to be today. To understand where the language has come from, we need to reverse psychology these changes. That will help us make sense of its origins.
LATIN AND ITS TRACES IN ENGLISH:
Modern English has many of its words derived from Latin, which was predominantly a romance language. Particularly French and Spanish which have been derived from Latin itself. When the Norman Invasion of England took place in 1066, the French language speaking Normans took over England. This resulted in the transfer of language and speech which gave The English a lot of French and Latin vocabulary to learn and also implement into the traditionally spoken English. This language is known as – Old English.
LANGUAGE OF BEOWULF:
This type of Old English language is more understandable if one knows a little bit of German. The reason being that the roots of the language are in the Germanic Language Family. This form of old English was brought to England in the 5th and 6th century by – Angles, Saxons and Jutes. This form of dialect spoken by them was known as – Anglo Saxon. Then came the Viking invaders in the 11th century who implemented Old Norse to the langue already spoken. Therefore, the English language is a culmination of French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages.
PROTO GERMANIC LANGUAGE:
One can conclude that many languages such as – Spanish and Portuguese came from the common roots of Latin. Similarly, the languages such as – English, Swedish and German have come from the common roots of Proto Germanic Family. The type of Proto Germanic Language was predominantly used in the 500 B.C.E. Furthermore, the Proto Germanic Languages can find its traces in an even older language – Proto-Indo-European, which was used 6000 years ago. The regions that used these languages back then were – modern-day Ukraine and Russia. All the languages spoken in Europe and Southern and Western Asia can be traced back to this family of language. English can also be related to Hindi, Persian and also the Celtic languages.
It is intriguing to learn the history of the languages that so very predominately used around the world and the fact that everyone today has the same root of spoken languages which traces back to 6000 years ago.
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