26/11/2015
The origin of English Language.
English is a West Germanic language that
originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought
to Britain in the fifth to seventh centuries by
Germanic invaders and settlers from what is
now northwest Germany and the Netherlands.
The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era
developed into Middle English, the language as
spoken between the Norman Conquest and the
late 15th century. A significant influence on
the shaping of Middle English came from
contact with the North Germanic languages
spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered
and colonised parts of Britain during the 8th
and 9th centuries; this contact led to much
lexical borrowing and grammatical
simplification. Another important influence
came from the conquering Normans, who
spoke a form of French called Old Norman ,
which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman .
Many Norman and French loanwords entered
the language in this period, especially in
vocabulary related to the church, the court
system and the government. The system of
orthography that became established during
the Middle English period is by and large still
in use today – later changes in pronunciation,
however, combined with the adoption of
various foreign spellings, mean that the
spelling of modern English words appears
highly irregular.