What languages became English? A Germanic language brought by the Anglo-Saxons, then Norse brought by the Scandinavian Vikings, and then French brought by the Normans.
No language really has a starting point, but you can often see the languages that combined to make them. For example, French, Italian, and Spanish all evolved from Latin, which the Romans carried all across the continent. However, the three languages have since grown apart because of the different influences on them. Italy and Spain were controlled by the Romans for longer than France was, and France had some Germanic invasions that brought in other words and dialects. Spain was also influenced heavily by the Arabic presence in lower Spain that came from just across the sea in Africa.
This path can be seen for English as well. The language we speak now obviously did not start as a fully formed language and you can see the history of England in its route. Homo sapiens have only constantly lived on the British Isles since about 12,000 years ago. Neanderthals did lives there from about 400,000 years ago, but it became too cold, and they all moved south. Then, the climate warmed and the sea rose, cutting Britain off from mainland Europe and no one could get there. When another ice age came, the sea levels dropped, and Britain was connected to Europe via an area called Doggerland that people could cross.
The first language spoken in Britain was by a culture called the Bell Beaker people who arrived there in about 2500 BC. They didn’t write and there are no records of what their language was, so people can only make educated guesses. The language that came after that was Celtic and it was spread by a people called the Celts. They didn’t originate in Britain. They came from central France, and they spread through most of Western Europe and had reached Britain by 1000 BC. Incidentally, their name, Celt, is a Roman name given to them. Most of the original languages spoken across France and Britain were all connected with each other.
The next Language to arrive was Latin, brought by the Romans. As they took over more and more of Britain, they pushed the Celts back and pushed their language with them. Latin became the main language spoken in towns. Celtic was pushed almost out of Britain and it only survived at the extremities, where the Romans couldn’t completely conquer. Forms of Celtic have remained in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Normandy. Roman survived in Britain for about 400 years before the Romans upped and left in AD 410. The people that were still there spoke Latin, or a form called Vulgar Latin, which is a more colloquial form of Latin.
Once the Romans had gone, Roman Britain broke up into smaller tribes again. The people that lived in Scotland, known as the Picts, started to invade down into England to fill the vacuum left by the Romans. Settlers from northern Europe also moved in as well. These people were the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The Angles came from where southern Denmark and northern Germany are now. The Saxons came from northern Germany, below the Angles. And the Jutes came from northern Denmark. They settled all across southern England, in the areas the Romans had controlled. These were all different tribes, but they all spoke different dialects of the same Germanic language. Their dialects mixed and this is what we call Old English. They also gave the name that we still use today: Engla lond (land of the Angles). There are many Old English words that we still use: friend, bread, good, house, thing, arm, be, and many others.
The next language to be assimilated was Latin again. Christianity had taken hold all over Europe and Christian missionaries set their sights on Britain in about 600. They brought Bibles and Latin with them. They also brought the Latin alphabet because Old English had been largely written in runes. They introduced 400 words into Old English that were often connected to religion, such as priest, and school.
Old Norse was the next language to add itself into the mix. Vikings in the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Denmark saw Britian as a land of possibility and set sail for her shores. They started to raid at first, and then began to settle. From AD 865, they tool over large areas of northern England and spread down into southern England, coming into conflict with the Angle-Saxons that lived there. They were slowly pushed back, but their Germanic language, Old Norse, had over 200 years to mix into English. They gave us over 2,00 words, many of which we still use today, such as are, birth, clumsy, die, egg, and knife, along with many more.
The last major addition came from Norman France. In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded and captured England. He became king and he introduced Norman French to England. Norman French came from Normandy, which was a Norse influenced French speaking part of France. The poor people in England continued to speak Old English, but the ruling class and the government spoke French. Often, a conquering country will replace the local language with its own, which is why so many countries in the world speak Spanish, but the Norman French didn’t do that. Old English became the language of the poor workers and French became the language of the rich ruling classes. The two languages mixed, adding about 10,000 new words to the English language. This became known as Middle English, and it was fully formed by the 15th century. Some of the words it gave are beef, faced, stage, embassy, January, and many others. It is the reason why we have so many similar words in English. We often have the Old English word and the French word. For example, kind and gentle, guard and protect, king and royal.
Since Middle English, we had the great vowel shift, where pronunciation changed, but English isn’t affected by any one country. Thanks to the printing press and the worldwide spread of knowledge, from the 16th century onwards, English has been added to by words from many different countries. English has a huge number of loan words. And this is what I learned today.
Image By anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet – This file has been provided by the British Library from its digital collections. It is also made available on a British Library website.Catalogue entry: Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, ff 94r–209v, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30380424
Sources
https://museum.wales/articles/1341/Who-were-the-Celts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Beaker_culture
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/first-britons.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml
https://www.bmck.au/posts/2023/a-comparative-study-of-spanish-italian-french-and-portuguese
https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/language/a-short-history-of-the-english-language
https://blog.duolingo.com/history-of-english-language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_English_origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_French_originhttps://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/56f2519a651eb.pdf