ASSIGNMENT ON HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT ON HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HANOI,2020 REFERENCES 1.Itc-english.com 2.oldenglishteaching.art.gla.ac.uk 3.linguisticsociety.org 4.en.wikipedia.org 5.The book: Assignment on history and development of the English language CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION 1.1.Rationale English spread everywhere under colonialism during the prosperous period of the British Empire, from the British Islands to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the United States and some places where English became a "second language".The most important and increasingly used by the learners, English has evolved over a period of more than 1,400 years with two periods of "Old English and Modern English" Since then there have been a lot of changes between periods, so I chosed this topic to show the difference between the two periods: ancient English and modern English 1.2.Aims and objectives of the study -Finding out the differences between the stages of English development Through vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar 1.3.Reseach questions 1.How did Old English differ from Modern English? Can you explain this with reference to both grammar and vocabulary? Based on what you know about the development of English from its earliest inception, can you speculate on how the English language might develop in the future? What kinds of changes might we expect to see and what factors affect the extent to which you can make such predictions? 1.4.Methods of the study Method of theoretical research: Based on the information and database available in documents and documents to draw scientific conclusions for the research problem Including methods: Methods of analysis and theoretical synthesis CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1.Old ENGLISH Old English or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages It was probably brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by AngloNorman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period,[3] although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon Like other old Germanic languages, it is very different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand without study Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, and word order is much freer.The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system, but from about the 8th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet 2.2 Modern English Modern English (sometimes New English or NE (ME) as opposed to Middle English and Old English) is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed in roughly 1550 With some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern English, or more specifically, are referred to as using Early Modern English or Elizabethan English English was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, the Indian subcontinent, Africa, Australia and New Zealand through colonisation by the British Empire Modern English has many dialects spoken in many countries throughout the world, sometimes collectively referred to as the anglosphere These dialects include American English, Australian English, British English (containing English English, Welsh English and Scottish English), Canadian English, Caribbean English, Hiberno-English, Indian English, Pakistani English, Nigerian English, New Zealand English, Philippine English, Singaporean English, and South African English According to the Ethnologue, there are almost billion speakers of English as a first or second language English is spoken as a first or a second language in many countries, with the largest number of native speakers being in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland; there are also large populations in India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Southern Africa It "has more non-native speakers than any other language, is more widely dispersed around the world and is used for more purposes than any other language" Its large number of speakers, plus its worldwide presence, have made English a common language ("lingua franca") "of the airlines, of the sea and shipping, of computer technology, of science and indeed of (global) communication generally" CHAPTER 3: Old English Differ from Modern English Old English happened to be a very highly inflectional language; but then Old English underwent a series of changes, as a result of which Modern English is almost devoid of inflections.Old English and New ( or Modern ) English are not two different entities Old English kept on changing until it became what today we call Modern English So, Modern English is merely a continuation of Old English ( It is the same thing with any other language), and Old English was the precursor of Modern English Just to give you a crude analogy, I am the same person as I was forty years ago; only I changed physically, and intellectually 3.1 Grammatical differences -The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more inflected As an old Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system that is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as the umlaut Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fully inflected with four grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), and a vestigial instrumental, two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) First- and secondperson personal pronouns also had dual forms for referring to groups of two people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms The instrumental case was somewhat rare and occurred only in the masculine and neuter singular It was often replaced by the dative Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agreed with their antecedent nouns in case, number and gender Finite verbs agreed with their subject in person and number -Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of IndoEuropean in favor of analytic constructions The personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the more extensive Germanic case system of Old English) For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive or English possessive" Eight "word classes" or "parts of speech" are commonly distinguished in English: nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions Nouns form the largest word class, and verbs the second-largest Unlike many Indo-European languages, English nouns not have grammatical gender 3.2 Differences in Vocabulary 3.2.1 Old English Surviving vocabulary of Old English (OE) is relatively small The Thesaurus of Old English (TOE), with which you will be working, contains almost 34,000 different word forms, whereas a modern desk dictionary might contain 80,000 An example of multiple meaning or polysemy is OE ecg, pronounced in the same way as its Modern English (Mod E.) Much of the vocabulary of Mod E derives from OE This applies particularly to our core vocabulary: common words in everyday use for fundamental concepts Examples include the natural world (earth, sea, wind, fire, water; sun, moon, star); people (man, woman, child, father, mother, brother, daughter); the body (hand, arm, elbow, finger, foot, nose, mouth); and other basic concepts such as food, drink; heaven, hell; friend, neighbour; love, good, evil; hot, cold; after, over, under However, not all words which look alike necessarily refer to the same thing – such misleading words are often called false friends An example pair is OE bēor / Mod E beer Although both refer to alcoholic drinks, the nature of the drink is quite different 3.2.2 Modern English In the early period of Modern English, Europe saw a new upsurge of learning ancient Greek and Roman classics This is known in history as the Renaissance In modern English, word endings were mostly lost with just a few exceptions It can be concluded that English has evolved from a synthetic language (Old English) to the present analytic language Compare the following examples: 　　Old 　　Middle 　　Modern 　　eorn- ian 　　mon- a lern- en 　　learn 　　mone- e moon 　　stan- as 　　ston- es 　　stones 　　sun- ne 　　sun- ne 　　sun 　　sun- u 　　sun- e 　　sun - Creation refers to the formation of new words by using the existing materials, namely roots, affixes and other elements The major means of word-building will be discussed in the chapter to follow In modern times, this is the most important way of vocabulary expansion, e.g.: supercomputer ,super-rich ,super-fit ,colaholic ,chocaholic ,newscast sportcast 10 CHAPTER 4: ENGLISH CHANGING AND DEVELOPING IN THE FUTURE 4.1 The Changes of English Yes, and so is every other human language! Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users This isn't a bad thing; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV As long as the needs of language users continue to change, so will the language The change is so slow that from year to year we hardly notice it, except to grumble every so often about the ‘poor English’ being used by the younger generation! However, reading Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it would be like reading a different language 4.1.1 Why does it change? Language changes for several reasons First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently Consider texting: originally it was called text messaging, because it allowed one person to send another text rather than voice messages by phone As that became more common, people began using the shorter form text to refer to both the message and the process, as in I just got a text or I'll text Sylvia right now Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young adults As young people interact with others their own age, their language grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are different from those of the older generation Some have a short life span (heard groovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole 11 4.2 The Development of English As the world develops in terms of educational standards, more and more people are choosing to study English as a second language In this day and age, the opportunities that are available to you if you can read, speak, and write in English are much more desirable than other languages The potential for jobs, to expand on your knowledge, and to generally speak with more of the world’s population will all improve when capable of communicating in English English is also gaining popularity thanks to advancements in technology and computing English dominates the technology industry, with the majority of software’s, operating systems, websites and programmes all written in languages based off of English With technology playing more and more of an important role in our lives, English will become more and more important English has so many diverse people learning it around the globe, making it almost a “must-know” language these days With the influence the English language already has across the world, its easy to see English becoming a universal language of the future 12 CHAPTER 5:CONCLUSION English is the largest language by number of speakers, and the third mostspoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers It is estimated that there are over billion speakers of English.English is the majority native language in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch English has a vast vocabulary, though counting how many words any language has is impossible English speakers are called "Anglophones" Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent marking pattern, with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order and a complex syntax Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation The variation among the accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions—in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, idioms, grammar, and spelling—can often be understood by speakers of different 13 dialects, but in extreme cases can lead to confusion or even mutual unintelligibility between English speakers The English language has shaped the world in a positive way, allowing useful and easier communications between people, parties and businesses Most of the top universities in the world are in English speaking countries and are very desirable to attend Most of the time, to study abroad in an Englishspeaking country, you need to take a lengthy test that will ensure that you can communicate fluently and won’t require a translator for your studies As English becomes a global language, its importance will only increase Some countries have even made it mandatory for English to be taught as second language in school TABLE OF CONTENTS 14 Chapter 1:Introduction…………………………… 1.1 Rationale……………………………………….3 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study………………3 1.3 Reseach questions…………………………… 1.4 Methods of study……………………………….3 Chapter 2:Literature review……………………….5 2.1 Old English……………………………………5 2.2 Modern English……………………………… Chapter 3:Old English Differ from Modern English …………………………………………………… 3.1 Grammatical differences………………………8 3.2 Differences in vocabulary…………………… Chapter 4:English Changing and Developing in The Future ……………………………………………………11 4.1 The changes of English………………………11 4.1.1 Why does it change? 11 4.2 The development of English…………………12 Chapter 5:Conclusion…………………………….13 15 ... passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation The variation among the accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions—in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes... areas of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations It is the most... second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are