The Descent of the English language

The Descent of the English language

              

              The history of English has been distinguished and denied into three different periods, The period from the arrival of the English in Britain, down to about  1100 is usually called the old English or the Anglo-Saxon period. Following the earliest age, the period from 1100 to 1500 is called the middle English and from 1500 to the present day is called modern English, although migration of the English people from the continent of Europe had started during the 5th and the 6th centuries very few records of English writing is available before 700.

Indo-European family of language:

         

         Our English vocabulary is not to be studied in isolation, but it is related in one way or the other to many languages of the world, the proper beginning therefore is to views the place of English by taking into accountable many other tongues of mankind.

        For example, the people who know German language might have noticed a remarkable similarity between English and German, for instance, the German word “Milch” is very close in sound to the English ‘Milk’, likewise, the German “Wasser” is closer to the word “water” there are many other similarities between different words of German, Dutch, Spanish and English.

        The English language has had a remarkable history, and when we take a sight of historical records of English as a language, we can say that, it is a language, in particular speech of some not to civilized tribe on the continent of Europe along the north sea, of course, it had a still earlier history, going back perhaps to somewhere, in eastern Europe or Western Asia. The most remarkable thing about English language is that how it changed from being the speech of a few small tribes to becoming the major language spoken on earth.

       Considering language in isolation, we can say that it is a system of conventional vocal signs by mean of which human beings communicate, language includes the aspects of signs, vocals, conventional speech patterns, and communication.

       As we discussed earlier English, German, Dutch, and Danish are almost like in terms of pronunciation on the basis of this we may conclude that the similarity among these language are due to borrowing, because there languages are spoken by people living relatively closer to one another but that is not the case.

       If we extent the similarity within languages to Spanish, French, Latin and Greek, we can see that there are further questions that arises in so far as the patterning of English is concern. The resemblance between all the eight languages, is that they are the descents of a single parent language.

     Thus, Most of the major languages of Europe and some of the languages of Asia belong to one family known as Indo - European family of languages.

       The original Indo-European parent language became dead long before written records have existence, it was spoken by pre-historic people, whose homeland was somewhere in eastern Europe, it was perhaps between 3000 to 2000 BC, and it was during that time the people started migrating to other places, during the centuries that followed the Indo-Europeans moved rest world, in Europe and South countries in Persia and India, and it suppressed all the local languages.

        It is believed that the only language that has survived from the Pre-Indo-European tongues of Europe is “Basque” (Language of Spain Local), but as we know the language is constantly changing and as the various groups of Indo-Europeans became isolated from one another in Europe as well as in Asia and the languages began to evolve in their own way in various regions.

      Eventually a number of distinct came out and there was no longer one common tongue but a series of completely different languages. Which further produced  many more languages, from which some languages died totally and other languages gave birth to the newer ones.

      The modern descendent of the common Indo-European parent may be deride into eight principal group of branches...

1) Teutonic:

         We should first of all consider the Teutonic branch as it belongs to English, taking about the primitive Teutonic  branch can be geographically devided into three further languages, east north and west (three parts)

        The east Teutonic  languages did not survive in modern times, their principal representative language was Gothic, which is to be found in the New Testament. The North Teutonic languages are spoken today, in the Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Norway Sweden and Iceland. West Teutonic is represented by German, Dutch and English.

2) Italic:

        When Rome was only a small village, there were several Italic languages having equal status with Latin, but as Rome achieved a dominant position in the ancient world all these languages disappointed. The modern descendent of Latin usually called roman languages, show by their geographical distribution something of the extant of Roman Empire. In France and Spain the Roman conquest resulted in the complete displacement of the earlier languages by Latin.

3) Hellenic: (Greek Culture) 

         The Hellenic branch of Indo European family is today represented by modern Greek, which is the descendent of the classical Greek of Plato and Aristotle, and the common Greek dialect of the eastern meditation area in which the New Testament was written.

4) Celtic languages:

       More than 2000 years ago, the Celtic languages were spoken throughout a wide area of western Europe generally in France, Spain and Great Britain but through the Roman conquest Latin replaced all the Celtic language, but still Celtic language s exists in Ireland and Wales (Welsh, UK).

5) Deltoslavic : 

         The Slavic languages are spoken in Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The Deltaic groups do not matter as much It compresses mainly Latvian languages, which was absorb by the soviet union 1940.

6) Indo-Iranian: 

        The oldest literary work in any Indo European language is written in an Indian language Sanskrit, as the earliest 1500 BC, many books were published in this language Sanskrit has always been of great interest to all the linguistics. Another language was Romany, it was the language was thy gypsy who roamed about in Europe and America but their native was long ago in the north western part of India.

7) Armenian: 

      Now, no longer used, its modern Armenian version is spoken in Turkey and Russia.

8) Albanian: 

       The only surviving representative of the Albanian which is spoken in North Greece.

Conclusion:

       Because all of these languages have come from a common ancestors they are called cognate language and the similarities between them which are not only of vocabulary but also of grammar. We must remember however that Indo-European is only one of a number of language families throughout the world.