The History of the English Language, all but just Words.

 By: Fernando Ramirez

English, a language spoken by more than four hundred and seventy million people in forty-five different nations around the world, this makes it the second most spoken language out there, and those numbers may be subject to a radical increase as new barriers are broken and more people are reached. Many words and terms have been added and subtracted from this tongue but still it has proven to stay alive throughout the nations and through the centuries. A language as strong as this one must contain a present, a past, and a future. A beginning, and maybe even an end.

English is part of the Indo-European family of languages. The word English comes from the old word “Engaland” that means “The land of the Angles”. The Angles were one of the first three tribes that emigrated from what today we know as Northern Germany and Denmark and then settled in England. That is important to the history of English because English itself originated from those Germanic tribes in the fifth century and now we use a continuation from that original dialect. (Emerson, 59)

English should be might as well be divided into three periods, old, middle, and modern English because of the great changes that have been made to it. Old English which extended until around the 1100’s, Middle English which extended from the 1100’s to the 1500’s, and finnaly something like what we know today that would be modern English which went from the 1500’s to present time. So much change went in between those periods that they could actually be divided themselves.  For example, an English-speaker from the 1200’s would not be able to understand one from the fifth century, nor would he be able to understand one from today. And this happens to every language just because that’s part of our nature as humans, we add and subtract things to virtually everything to either improve it or unknowingly make it worse. Although the language has gone through so many changes in how it is pronounced, the spelling of the words have changed very little through out the years, and because of that the spelling can be misleading when trying to pronounce the language. After the old English was somehow stable, many French words were added to the dialect so it would be right to say that the French language influenced the growth of the English language itself and also as modern English progresses, another language that has influenced English is Spanish.

Here’s a list of words that came from the French and Spanish languages:

-Abbreviation (French)

-Absolute (French)

-Campaign (French)

-Change (French)

-Barbecue (Spanish)

-Mustang (Spanish)

-Ranch (Spanish)

-Tuna (Spanish)

            It is very interesting how different tongues influence others and for the most part they go un-noticeable to the common individual. And also how these “loaned” words are adapted to fit the language so well.