Early Developments

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The History of English: An Overview

The history of the development of English has to be sensitive to the differing environments (intellectual and
technological, political and physical) that characterized the different periods of that development. English in 470 AD
was used by very different people for very different purposes than the language that was evident in 1389 AD.
English comes into existence through the recognition of a number of tribal mercenaries over against a settled people
(the Roman Britons), who are hiring them to protect them from the Irish (Scots) and the Picts. These people had no
one name, but they were members of tribal groups that spoke mutually intelligible languages and chief among them
were the Angles, Saxons and Juteswhich all seem to connect with the Danish area of Jutland and the northern
German tribes of Saxony. Their unified identity was presented to them by their enemies, much as we discern a
united Mafia, while the Mafiosi see a changing alliance of different families and strong men.
The Roman armies in Britain returned to the continent in the early 5th century (400s) and the defenseless Imperial
citizens and cities, who remained, hired guards from the Barbarians even as their colleagues on the mainland were
doing. The barbarians were very like our undocumented workers, eager to please and looking for a better life. When
they found such a life, they naturally brought the wife and kids and the relatives, and this started to overwhelm the
local service providers. The guards could very soon take over the shop, and since they had control of the seas, there
was little the local folk could do about preventing them from bringing in greater numbers of immigrants. Numbers
started to tell and the local mayors and militia tried unsuccessfully to stem the tide and even reverse it. This was part
of the legend of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
The newly successful German hired troops acted like all such bands: when the civil law and institutions were strong,
they obeyed; when the civil institutions were weak, they flouted them and took what they could. To the Romans,
they were pirates, merchants, taxpayers, tax collectors, and prospective citizens all at the same time.
As the power and wealth of the locals caved in, the intruders found it necessary to make their own economy. They
founded small kingdoms or bands run along kinship lines, usually speaking the same dialect and worshiping
similar gods. Over time, these small kingdoms became a heptarchy (seven semi-independent, but interacting seats of
government with much the same law and cultural traits).
On the continent and in the newly Christianized barbarian homelands, the church was taking on many of the
institutional roles that the Imperial bureaucracy had performed. Kingdoms and counties found it very useful to have
tax rolls and other benefits of written communication. The new English kingdoms were offered these benefits by
missionaries from Rome in 597, but a number of the Northern kingdoms had already accepted services from Irish
monks, who themselves had only begun to write and copy books since their conversion by St Patrick and were
establishing monasteries in Ireland and on the West coast of Britain.
These two sources of training provided the English with a number of well-educated clerics, who could use the
official ecclesiastical languages, Latin and Greek (the seventh Archbishop of Canterbury was from Tarsus in
Anatolia, the home city of St. Paul). These clerics were also active in the writing and standardizing of two civil
tongues, Anglo-Saxon and Old Irish.
By the beginnings of the 8th and 9th centuries, the Insular English and Irish kingdoms were quite rich in learning and
commercial trade; they were protected by the sea, and they were ready to return the favors that the continent had
bestowed on them.
The Carolingian Empire in Gaul, now called France, central Germany and Italy required a great deal of bureaucratic
refurbishing. Most of the older institutions had fallen into disrepair and the local resources were hardly sufficient to
set up the chancelleries that a multi-ethnic Empire required. The English and Irish scholars, such as St. Boniface
(Originally Wynfrith--English missionary and martyr to the pagan Germans), Alcuin (English teacher of
Charlemagne himself, John Scotus Erigena (Irish translator of Platonic texts),Willibrord (English founder of the
chief Luxembourg monastery), and Virgil of Strasbourg (Irish bishop of the Rhineland), founded and expanded
continental monasteries and schools through Europe. Indeed, much of what we have as English or Irish manuscripts
have a Continental rather than an Insular origin. The languages used in these institutions were becoming the
Romance tongues that we are all familiar with, French, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan, but there were German tongues
also being developed, especially Saxon, High German, and Low German-Dutch.

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Thus, English was a written language (6th through 11th centuries) well before any of the other Germanic tongues,
except for Gothic, which was written in a Greek based alphabet in Anatolia in the 4th century. This preeminence of
English is often forgotten because the next episode in the story is one of tragedy and great political and economic
confusion.
Anglo Saxon or Old English was a largely standardized language, whose spelling and pronunciation varied wildly
from the actual spoken dialects of the British Isles. It had a large literature of ballads, epics, laws, pedagogical
manuals, religious and philosophical works, and translations from all the ancient languages. The vocabulary was
heavily influenced by this translation activity and many Church based words had been borrowed from Latin and
Greek (bishop, church, priest, etc.).
Samples of Old English dialects:
Matthew 6.9 Lindisfarne Gloss: (Northumbrian, circa 950 AD)
Fader urer u ar I u bist in heofnum I in
Pater noster, qui es in caelis

heofnas, sie gehalgad noma in, to-cyme ric

Sanctificetur nomen tuum; Adveniat regnum

in; sie willo in su is in heofne ond in earo;

tuum: Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.

hlaf userne ofer wistlic sel us todg ond forgef

Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie: et dimitte

us scylda usra su uoe forgefon scyldgum usum;

nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.

ond ne inl usih in costunge, ah gefrig usich

Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

Sed libera nos

from yfle.
a malo.

Matthew 6.9 (WSCp, 11th c.)

Fder ure u e eart on heofonum; Si in nama gehalgod to becume in rice gewure in willa on eoran
swa swa on heofonum. urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us todg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we
forgyfa urum gyltendum and ne geld u us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele solice.
(Corpus Christi College MS 140, ed. Liuzza (1994))

1 [....]g fder, u e on heofonum eardast,

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Lord's Prayer I (Exeter Book,10th c.)

2 geweorad wuldres dreame. Sy inum weorcum halgad

3 noma nia bearnum; u eart nergend wera.
4 Cyme in rice wide, ond in rdfst willa
5 arred under rodores hrofe, eac on on rumre foldan.
6 Syle us to dge domfstne bld,
7 hlaf userne, helpend wera,
8 one singalan, sofst meotod.
9 Ne lt usic costunga cnyssan to swie,
10 ac u us freodom gief, folca waldend,
11 from yfla gewham, a to widan feore.
(The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp and Dobbie 1936)
Comments on the examples:
Note that the differences between texts are not as great as those you will see in the Middle English examples. The
first translation was made into Northumbrian, the Northern dialect, which is the ancestor of modern Northern
English dialects including the written standard tongue Lalands. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by
Irish monks and was slow to come under the control of the Roman see in Canterbury. This is one reason why the
forces of standardization did not work as thoroughly.
The next two are very much the same orthographically, and represent the standard Wessex (West Saxon) tongue that
was fixed in the time of Alfred (9th and 10th centuries). The distinction between them is that one is a strict translation
and the other is in verse. We also see that earlier texts have freer syntax than later texts, which are moving toward
the strict word order of Middle and Early Modern English and of the loss of word inflections.
The Norse Invasions and the Results of Mixed Speech Communities:
As we suggested in the lecture, the Vikings were not merely piratical despoilers: almost all of the cities of Northern
Europe and the British Isles, which do not have Roman origins, were the creation of Vikings (Cork, Dublin,
Aberdeen, Moscow, Vilnius, etc.). However, the Vikings were also quite destructive in their early marauding: the
exposed monastic institutions of England and Ireland were devastated and pillaged. The same sort of thing happened
on the Continent, where Viking bands settled in Normandy. Thus, the learned period of cross channel education
came to an end.
The Vikings were enormously important culturally, yet they did not impose their languages on the territories that
they ruled. Vocabulary items became part of the Norman French dialect even as similar words entered English (in
English e.g. law, egg, die, etc.). However, Norse morphological and syntactic patterns also influenced English,
which was not very far from the common Norse spoken by the invaders. Certainly simplifications occurred because
the common vocabulary often had variant endings.
The English negotiated a peaceful division of the land between the earlier English invaders and the more recent
Norsethe so-called Danelaw. Most of the strong Danish-Norse linguistic influence happens in these regions in the
North of England and the South of Scotland. These influences include new pronouns such as she and they and
new verbal inflections, such as the s of the 3rd person singular, present tense and hard g where English dialects
have y.

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In the end the whole of England became part of Canutes Danish Empire and the intermarriage between English and
Norse/Norman families set the stage for the wars of succession after the death of the childless, Edward the
Confessor.
The English Civil tongue was the interpretive instrument of the Clerical Latin. The need for so many books in the
English suggests that reading and writing were more common in the Insular environment (England, Scotland and
Ireland) than on the Continent.
Example of Northern dialect Middle English that shows Norse influences:
Lord's Prayer: circa 1250 AD, MS Cotton Cleopatra B. VI)
Ure fadir, at hart in hevene. Halged be i name, with giftis seuene samin cume i kingdom, i will in
here als in hevene be don; vre bred at lastes ai gyve it hus is hilke dai, and vre mis-dedis u forgyve
hus, als we forgyve aim at misdon hus; and leod us in-tol na fandinge, bot freis us fra alle iuele inge.
Amen
Comments on the example:
The clear use of th- pronouns, -s instead of eth in the 3rd person, and g- for y- marks this as a Northern dialect
version. Note also that there are no Norman French vocabulary items at all. Also note that an intrusive h- seems to
appear on most unstressed, vowel initial words (but earth has an h as well). Finally, the word in-tol seems an
infection of into with till.
1066 and all that:
The Normans defeated Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, and the rest is our Romance laden tongue. The
orthography became French and a number of OE spelling/pronunciation rules were explained by the new French
spellings. OE letters such as f and s had two pronunciations depending upon the surrounding sound. They were
voiceless if initial and in voiceless environments and voiced if within the words surrounded by voiced consonants or
vowels. This explains Norman spellings such as wife/wives, where OE had wif/wifes.
Other mysteries of pronunciation are explained: hlaford/hlafweard, hlaefdige, hlafaetan (pl.) are OE titles of nobility
that are folded into the Norman French ranks, but they are spelled lord, levedi (later, Lady) and companions (bread
sharers). The meanings are clearer from the etymological spelling of the OE, but the pronunciation had obviously
changed in the years after the fixing of the spelling in the Wessex dialect. The same happens with words like hussy,
which are the natural outcome of OE huswif.
The new Civil tongue of the kingdom is Norman French, but in the provinces English of many different dialects is
alive and well; however, the dialects and orthographies vary wildly.
Chaucers Nun and her knowledge of French from an English school:
Ther was also a Nonne, a PRIORESSE,
That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy;
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Hir gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy;

And she was cleped Madame Eglentyne.
Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely,
And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

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After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,

For Frenssh of Parys was to hir unknowe.

She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,

Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe;
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At mete wel ytaught was she with alle:

Wel koude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe

That no drope ne fille upon hir brist.
In curteisie was set ful muche hir list.
Hire over-lippe wyped she so clene
That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene

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Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.

Ful semely after hir mete she raughte.
And sikerly, she was of greet desport,
And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port,
And peyned hir to countrefete cheere

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Of court, and been estatlich of manere,

And to ben holden digne of reverence.
But, for to speken of hir conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous
She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous

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Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.

Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But soore weep she if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte;

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And al was conscience, and tendre herte.

Ful semyly hir wympul pynched was,
Hire nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas,
Hir mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;

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It was almoost a spanne brood, I trowe;

For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.
Ful fetys was hir cloke, as I was war;
Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,

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An theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,

On which ther was first write a crowned A,
And after Amor vincit omnia.

Only the defeat of the English in the Wars in France induces the change of Civil tongue to English and the new
fixed dialect is the chancellery English of London, a third dialect center. This is the tongue of Chaucer and can be
illustrated by the following Wycliffite versions of the Pater Noster:

Tracts: Pore Caitif (c1400)

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Oure fader that art in heuenis halowid be thi name; thi reume or kingdom come to the. Be thi wille don in
herthe as it is doun in heuene. Yeve to vs to-day oure eche dayes bred. And foryeve to vs oure dettis, that is
oure synnys, as we foryeuen tu oure dettouris, that is to men that han synned in vs. And lede vs not in-to
temptacion, but delyuere vs from euyl. Amen, so be it.
(Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.751, cited in Lollard Sermons, ed. Cigman (1989:xxiv))
Sermons: First Sunday in Advent (c1425)
... as Crist ha taut vs in oure Pater Noster, seyinge: Dimitte nobis, et cetera. at is: 'Forgeue to vs oure
trespaces, as we don to oure trespasouris.'
(British Library Additional MS 41321, in Lollard Sermons 1.115-117, ed. Cigman (1989))
Comments on the Examples:
The Southern traits of th for 3rd person and y- for g- in give are clear, but what is more noticeable is the number of
French terms that have entered the local language: reume (realm), dettouris, temptacion, trespaces, etc. Note also
that the syntax is straightforwardly modern.
The Great Vowel Shift:
The shifting of vowels is an on-going process during the 15th century and it is largely completed by the beginning of
the 16th century although some of these changes continue into the 19th century and happen only in the British Isles.
Any one learning the Latin, Spanish, French, Russian, or Hungarian cardinal vowels knows that they are pronounced
a /a/, e /e/, i /i/, o /o/and u /u/, but that in English they are quite rehashed: a /ey/, e /iy/, i /ay/, o /ow/, and u /juw/.
This shift occurs in tense vowels, leaving most of the lax vowels largely the same as those in other European
languages: //, //, and /o/. Obviously, //, // and // are modified from simpler sounds.
http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm

The English language at this juncture remains a very geographically limited tongue. Like most of the languages of
Europe local speech and writing has local use, but for international communication Old French (the Lingua Franca)
or Latin are used depending on the Civil or Clerical purpose of the text.
Many French literary works are written in England by Englishmen, just as the histories and travel books of the
Crusades were all written in French (Marco Polo as well).
Shakespeares Mowbray (Richard II, Act 1, Scene 2) speaks the plight of a man who is not multilingual in the late
14th century and is sent into exile from his native England:
A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,
And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth:
A dearer merit, not so deep a maim
As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness' hands.
The language I have learn'd these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego:

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And now my tongue's use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony:
Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,
Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;
And dull unfeeling barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now:
What is thy sentence then but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?
Shakespeares Londoners would have been little better off than Mowbray had they attempted to speak
English on the Continent. Yet things were changing and many of those changes were due to the invention of
printing and the Protestant Reformation.
Early Modern English:
Printing made one book available to thousands of readers at all but the same time. It created a community
of readers, who could refer to the same source using the same pagination, index, and table of contents. The
very number of books allowed many more people to aspire to reading and writing; moreover, the topics that
books tackled were as various as building printing presses (with detailed blue prints and illustrations) to
learning Basque.
The Protestant Reformation split Europe into religious camps and reorganized the dynastic marriages of
almost the entire Continent. The English would now turn to Danes and Germans, and Spanish and French
marriages would no longer be favoredthey would lead to Charles I losing his head in 1649.
The wars also brought refugees into London, especially from Italy, France and Spain, while English
Catholic and Dissenter refugees made their ways to France, Italy and the Netherlands (where religious
freedom was more or less recognized). English was spreading into Europe as a tongue to be learned by
those who wanted to do business in Britain, and refugees themselves found it necessary to create the ESL
market, especially if they were long-term inhabitants.
Thus, books for learning English became more widespread and the very making of books tended to
standardize the spelling and pronunciation of the language. As translation of the Latin and Greek classics
became good ways to keep the presses humming, many Latinate words became English. The entire Latin
vocabulary (already larded with Greek philosophical and scientific terms) was subsumed into the English
vocabulary over the next few centuries.
Examples:
Book of Common Prayer (1559)
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it
is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that
trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen.
(Morning prayer; modern spelling edition, ed. Booty (1976))
The Geneva Bible (1602)
Our Father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done euen in earth, as it is in heauen.
Giue vs this day our daily bread.
And forgiue vs our debts, as we also forgiue our debters.

(1607 printing, ed. Sheppard (1989))

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And lead vs not into tentation, but deliuer vs from euill: for thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the
glory for euer. Amen.

The King James Bible (1611)

Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen.
Giue vs this day our daily bread.
And forgiue vs our debts, as we forgiue our debters.
And lead vs not into temptation, but deliuer vs from euill: For thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the
glory, for euer, Amen.
(word-for-word reprint, Thomas Nelson Publishers
Commentary:
The letters u/v and uu/w were alternate forms of the same lettereven as i/j were not necessarily
distinguished. This mixture was a consequence of Latin practice. It has nothing to do with the
pronunciation. Note that aventure, tentation, and perfet were respelled with etymological, silent d, p,
and c, which were subsequently pronounced by English as Second Language speakers on the American
prairies: the immigrant Germans, Swedes and Czechs, who learned English from Websters spellers and
readers.
The orthography is the creation of typesetters, not of academics. Before the 18th century, formatting a page
(justifying a line, etc.) was accomplished by using manuscript abbreviations (& for et or and, etc. for and
so on, e.g. for for example) and by the adding of unetymological silent-e. Most if not all of these remain
with us and have to be memorized by children as exceptions to the pronunciation and spelling rules. Only a
few new simplifying rules have been added over the yearsoften after a Revolution, when school curricula
are in the power of political hacks and ideologues.
English as a World Language:
Outside of England, various differing dialects of English were transplanted to the Americas, Africa, India,
etc. Yet, the general rule is that the place of origin is the place of greatest varietythis is true of plant and
animal genes and of human languages and other memes (cultural models).
The Americas had far fewer varieties of English than were present in England itself. Moreover, the
tendency to standardize was even more compelling as the number of non-English speakers was very large.
The kings of England were of foreign German origin after Queen Anne Stuart (1714) and the Georges had
to unite a fractured kingdom and fight wars against France, Austria and Spain. They were very keen on
creating a new nationality, the British nationality, that united Scots, Irishmen, Englishmen and various
German Hessians, Saxons, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, etc. into one Imperial nation. As they conquered
French Canada and French India, the task became ever more difficult. Yet, dictionary writing, newspaper
production and propaganda actually accomplished the necessary collusion that defeated Napoleon, while
the American Revolution reminded the British just what they were most afraid might happen on a larger
stage.
Webster respelled the Language in order to thumb his nose at the Evil Empire. American standardized
pronunciation shifted from Philadelphia to Boston to Chicago as wealth and population shiftedmany of
whom were not native English speakers.
Where English was used as a political language of convenience (India and Africa), it was frequently far
slower to change because of its special and narrow focus and status. Where English became the languages
of slaves, themselves coming from many linguistic stocks, the language started as a pidgin spoken by the
masters to the servants, which the latter creolized making it a full language that could discuss love as well
as work.

Book of Common Prayer (1928)

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Examples of Modern World English:

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it
is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who
trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and
the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
The New Testament in Modern English (1963, tr. Phillips)
Our Heavenly Father, may your name be honored;
May your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Forgive us what we owe to you, as we have also forgiven those who owe anything to us.
Keep us clear of temptation, and save us from evil.
The Alba House New Testament (1970, tr. Condon)
Our Father in Heaven,
let your holy name be known,
let your kingdom come,
and your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today the bread that we need,
and forgive us our wrongs,
as we forgive those
who have done wrong to us.
Do not lead us into trial,
but save us from evil.
A New Pater Noster:
Heavenly Father, your name is blessed throughout the universe. Your rule and command should be realized
on earth as everywhere else.
Provide us with our daily needs. Forgive our misdeeds against your commands as we forgive others'
misdeeds against us.
Do not leave us in difficult circumstances, where we might do what is wrong, and when we fall into such
traps, help us to escape their consequences.
Bureaucratese/UN English Jargon:
Our Universal Chairperson in the metaphysical realm, Your identity enjoys the highest rating on a
prioritized selectivity scale. May Your sphere of influence take on reality parameters. May Your mindset be
implemented on this planet, as in the metaphysical realm. Allow us at this point in time and on a per diem
basis a sufficient and balanced dietary food intake, and rationalize a disclaimer against our disparaging

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feedback to others. Deprogram our negative potentialities, but desensitize the impact of the counter
productive force. For Yours is the dominant sphere of influence, the ultimate capability, and the highest
qualitative analysis rating at this stage of human history and extending infinitely beyond any limited time
frame. End of Message.
Anonymous
Commentary:
The first clearly displays a reluctance to depart from tradition, yet as we continue we find some very simple
rewordings of the Greek in the clearest Englishsome more academic than others. The last is a bit of fun, but it is
also far too possible to be taken seriously. This is the use of language to obfuscate and confuse; one of its universal
potentials that is now finding its most consistent use in the advertising world, which now completely colors the
Media.
Mr. Strohmeyer