Basic Information
English belongs to the Indo-European language family, specifically to the Germanic branch (together with, for example, German, Swedish, Dutch, etc.). The beginnings of English date back to the 5th century, when tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded Britain and settled there. Before the Anglo-Saxons, Britain had been inhabited by other peoples, such as the Beaker People, the Celts, and the Romans. These groups, however, did not influence today’s English very much. Celtic languages left only a handful of words, such as Thames or Avon. Latin, spoken by the Romans, had a greater impact, but most Latin words entered English later, mainly through French and scholarly use, rather than directly during the Roman occupation.
The first stage of English, called Old English, was the language of the Anglo-Saxons, who spoke a variety of Germanic dialects. Old English was a synthetic language (see below). For several centuries it changed only slowly. The main external influence was Old Norse, the Scandinavian language of the Vikings, who raided and settled parts of Britain between the 8th and 11th centuries. Since Old Norse was also a Germanic language, many of its words were easily adopted into Old English.
A major change occurred at the end of the 11th century. In 1066, the Normans, led by William the Conqueror, invaded Britain and defeated the Anglo-Saxon king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The Normans spoke a dialect of Old French, and together with their language they brought new culture, administration, and institutions. As a result, a Germanic and a Romance language mixed and produced what we now call Middle English. For a modern reader, Middle English is much more understandable than Old English. During this period, English gradually lost most of its inflections and became increasingly analytic.
At the end of the 15th century, the Renaissance reached Britain, along with the invention of the printing press. This brought important cultural and linguistic changes. Books became much more accessible to ordinary people. English also borrowed many words from other languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek. From this period we speak of Modern English, although Early Modern English (the language of Shakespeare) was still very different from the English of today.
Languages that have influenced English
- 40% Anglo-Saxon (Old English)
- 30% French
- 15% Norse
- 7.5% Latin
- 5% Greek
- 2.5% other languages
How many words are there in English today?
The Oxford English Dictionary has about 300,000 entries, not including many scientific and technical terms. This makes English the language with the largest vocabulary. An educated English speaker, however, actively uses about 30,000 words.
Synthetic and Analytic Languages
There are two types of languages: synthetic and analytic.
- Synthetic languages, such as Czech or German, use a lot of
inflection (many different forms of one word depending on case, number, tense,
etc.). For example, in Czech the noun pes has the forms psa, psovi,
pse, psem, whereas English has only dog. Similarly, the Czech verb
jít has forms like jdu, jdeš, jde, jdeme, jdete, jdou, jdi,
while English only has go and goes. Because of this, word
order is not as important in synthetic languages:
- Pes honí kočku.
- Psa honí kočka.
Here, the forms of the nouns make the roles clear, even if the word order changes.
- Analytic languages, such as English, have very little
inflection, so word order is crucial for understanding the meaning:
- A dog is chasing a cat.
- A cat is chasing a dog.
All languages tend to move slowly from synthetic toward analytic. English started as a highly synthetic language but gradually lost its inflections and came to rely on word order. Czech is still strongly synthetic, with its seven cases and many different verb forms. Spanish is somewhere in between, with a complex verb system but much simpler noun inflection. English, by contrast, has gone very far toward the analytic type.
Borrowing and Lending
Borrowing and lending are two common linguistic processes.
- Borrowing occurs when one language takes a word from another language. This often happens when there is no existing word for a new concept. For example, the word pizza (from Italian) entered English when the dish itself was introduced. In some cases, borrowed words supplemented or replaced native ones. For example, the native English word teach exists alongside the borrowed word instruct. Today, each word is used in a slightly different context.
- Lending is the reverse process: one language provides words to another. For example, English has lent the word hamburger to many other languages.
Sometimes two languages contain words that look the same but actually mean different things. These are called false friends. For example, English actual and Czech aktuální have different meanings, as do English list and Czech list, or English become and German bekommen.
