The History of English
The origins of the English language 6000 years ago:
-The English language has his origin in the Proto-Indo-European language.
The Proto-Indo-European language spread from the Caucasus/Black Sea area over Europe and Asia. In the late 18th century colonists discovered similiar languages to the European ones in Pakistan and India. Those languages were based on Sanskrit which is close to Greek. They developed into nowadays Hindi and Urdu.
Based on this information we have evidence for the wide spread of the Proto-Indo-European language.
- One branch of Proto-Indo-European developed into the Germanic language.
- The English language is a Germanic language
Different states of development: for the English language ⇒developed into
Proto-Indo-European ⇒ Germanic ⇒ West Germanic ⇒ Anglo Frisian ⇒ Old English ⇒ Middle English ⇒ Modern English
- Middle English was also influenced by french (latin language).
- to give an explanation for the fact that there is not only the English language spoken on the British Islands today, we have to involve the first settlers.⇒ The Celts
Nowadays spoken languages as Welsh (Wales), Gaelic (West of Ireland and North-West of Scotland) developed from the Celtic language.
Proto-Indo-European ⇒ Celtic ⇒ Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- First evidence for Germanic languages on British Islands: Angles from Jütland and Schleswig-Holstein and Saxons from Niedersachsen (after 400AD)
Vikings (after 600AD)
Linguistic analysis to compare languages and proof relations, Etymology of words
Definition of etymology:• noun (pl. etymologies) an account of the origins and the developments in meaning of a word.
(http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/etymology?view=uk)
Grimm's Law:
describes the first sound change. → developed into
- deaspiration
*bh→*b
*dh→*d
*gh→*g
- devoicing
*b→*p
*d→*t
*g→*k
- fricativisation
*p→*f
*t→*þ
*k→*h
High German Sound Shift:
describes a second sound change. → developed into
p→pf→f
t→ts→s
k→k (kx)→x/ç
to give an example: the english word pepper → pfeffer
apple → apfel
Great Vowel Shift:
describes a third sound change.
The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift.
(http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm)
Words changed their meanings (semantic change) by:
- derivation
- compounding
- abbreviation
During the lecture we had the example of:
shirt-skirt-schürze
skirt (viking) and shirt (anglesaxon) have once been the same word with the same meaning. Due to the first sound shift (Grimm's Law, *k→*h) the word changed.
Furthermore due to the High German Sound Shift the word 'schürze' developed.
Today all three words still exist, but all three of them describe different parts of clothes.
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