Anupama Nair
Before learning any language, you need to know the history of the country and the language. It will make the mastery of the language, that much easier. To speak global English i.e., English which is easily understood everywhere in the world is a dream of most people. To do that, you need to understand the history of England and the English language.
English is the main language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, India, various island nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. English is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries of the world. No wonder it is the global lingua franca. It is estimated that about a third of the world’s population, nearly two billion people speak English.
The history of the English language really began with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the fifth century AD. The tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from Denmark and northern Germany to reach Britain. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a language called Celtic. The invaders forced the Celts to the west and north into what is now known as Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The invading Germanic tribes spoke a language, which was called Old English. Old English did not sound or look like the English of today. In fact, we would have great difficulty understanding Old English. However, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have their origin in Old English. Old English was spoken until around 1100 AD. The Angles came from ‘Englaland’ and their language was called ‘English. Henceforth, the language came to be called English and the country England.
In 1066 AD, William the Conqueror, or the Duke of Normandy, which forms a part of modern France, invaded and conquered England. Normans brought with them French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period, there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English while the aristocracy spoke French. In the fourteenth century English again became the main language, but with many French words added and language was called Middle English.
The Renaissance ensured many new words and phrases were added to the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization of phonetics and grammar, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, became the standard and came to be known as ‘Queen’s English’. The first English dictionary was published in 1604 AD.
Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors — firstly, the Industrial Revolution where technology created a need for new words and secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth’s surface, and the English language soon adopted foreign words from many countries.
From around 1600 AD, colonization of North America by the British resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words ‘froze’ when they reached the shores of Colonial America. What is surprising is in some ways, American English resembled Shakespearean English than modern British English. Some expressions that the British call ‘Americanisms’ are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while it was not used in Britain i.e., trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn. The word ‘frame-up’, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies. Spanish also had an influence on American English and subsequently British English, with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (Louisiana) and West African words (the slave trade) also influenced American English and so, to an extent, British English.
Today, American English is mainly influential, due to the USA’s dominance of the world in terms of being a super power, and also in cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology. However, there are many other varieties of English around the world i.e., Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.
So, I would say, knowledge of English is needed to survive today.
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