It was observed that an interest in the past is one of the distinguishing characteristics of human as compared to other animals. The medium by which speakers of a language communicate their thoughts and feelings to others, the tool with which they conduct their business or the government of millions of people, the vehicle by which has been transmitted the science, the poetry of the culture is surely worthy of study.
A liberally educated person should know something of the structure of his (her) language, its position in the world and its relation to other tongues, the wealth of its vocabulary sources from which it has been enriched.
The history of English is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1,500 years. Political, economic and social forces influence a language. These forces shape the language in every respect, most obviously in the number and spread of its speakers, but also in the meaning of words, in the accent of the spoken language, and even in the structures of the grammar. The history of a language is intimately bound up with the history of the peoples who speak it.
The English language of today reflects many centuries of development. The political and social events that have so profoundly affected the English people in their national life have had a recognizable effect on their language. E.g., the Roman Christianizing of Britain in 579 brought England into contact with Latin civilization and made significant additions to English vocabulary. The Scandinavian invasions resulted in a considerable mixtures of the two peoples and their languages. The Norman Conquest made English for two centuries the language mainly of lower classes while the nobles used French. And when English once more regained supremacy as the language of all elements of the population, it was an English greatly changed in both form and vocabulary from what it had been in 1066. in a similar way the language was effected by the Renaissance, the development of England as a maritime power, the expansion of the British empire, and the growth of commerce and industry, of science and literature each in their way, contributed to the development of the language.
English, like all other languages, is the subject to that constant growth and decay that characterize all forms of life. It is a convenient figure of speech to speak of languages as living and dead. When a language ceases to change, we call it a dead language. E.g. classical Latin is a dead language because it hasn’t changed for nearly 2,000 years. The change that is constantly going on in a living language can be most easily seen in its vocabulary. Old words die out, new words are added and existing words change their meaning. Most of the vocabulary of old English has been lost, and many new words appeared, and many old words changed their meaning. It can be illustrated from any page by Shakespeare. Nice in Shakespeare’s day meant foolish; rheumatism signified a cold in the head.
Changes also occur in the grammatical forms of a language. They may be a result of gradual phonetic modification, or the desire for uniformity. The person who says and I knowed is only trying to or the past tense of this verb after the pattern of the past tense of so many verbs in English. This process is known as the operation of analogy.
Thus the task of the course of the history of English Language is to trace the influences, that are constantly at work, tending to alter from age to age. They have brought about such an extensive alteration in English as to make it quite unintelligible to English speakers of 2000.
It is natural for people to view their own first language as having advantages over languages that are foreign to them. But it is clear that languages become important because of events that shape the balance of power among nations. The language of a powerful nation acquires importance as a direct reflection of political, economic, technological and military strength. Besides the spread of arts and sciences through the medium of a particular language reinforces the prestige of that language.
English, French, German and Spanish are important languages because of the history and influence of their populations in modern times; for this reason they are widely studied outside the country of their use.
The modern English language is a result of 15 centuries development. English language has changed so much that now we can’t understand the old English text.
While studying modern English language we often come across very many phenomena in its stock of words, phonetical and grammar structure, which seem to be utterly unaccountable if we regard then from the point of view of modern language. Let’s take some of them.
1) We discover a great affinity (likeness) between English and German languages in basic stock of words, for example:
winter – Winter
summer – Sommer
foot – FuB
long – lang
sing – singen
sit – sitzen
On the other hand we see the same likeness between English and French languages.
And we can’t explain all these conformities if we proceed from the modern English language.
The reasons for such correspondences lie in more or less removed historical past and we can find them out only in the case we refer to the history of the English language.
In phonetical structure of the language we have plenty of examples, which are incomprehensible if we take them within the modern language. I mean the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation of many words. Why, for instance, in words: sign, light, know, knife, gnat … we write letters which don’t indicate any sound? Why a letter – combination ea in different words renders different sounds? (speak, great, bear, heart, heard)
Why sound [^] is indicated by the letter u in some words in others by the letter o? (sun, cut, butter, love, son, brother)
All these questions can be answered only by means of historical study of the language.
And at last we come across a whole row of such phenomena in grammar structure. Why do the nouns man, foot, goose, mouse form their plural by means of mutation, contrary to the general rule? Or why don’t the verbs can, may, will have ending in the 3rd person singular?
That’s why the knowledge of the history of the language is an inseparable part of theoretical education of a qualified teacher of this language.
Besides the study of the history of some concrete language is based on the application of the general principles of linguistics. Thus in the course of studying the history of the English language we establish the organic connection between the general principles of linguistics and the facts of the modern English language.
The subject of the history of the English language is a systematic account of the development of the language beginning with the most ancient times till nowadays. The study of the history of the language gives us the possibility of getting to know more profoundly the modern English language; we come to understand it as the result of a very complex process of development and to define its place among other languages.
Alongside with all this history of the English language helps much in studying history of England and history of English literature. History of the English language is closely connected with the subjects studying the modern English language that is with theoretical courses of phonetics, grammar and lexicology. It shows phonetical, grammar and lexical phenomena in their development and establishes the origin of the modern system of the language.
It is well known that language, whether it is English, Ukrainian or any other, is a historical phenomenon. As such it does not stay unchanged for any considerable period of time, or for any time at all, but it is constantly changing throughout its history.
The changes affect all the spheres of the language: grammar and vocabulary, phonetics and spelling. The changes that any language undergoes are gradual and very slow but pronounced enough if you compare the stages of its development within a century or even half a century. You can imagine that with the passage of time the difference between different stages of the development of the language grows and you will easily deduce that if you speak of such a language as English the history of which embraces over fifteen centuries you will have to analyze and explain a great number of linguistic data characterizing the language at different stages of its history.
The aims set before a student of the history of the English language are as follows:
1. to speak of the characteristics of the language at the earlier stages of its
development;
2. to trace the language from the Old English period up to modern times; 3. to explain the principal features in the development of modern language
historically.
To achieve those aims a student will have to know the theoretical basis of the subject and to work with the text to apply the theoretical knowledge to the practical analysis of English texts at different periods of the language development.
The main purpose of studying the history of the English language is to account for the present – day stage of the language to enable a student of English to read books and speak the language with understanding and due knowledge of the intricate and complicates “mechanism” they use.
We said that the history of any language is an unbroken chain of changes more or less rapid. But though the linguistic tradition is unbroken it is impossible to study the language of over 15 centuries long without subdividing it into smaller periods. Thus the history of the English language is generally subdivided conventionally into Old English (5th – 11th century), Middle English (11th – 15th century) and New English (15th century – till now).
