The English language has experienced a lot of notable changes since the fifth century up to date. There have been phases which marked the major transitions, and these are the Old English period, the Middle English period and the Modern English period. Old English had most of it borrowed from the Celtic language, then the Latin and the Norse who influenced it later. There are very many notable differences between these two phases of the transitions, some of them being: differences in the times used, influencing languages and the number of dialects used, among others.
Old English sounds were characterized by breaking and palatalization for the consonants and breaking and fronting for the vowels. The kind of alphabet mostly used was the runic alphabet which has been found on stone cravings and walls. The scribes also used old English, and they wrote on valium and layer, their writings were translated into the Roman alphabet. The sounds of the Old English alphabet had a particular way of appearing in words. The sounds “v,” “z” and “δ” would appear mostly between vowels. This is a result of loans, mostly from French and Latin. Breaking in vowels when using Old English occurs when the vowels, mostly, æ, e and I become diphthongs. Fronting happens when a back vowel precedes an “I.” Most poetic texts from the Old English origin have the feature of alliteration, which simply means that word-initial consonants are similar.
The Old English grammar was very much different from today’s English grammar. The ending “-e” has been replaced with a preposition “to” and therefore, is no longer used. This change is called grammaticalization since the lexical meaning of the word disappears while the grammatical meaning prevails. The verbs in Old English are mostly used to end sentences while in modern English, the verbs are used to make a clear distinction between the subject and the object. The morphology of Old English is very different from that of Modern English. The verb and adverbial endings are very much different. The application of pronouns and their plurals also differ from the method used un-Modern English.
Old English period begun from as early as 450 and most of the borrowing was from the Celtic language. This phase was divided into two main parts, the first being loans from Germanic and other languages and the second one being words incorporated into Old English before and after the spread of Christianity. Some words were borrowed from Celtic directly into Germanic while others are shared both by the Germanic and the Celtic languages. An example is the word “dun” which means hill and has the similar meaning in both Celtic and Germanic contexts. Also, another proof of the borrowing from the Celtic to the Germanic dialects is in the word “schulen,” the tenth verse of the paragraph attached, this translation means “should” therefore, representing the borrowing that took place from Old English to the Modern English that is currently in use.
Borrowing was also done form the Latin, and this affected the language in a couple of ways. Many words were borrowed into the English language, and one could easily tell such instances due to the distinct changes in vowel fronting and breaking. The word borrowed from Latin could be identified easily since some vowels were either broken or reversed in position. For example, the Latin word “uncia” changed to ynce which means inch, and this was as a result of fronting the back vowel “u” to “y.” An instance of breaking in seen in the word “falsus” which is changed to “fals” in old English. The final vowel was cut off in this case, leaving the word fals, which means false. To add onto that, reversions back to Latin, from Modern English are also not uncommon, for instance, the word “unicornus” In Latin, which was borrowed and changed to “anhorn” but is currently used as “unicorn” in modern English. Most of these borrowings from Latin are religious, commercial, cultural and are mostly nouns, with a few adjectives and verbs.
During the Old English period, there also existed Scandinavian borrowings, most of which caused lexical changes. The meanings of words changed from their original Scandinavian form to a different form in English (Jespersen 1938: 64–5). Examples are the word dream, which means joy in Old English but becomes a vision in sleep in Middle English. The turnaround also exists in given pairs of words which previously had somewhat the same meaning but ended up having narrower meanings in modern English. The Scandinavian borrowings are the ones that have caused a lot or some slight change in the meanings of the words borrowed into English. Some English words have been replaced by the ones from the Scandinavian origins, for example, the word “weorpan” from old English has become cast, which is originally a Scandinavian word.
Borrowings from French did not affect modern English as much mainly because there was a difference between the French dialects used between the 11th and the 16th centuries. These two were Central and Norman French. However, it goes without saying that there were few words which were borrowed as the Frenchmen were learning Old English. The words such as government, jury, justice, study, and art were borrowed from them. The concept of prefixes and suffixes was also adopted, and it led to a wider branch of words with even more meaning, for example, governance, envious, majority and labor. Some prefixes and suffixes were as a result of a mixture of many different dialects, the Latin and French, to English. Other languages, for example, the Dutch and Spanish also influenced the use of English words. As a result of all these languages, a lexicon, which is English, was born.
In the earlier centuries, English was not seen as a prestigious language, and its use had to be justified. In the year 1300, most people started to adopt the language, and they used it in writing pieces of art, government documents and even plays to be performed. The rise in popularity of the language propelled some changes regarding spellings of some words, the sounds, and the morphology. Most of these changes were also influenced by the loaning from different origins. Regarding spellings in the texts, the major changes included, sc became sh, for instance, “schulen,” changed to should. Another was the word “boc” which changed into the book,
As the language evolved, there was some variation in the sounds, especially around the 10th century. The chances in sounds were as a result of consonant deletion and shifting of vowels. The aspect of the letter “h” in some words was as a result of these changes. An example is,” Ich abbe I min castlen seoue þusend Kempen” which changes to ‘I have in my castles seven thousand fighters.’ (Layamon, Brut line 233). Additionally, in the word these many consonants, the “h” was pulled out, as a result, forming words like naked and loaf, which previously were, “hnacod” and “hlaf” respectively. The nasals and liquids were also modified as follows, “hwilum” changed to “while,” and the liquid “swilce” was transformed to “such.” Depending on the consonants in the word, the vowels in that particular word either shortened or lengthened.
Changes in pronouns and the endings of verbs, adjectives, and nouns also occurred. In the period of transformation, the pronoun “she” was introduced, as well as the plural “they.” Other changes included the changes in how the second person was used. The plural third person pronoun with initial “h” is transformed to the initial “th,” in that, the statement “wat heo ihoten weoren” and “wonene heo comen “changes to “what they were called and from where they came.” The notable changes in the adjectives and adverbs include the reduction of forms and endings. Some endings, for instance, “ice” is replaced by “ly.” The emergence of middle English also causes a distinction between the weak and strong verbs. In Middle English, the verb “welk” is considered strong while “walked,” as used in modern English is weak.
When analyzing some characteristics of Old English as compared to those of modern English, it is evident that the latter is more reasonable and analytical. The writings in Old English do not employ the articles “a” and “an” although the determinant “the” is used more often. The comparatives and superlatives used in the Modern English are more elaborate since more adjectives exist. To add onto that, there is a big difference in word order as used in these phases. The word order used in the Modern English is more relevant as compared to the one used in Old English. The exception is in the arrangement of words when asking “wh” questions with finite verbs.
English language, one of the most widely used languages in the globe was formed as result of borrowing from many other languages, starting from the Anglo-Frisian dialect in the 5th century, and transforming to a lexicon. As time went by, there were new improvements made to the language, other words added while others removed, and others changed meaning completely. All these changes and improvements mainly as a result of human interaction and exchange in the early years.
Work Cited
Gelderen, Elly van. History of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Simpson, John, and Edmund SC Weiner. "Oxford English dictionary online." Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved March6 (1989): 2008.
