An Introduction to the History of the English Language

An Introduction to the History of the English Language .

1. 
   The subject-matter of History of English.
   
2. 
   The information about the Germanic and Roman tribes.
   
3. 
   Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law.
   
4. 
   Classification of Germanic Languages
   
5. 
   Modern Germanic Languages
   

History of the English language is one of the fundamental courses forming the linguistic background of a specialist in philology. In studying the English language of today we are faced with a number of peculiarities which appear unintelligible from the modern point of view. These are found both in vocabulary and in the phonetic and grammatical structure of the language.

We cannot account for them from the point of view of contemporary English; we can only suppose that they are not a matter of chance and there must be some cause behind them. These causes belong to a more or less remote past and they can only be discovered by going into the history of the English language.
With adequate tools of investigation we still can trace all the changes within the language as a system. So the aim of the course is the investigation of the development of the English Language.
The subject matter of our course is the changing nature of the language through more than 15 hundred years of its existence. It studies the rise and development of English, its structure and peculiarities in the old days, its similarity to other languages of the same family and its unique specific features.
It starts with a view at the beginnings of the language, originally the dialects of a comparatively small number of related tribes that migrated from the continent onto the British Isles, the dialects of the Indo-European family – synthetic inflected language with a well- developed system of noun forms, a rather poorly represented system of verbal categories, with free word order and a vocabulary that consisted almost entirely of words of native origin. In phonology there was a strict subdivision of vowels into long and short, comparatively few diphthongs and an undeveloped system of consonants.
Mighty factors influenced the language converting it into the mainly analytical language of today, with scarcity of nominal forms and a verbal system that much outweighs the systems of many other European languages. Its vowel system is rich, its vocabulary is enormous. Its spelling system is rather confusing.
The purpose of our subject is a systematic study of the language development from the earliest time to the present day. Such study enables the students to acquire a more profound understanding of the language of today. Tasks^

• 
  to state the facts and to find the causal ties between them;
  
• 
  to explain the peculiarities of the modern language;
  
• 
  to be able to explain the discrepancies;
  
• 
  to analyse the systematic changes.
  

Study of the history of a concrete language is based on applying general principles of linguistics to the language in question. Foundations of our science are studied in introduction to linguistics (the general notions and categories).
To know the origin of the English language we should remember the introduction to special philology which gave the information about ancient Germanic languages and their structure.
It has been estimated that there are more than 5,700 distinct languages to be found
in the world to-day, and all these fall into linguistic groups which are part of linguistic families which may have appeared in different parts of the globe simultaneously.
It should be borne in mind that when people speak of linguistic families they do not use the term "family" in the genetic sense of the word. The fact that people speak the same, or related, languages does not mean that there is a link of race or blood. It is therefore completely unscientific to establish any connection between racial origin and language.
It is often possible to show that languages are historically or genetically related, i.e. they descend from a common source, but when it comes to races we have no such evidence. We cannot say, for instance, that the Mongolian race means the same as the Mongolian languages. Furthermore, it is quite probable that no such thing as an Indo-European race ever existed. In the course of the migrations of ancient peoples, numerous linguistic and racial mixtures took place. The linguistic map of the world shows that many non-Indo-European peoples of Europe and Asia abandoned their own languages and adopted the Indo-European. The Basque language, which is spoken in the north of Spain and the south of France, resisted the assimilation of Indo- European in the past and is not genetically related to the Indo-European languages. On the other hand there is no racial difference between the Estonians, for instance, who speak a Finno-Ugric language, and the Lets, who speak a language of Indo-European origin.
This outline history covers the main events in the historical development of the English language: the history of its phonetic structure and spelling, the evolution of its grammatical system, the growth of its vocabulary, and also the changing historical conditions of English speaking communities relevant to language history. Through learning the history of the English language the student achieves a variety of aims, both theoretical and practical. The history of the language is of considerable interest to all students of English, since the English language of today reflects many centuries of development. This is no less true of a foreign language. Therefore one of the aims of this course is to provide the student with a knowledge of linguistic history sufficient to account for the principal features of present day English. In studying the English language of to-day, we are faced with a number of peculiarities which appear unintelligible from the modern point of view. These are found both in the vocabulary and in the phonetic and grammatical structure of the language. Let us mention a few of them..
In the sphere of vocabulary there is considerable likeness between English and German. Thus, for examlce: the German for