Where Did the English Language Come From?
By Paul Thompson Broadcast: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 (THEME) VOICE ONE: This is Steve Ember. VOICE TWO: And this is Shirley Griffith with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. Today we present the first of two programs about the history of the English Language. (THEME) VOICE ONE: More people are trying to learn English than any other language in the world. English is the language of political negotiations and international business. It has become the international language of science and medicine. International treaties say passenger airplane pilots must speak English. English is the major foreign language taught in most schools in South America and Europe. School children in the Philippines and Japan begin learning English at an early age. English is the official language of more than seventy-five countries including Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa. In countries where many different languages are spoken, English is often used as an official
Why has it become so popular? To answer these questions we must travel back in time about five thousand years to an area north of the Black Sea in southeastern Europe. Experts say the people in that area spoke a language called Proto-Indo-European. That language is no longer spoken. Researchers do not really know what it sounded like. Yet, Proto-Indo-European is believed to be the ancestor of most European languages. These include the languages that became ancient Greek, ancient German and the ancient Latin. Latin disappeared as a spoken language. Yet it left behind three great languages that became modern Spanish, French and Italian. Ancient German became Dutch, Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish and one of the languages that developed into English. VOICE ONE: The English language is a result of the invasions of the island of Britain over many hundreds of years. The invaders lived along the northern coast of Europe. The first invasions were by a people called Angles about one thousand
From the late 15th century, the language changed into Modern English, often dated from the Great Vowel Shift. English is continuously assimilating foreign words, especially Latin and Greek, causing English to have the largest vocabulary of any language in the world. As there are many words from different languages the risk of mispronunciation is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, notably in the West Country. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published the first significant English dictionary.
Unlike most other languages, English was born out of a combination of two languages. The Anglo-Saxons, the people who settled in England during the fifth century, spoke a German language we now call “Old English.” Then in the 11th century, England was conquered by French-speaking people from Normandy, and French became the offic
