Where did the english word come from

The words ‘English’ and ‘England’ come from the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxons were not a single people, and may not have been even a formal confederation initially. Largely composed of Jutes from Jutland where they are still called Jutes because area, the Engle or Angles from Angeln in Denmark, additionally called the ‘Anglii’ (Latin for Engle,) by the Roman chronicler Tacitus, as well as the Seax, called after their formidable fighting blade of the exact same name, that came from Saxony Elbe-Weser region in Germany.

Smaller number of Frisians came from the little islands in the North Sea.There were also Jutes from the lower Rhineland, and also Swabians, Franks and Alamanni. The Anglian and also Saxon tribes were the most prominent. These people called the Anglii-Saxones by Paul The Deacon to cover a solitary ‘insular Germanic’ identification, or Saxons (after the leading tribe,) for short in even more modern times.

They were a powerful trine North Sea Germanic people. From this combination of people we obtain a development through the words Engle, Angles, Anglii, – or Englisc, Anglisc which were apart of the Nerthus-Worshipping individuals mentioned in Tacitus’s Germania. Anglii (the Latin version of words Engle) is the earliest taped form of the folk-name which triggered ‘Eng’ in England. The people called themselves Anglisc (Angle-ish, Anglian) as well as the national identity was presumed under the going Anglisc or Englisc, ‘English’. Individuals gave their name to their territory, therefore the Englisc provided their name to Englalond (England). Englisc was made use of from the time of Alfred the Great onwards to define both in the sense of ‘Englishman’ and as suggesting the ‘English’ language.

The word England– its real significance

Ing implies ‘people of’ – which became Eng. The Ing worshipped the sword in early times in exactly what is now Denmark.

England = Land – of individuals – that worship the sword.

The English– a legal interpretation

The Ethnic English

The English are by law a Nation. A legal representative has actually explained the English this way:

” The English gave their name to England and also have actually lived there ever since. People that have since involved England as well as merged into the English population and also are equivalent from the English and also case no identification apart from English and are accepted by the English as being just one of their own, are English.”

Englishness

” Your strength of Englishness is defined by your need to be part of the English neighborhood, to be sensitive to the ethnic English individuals that form it, and also to its background and also culture as any person would certainly anticipate them selves to be conscious any type of culture.”

English Culture

Leaving aside Shakespeare, William Blake and also others who are Global culturalists, England itself does have a strong Folk culture. Use the internet to search for the people below:

• English Sword Dancers
• Carlisle Sword Dancers
• English Folk Music or Folk Songs
• Cecil James Sharp, born in 1859 in London an organist
• William Kimber born 1872 from Headington Quarry near Oxford.
• Charles Marson from Hambridge in Somerset
• English Folk as well as Country dancing– ritualistic and also social– ritualistic being seasonal.

Do you ever wonder about the origins of words?

That is, their etymology.

Recently I was in Manila. The major language of the Philippines is Tagalog, which apparently comes form the word “tagá-ilog” — or “people of the river”.

Which got me interested…

Where does “English” come from?

Logically you’d think it comes from the word “England” — the name of the country.

But actually, that isn’t necessarily the case.

It’s just as likely, for example, that “England” was called so because that’s where the “Speakers of English” were. Which actually seems to be the case.

Supposedly, the word “English” is a corruption of the word “Anglish” — or, the “Language of the Angles”, one of the Germanic tribes that, along with the Saxons and the Jutes (collectively the “Anglo-Saxons”), invaded and colonised Britain from the 5th century after the Romans left. The Anglo-Saxons came from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands… and supposedly the Angles were called that because the place they came from—the Jutland peninsula—was shaped like a fish hook. The noun “angle” was derived from the Indo-European word “ank” meaning “to bend”, and the word “angle” entered the language in the Old English period and was used to mean “hook for fishing” (which of course is why we also call finishing “Angling”).

So there we have it.

[Julian]

P.S. If you want to speak British English, check out the first lesson of my best selling British English course, British Stories — do it here free.

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English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages (and, possibly, British Latin) that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

After the Norman conquest in 1066, Old English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman (also known as Anglo-Norman French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English or Anglo-Saxon era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. The conquering Normans spoke a Romance langue d’oïl called Old Norman, which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered the local language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. As Normans are descendants of Vikings who invaded France, Norman French was influenced by Old Norse, and many Norse loanwords in English came directly from French. Middle English was spoken to the late 15th century. The system of orthography that was established during the Middle English period is largely still in use today. Later changes in pronunciation, however, combined with the adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of modern English words appears highly irregular.

Early Modern English – the language used by William Shakespeare – is dated from around 1500. It incorporated many Renaissance-era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French, German and Dutch. Significant pronunciation changes in this period included the Great Vowel Shift, which affected the qualities of most long vowels. Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today^{[citation needed]}, was in place by the late 17th century.

English as we know it today came to be exported to other parts of the world through British colonisation, and is now the dominant language in Britain and Ireland, the United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many smaller former colonies, as well as being widely spoken in India, parts of Africa, and elsewhere. Partially due to influence of the United States and its globalized efforts of commerce and technology, English took on the status of a global lingua franca in the second half of the 20th century. This is especially true in Europe, where English has largely taken over the former roles of French and (much earlier) Latin as a common language used to conduct business and diplomacy, share scientific and technological information, and otherwise communicate across national boundaries. The efforts of English-speaking Christian missionaries have resulted in English becoming a second language for many other groups.^[1][2]

Global variation among different English dialects and accents remains significant today.

Proto-English[edit]

English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire, most of the Germanic-inhabited area (Germania) remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military, and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri, Batavi, Menapii and Frisii served in Britain (Britannia) under Roman command. Germanic settlement and power expanded during the Migration Period, which saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire. A Germanic settlement of Britain took place from the 5th to the 7th century, following the end of Roman rule on the island. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that around the year 449 Vortigern, king of the Britons, invited the «Angle kin» (Angles allegedly led by the Germanic brothers Hengist and Horsa) to help repel invading Picts, in return for lands in the southeast of Britain. This led to waves of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. (The Chronicle was not a contemporaneous work, however, and cannot be regarded as an accurate record of such early events.)^[3] Bede, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in AD 731, writes of invasion by Angles, Saxons and Jutes, although the precise nature of the invasion and settlement and the contributions made by these particular groups are the subject of much dispute among historians.^[4]

The languages spoken by the Germanic peoples who initially settled in Britain were part of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. They consisted of dialects from the Ingvaeonic grouping, spoken mainly around the North Sea coast, in regions that lie within modern Denmark, north-west Germany and the Netherlands. Due to specific similarities between early English and Old Frisian, an Anglo-Frisian grouping is also identified, although it does not represent a node in the family tree.^[5]

These dialects had most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of grammatical inflection. Vocabulary came largely from the core Germanic stock, although due to the Germanic peoples’ extensive contacts with the Roman world, the settlers’ languages already included a number of loanwords from Latin.^[6] For instance, the predecessor of Modern English wine had been borrowed into early Germanic from the Latin vinum.

Old English[edit]

The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon. It displaced the indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages remained in most of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and many compound Celtic-Germanic place names survive, hinting at early language mixing.^[7] Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English.^[8] The four main dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon; the last of these formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian.

Old English was first written using a runic script called the futhorc, but this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 8th century. Most literary output was in either the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great’s time, or the Late West Saxon (regarded as the «classical» form of Old English) of the Winchester school inspired by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham («the Grammarian»). The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf, composed by an unknown poet.

The introduction of Christianity from around the year 600 encouraged the addition of over 400 Latin loan words into Old English, such as the predecessors of the modern priest, paper, and school, and a smaller number of Greek loan words.^[9] The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century (see below).

Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots.^[10] The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined with freer word order, and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German. The language had demonstrative pronouns (equivalent to this and that) but did not have the definite article the. The Old English period is considered to have evolved into the Middle English period some time after the Norman conquest of 1066, when the language came to be influenced significantly by the new ruling class’s language, Old Norman.^[11][12]

Scandinavian influence[edit]

Vikings from modern-day Norway and Denmark began to raid parts of Britain from the late 8th century onward. In 865, however, a major invasion was launched by what the Anglo-Saxons called the Great Heathen Army, which eventually brought large parts of northern and eastern England (the Danelaw) under Scandinavian control. Most of these areas were retaken by the English under Edward the Elder in the early 10th century, although York and Northumbria were not permanently regained until the death of Eric Bloodaxe in 954. Scandinavian raids resumed in the late 10th century during the reign of Æthelred the Unready, and Sweyn Forkbeard eventually succeeded in briefly being declared king of England in 1013, followed by the longer reign of his son Cnut from 1016 to 1035, and Cnut’s sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut until 1042.

The Scandinavians, or Norsemen, spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent. It is likely that significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance (those ending in -by, for example); it is believed that the settlers often established new communities in places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers, including the possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in 878,^[13] undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of contact. Some scholars even believe that Old English and Old Norse underwent a kind of fusion and that the resulting English language might be described as a mixed language or creole. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the first half of the 11th century, a kind of diglossia may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as a koine or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest, the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process involving language shift and language death. The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during the process possibly contributed to the rate of borrowings from Norse into English.^[14]

Only about 100 or 150 Norse words, mainly connected with government and administration, are found in Old English writing. The borrowing of words of this type was stimulated by Scandinavian rule in the Danelaw and during the later reign of Cnut. However, most surviving Old English texts are based on the West Saxon standard that developed outside the Danelaw; it is not clear to what extent Norse influenced the forms of the language spoken in eastern and northern England at that time. Later texts from the Middle English era, now based on an eastern Midland rather than a Wessex standard, reflect the significant impact that Norse had on the language. In all, English borrowed about 2000 words from Old Norse, several hundred surviving in Modern English.^[14]

Norse borrowings include many very common words, such as anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, window, and even the pronoun they. Norse influence is also believed to have reinforced the adoption of the plural copular verb form are rather than alternative Old English forms like sind. It is also considered to have stimulated and accelerated the morphological simplification found in Middle English, such as the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (except in pronouns).^[15] That is possibly confirmed by observations that simplification of the case endings occurred earliest in the north and latest in the southwest. The spread of phrasal verbs in English is another grammatical development to which Norse may have contributed (although here a possible Celtic influence is also noted).^[14]

Some scholars have claimed that Old English died out entirely and was replaced by Norse towards the end of the Old English period and as part of the transition to Middle English, by virtue of the Middle English syntax being much more akin to Norse than Old English.^[16] Other scholars reject this claim.^[17]

Middle English[edit]

Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the end of the 15th century.

For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman, originating from a northern langue d’oïl dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French (see characteristics of the Anglo-Norman language).

Until the 14th century, Anglo-Norman and then French were the language of the courts and government. Even after the decline of Norman, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language, and about 10,000 French (and Norman) loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food^[18] (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). The strong influence of Old Norse on English (described in the previous section) also becomes apparent during this period. The impact of the native British Celtic languages that English continued to displace is generally held to be very small, although a few scholars have attributed some grammatical forms, such as periphrastic «do», to Celtic influence.^[19][20] These theories have been criticized by a number of other linguists.^[21][22][23] Some scholars have also put forward hypotheses that Middle English was a kind of creole language resulting from contact between Old English and either Old Norse or Anglo-Norman.

English literature began to reappear after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the first English government document to be published in the English language after the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. The Pleading in English Act 1362 made English the only language in which court proceedings could be held, though the official record remained in Latin.^[24] By the end of the century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language. Official documents began to be produced regularly in English during the 15th century. Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived in the late 14th century, is the most famous writer from the Middle English period, and The Canterbury Tales is his best-known work.

The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and in grammar. While Old English is a heavily inflected language (synthetic), the use of grammatical endings diminished in Middle English (analytic). Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were levelled to -e. The older plural noun marker -en (retained in a few cases such as children and oxen) largely gave way to -s, and grammatical gender was discarded. Definite article þe appears around 1200, later spelled as the, first appearing in East and North England as a substitute for Old English se and seo, nominative forms of «that.»^[25]

English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds being spelled th rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn) and ð (eth), which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, having been borrowed from Old English via Old West Norse.

Early Modern English[edit]

English underwent extensive sound changes during the 15th century, while its spelling conventions remained largely constant. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. The language was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardizing effect of printing, which also tended to regularize capitalization. As a result, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as «accent» and «dialect».^[26] As most early presses came from continental Europe, a few native English letters such as þ and ð died out; for some time þe (modern «the») was written as ye. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid 16th — early 17th century),^[27] the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. In 1604, the first English dictionary was published, A Table Alphabeticall.

Increased literacy and travel facilitated the adoption of many foreign words, especially borrowings from Latin and Greek, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English.^[28] In the 17th century, Latin words were often used with their original inflections, but these eventually disappeared. As there are many words from different languages and English spelling is variable, the risk of mispronunciation is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, most notably in the West Country. During the period, loan words were borrowed from Italian, German, and Yiddish. British acceptance of and resistance to Americanisms began during this period.^[29]

Modern English[edit]

The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile, grammar texts by Lowth, Murray, Priestly, and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further.

Early Modern English and Late Modern English, also called Present-Day English (PDE), differ essentially in vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from the Industrial Revolution and technologies that created a need for new words, as well as international development of the language. The British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth’s land surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries. British English and North American English, the two major varieties of the language, are together spoken by 400 million people. The total number of English speakers worldwide may exceed one billion.^[30] The English language will almost certainly continue to evolve over time. With the development of computer and online environments (such as chat rooms, social media expressions, and apps), and the adoption of English as a worldwide lingua franca across cultures, customs, and traditions, it should not be surprising to see further shortening of words, phrases, and/or sentences.

Phonological changes[edit]

Introduction[edit]

Over the last 1,200 years or so, English has undergone extensive changes in its vowel system, but many fewer changes to its consonants.

In the Old English period, a number of umlaut processes affected vowels in complex ways, and unstressed vowels were gradually eroded, eventually leading to a loss of grammatical case and grammatical gender in the Early Middle English period. The most important umlaut process was *i-mutation (c. 500 CE), which led to pervasive alternations of all sorts, many of which survive in the modern language: e.g. in noun paradigms (foot vs. feet, mouse vs. mice, brother vs. brethren); in verb paradigms (sold vs. sell); nominal derivatives from adjectives («strong» vs. «strength», broad vs. breadth, foul vs. filth) and from other nouns (fox vs. «vixen»); verbal derivatives («food» vs. «to feed»); and comparative adjectives («old» vs. «elder»). Consonants were more stable, although velar consonants were significantly modified by palatalization, which produced alternations such as speak vs. speech, drink vs. drench, wake vs. watch, bake vs. batch.

The Middle English period saw further vowel changes. Most significant was the Great Vowel Shift (c. 1500 CE), which transformed the pronunciation of all long vowels. This occurred after the spelling system was fixed, and accounts for the drastic differences in pronunciation between «short» mat, met, bit, cot vs. «long» mate, mete/meet, bite, coat. Other changes that left echoes in the modern language were homorganic lengthening before ld, mb, nd, which accounts for the long vowels in child, mind, climb, etc.; pre-cluster shortening, which resulted in the vowel alternations in child vs. children, keep vs. kept, meet vs. met; and trisyllabic laxing, which is responsible for alternations such as grateful vs. gratitude, divine vs. divinity, sole vs. solitary.

Among the more significant recent changes to the language have been the development of rhotic and non-rhotic accents (i.e. «r-dropping»); the trap-bath split in many dialects of British English; and flapping of t and d between vowels in American English and Australian English.

Vowel changes[edit]

The following table shows the principal developments in the stressed vowels, from Old English through Modern English (C indicates any consonant):

Old English (c. 900 AD)	Middle English (c. 1400 AD)	Early Modern English (c. 1600 AD)	Modern English	Modern spelling	Examples
ɑː	ɔː	oː	oʊ əʊ (UK)	oa, oCe	oak, boat, whole, stone
æː, æːɑ	ɛː	eː	iː	ea	heal, beat, cheap
eː, eːo	eː	iː	ee, -e	feed, deep, me, be
iː, yː	iː	əi or ɛi	aɪ	iCe	ride, time, mice
oː	oː	uː	uː	oo, -o	moon, food, do
uː	uː	əu or ɔu	aʊ	ou	mouse, out, loud
ɑ, æ, æɑ	a	æ	æ	a	man, sat, wax
aː	ɛː	eɪ	aCe	name, bake, raven
e, eo	e	ɛ	ɛ	e	help, tell, seven
ɛː	eː	iː	ea, eCe	speak, meat, mete
i, y	ɪ	ɪ	ɪ	i	written, sit, kiss
o	o	ɔ	ɒ ɑ (US)	o	god, top, beyond
ɔː	oː	oʊ əʊ (UK)	oa, oCe	foal, nose, over
u	ʊ	ɤ	ʌ	u, o	buck, up, love, wonder
ʊ	ʊ	full, bull

The following chart shows the primary developments of English vowels in the last 600 years, in more detail, since Late Middle English of Chaucer’s time. The Great Vowel Shift can be seen in the dramatic developments from c. 1400 to 1600.

Neither of the above tables covers the history of Middle English diphthongs, the changes before /r/, or various special cases and exceptions. For details, see phonological history of English as well as the articles on Old English phonology and Middle English phonology/.

Examples[edit]

The vowel changes over time can be seen in the following example words, showing the changes in their form over the last 2,000 years:

	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	mother	heart	hear
Proto-Germanic, c. AD 1	ainaz	twai	θriːz	feðwoːr	fimf	sehs	seβun	moːðeːr	hertoːː	hauzijanã
West Germanic, c. AD 400	ain	θriju	fewwur	moːdar	herta	haurijan
Late Old English, c. AD 900	aːn	twaː	θreo	feowor	fiːf	siks	sĕŏvon	moːdor	hĕŏrte	heːran, hyːran
(Late Old English spelling)	(ān)	(twā)	(þrēo)	(fēowor)	(fīf)	(six)	(seofon)	(mōdor)	(heorte)	(hēran, hȳran)
Late Middle English, c. 1350	ɔːn	twoː	θreː	fowər	fiːvə	siks	sevən	moːðər	hertə	hɛːrə(n)
(Late Middle English spelling)	(oon)	(two)	(three)	(fower)	(five)	(six)	(seven)	(mother)	(herte)	(heere(n))
Early Modern English, c. 1600	oːn >! wʊn	twuː > tuː	θriː	foːr	fəiv	siks	sevən	mʊðər	hert	heːr
Modern English, c. 2000	wʌn	tuː	fɔː(r)	faiv	sɪks	mʌðə(r)	hɑrt/hɑːt	hiːr/hiə
	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	mother	heart	hear

Grammatical changes[edit]

The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, Greek, modern German and Icelandic. Old English distinguished among the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with the dative). In addition, the dual number was distinguished from the singular and plural.^[31]
Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when the accusative and dative cases of the pronouns merged into a single oblique case that also replaced the genitive case after prepositions. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except for the genitive.

Evolution of English pronouns[edit]

Pronouns such as whom and him (contrasted with who and he), are a conflation of the old accusative and dative cases, as well as of the genitive case after prepositions (while her also includes the genitive case). This conflated form is called the oblique case or the object (objective) case, because it is used for objects of verbs (direct, indirect, or oblique) as well as for objects of prepositions. (See object pronoun.) The information formerly conveyed by distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order. In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct forms.

Although some grammarians continue to use the traditional terms «accusative» and «dative», these are functions rather than morphological cases in Modern English. That is, the form whom may play accusative or dative roles (as well as instrumental or prepositional roles), but it is a single morphological form, contrasting with nominative who and genitive whose. Many grammarians use the labels «subjective», «objective», and «possessive» for nominative, oblique, and genitive pronouns.

Modern English nouns exhibit only one inflection of the reference form: the possessive case, which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information).

Interrogative pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Masculine, feminine (person)	Nominative	hwā	who	who
Accusative	hwone, hwæne	whom	whom, who1
Dative	hwām, hwǣm
Instrumental
Genitive	hwæs	whos	whose
Neuter (thing)	Nominative	hwæt	what	what
Accusative	hwæt	what, whom
Dative	hwām, hwǣm
Instrumental	hwȳ, hwon	why	why2
Genitive	hwæs	whos	whose3

¹ — In some dialects «who» is used where formal English only allows «whom», though variation among dialects must be taken into account.

² — An explanation may be found in the last paragraph of this section of Instrumental case.

³ — Usually replaced by of what (postpositioned).

First person personal pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Nominative	iċ	I, ich, ik	I
Accusative	mē, meċ	me	me
Dative	mē
Genitive	mīn	min, mi	my, mine
Plural	Nominative	wē	we	we1
Accusative	ūs, ūsiċ	us	us
Dative	ūs
Genitive	ūser, ūre	ure, our	our, ours

¹ — Old English also had a separate dual, wit («we two») etcetera; however, no later forms derive from it.

Second person personal pronouns[edit]

Old and Middle English singular to the Modern English archaic informal

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Nominative	þū	þu, thou	thou (you)
Accusative	þē, þeċ	þé, thee	thee (you)
Dative	þē
Genitive	þīn	þi, þīn, þīne, thy; thin, thine	thy, thine (your, yours)
Plural	Nominative	ġē	ye, ȝe, you	you1
Accusative	ēow, ēowiċ	you, ya
Dative	ēow
Genitive	ēower	your	your, yours

¹ — Note that the ye/you distinction still existed, at least optionally, in Early Modern English: «Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free» from the King James Bible.

Here the letter þ (interchangeable with ð in manuscripts) corresponds to th. For ȝ, see Yogh.

Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural

	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Case	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal
Nominative	þū	ġē1	you	thou	you	ye	you
Accusative	þē, þeċ	ēow, ēowiċ	thee	you
Dative	þē	ēow
Genitive	þīn	ēower	your, yours	thy, thine	your, yours	your, yours

¹ — (Old English also had a separate dual, ġit («ye two») etcetera; however, no later forms derive from it.)

Third person personal pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Masculine singular	Nominative	hē	he	he
Accusative	hine	him	him
Dative	him
Genitive	his	his	his
Feminine singular	Nominative	hēo	heo, sche, ho, he, ȝho	she
Accusative	hīe	hire, hure, her, heore	her
Dative	hire
Genitive	hir, hire, heore, her, here	her, hers
Neuter singular	Nominative	hit	hit, it	it, they
Accusative	hit, it, him	it, them
Dative	him
Genitive	his	his	its, their
Plural1	Nominative	hīe	he, hi, ho, hie, þai, þei	they
Accusative	hem, ham, heom, þaim, þem, þam	them
Dative	him
Genitive	hira	here, heore, hore, þair, þar	their, theirs

¹ — The origin of the modern forms is generally thought to have been a borrowing from Old Norse forms þæir, þæim, þæira. The two different roots co-existed for some time, although currently the only common remnant is the shortened form ’em. Cf. also the demonstrative pronouns.

Examples[edit]

Beowulf[edit]

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in alliterative verse. It is dated from the 8th to the early 11th centuries. These are the first 11 lines:

Hwæt! Wē Gār-Dena	in geārdagum,
þēodcyninga	þrym gefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas	ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scēfing	sceaþena þrēatum,
monegum mǣgþum,	meodosetla oftēah,
egsode eorlas.	Syððan ǣrest wearð
fēasceaft funden,	hē þæs frōfre gebād,
wēox under wolcnum,	weorðmyndum þāh,
oðþæt him ǣghwylc	þāra ymbsittendra
ofer hronrāde	hȳran scolde,
gomban gyldan.	Þæt wæs gōd cyning!

Which, as translated by Francis Barton Gummere, reads:

Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!

Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan[edit]

This is the beginning of The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, a prose text in Old English dated to the late 9th century. The full text can be found at Wikisource.

Ōhthere sǣde his hlāforde, Ælfrēde cyninge, ðæt hē ealra Norðmonna norþmest būde. Hē cwæð þæt hē būde on þǣm lande norþweardum wiþ þā Westsǣ. Hē sǣde þēah þæt þæt land sīe swīþe lang norþ þonan; ac hit is eal wēste, būton on fēawum stōwum styccemǣlum wīciað Finnas, on huntoðe on wintra, ond on sumera on fiscaþe be þǣre sǣ. Hē sǣde þæt hē æt sumum cirre wolde fandian hū longe þæt land norþryhte lǣge, oþþe hwæðer ǣnig mon be norðan þǣm wēstenne būde. Þā fōr hē norþryhte be þǣm lande: lēt him ealne weg þæt wēste land on ðæt stēorbord, ond þā wīdsǣ on ðæt bæcbord þrīe dagas. Þā wæs hē swā feor norþ swā þā hwælhuntan firrest faraþ. Þā fōr hē þā giet norþryhte swā feor swā hē meahte on þǣm ōþrum þrīm dagum gesiglau. Þā bēag þæt land, þǣr ēastryhte, oþþe sēo sǣ in on ðæt lond, hē nysse hwæðer, būton hē wisse ðæt hē ðǣr bād westanwindes ond hwōn norþan, ond siglde ðā ēast be lande swā swā hē meahte on fēower dagum gesiglan. Þā sceolde hē ðǣr bīdan ryhtnorþanwindes, for ðǣm þæt land bēag þǣr sūþryhte, oþþe sēo sǣ in on ðæt land, hē nysse hwæþer. Þā siglde hē þonan sūðryhte be lande swā swā hē meahte on fīf dagum gesiglan. Ðā læg þǣr ān micel ēa ūp on þæt land. Ðā cirdon hīe ūp in on ðā ēa for þǣm hīe ne dorston forþ bī þǣre ēa siglan for unfriþe; for þǣm ðæt land wæs eall gebūn on ōþre healfe þǣre ēas. Ne mētte hē ǣr nān gebūn land, siþþan hē from his āgnum hām fōr; ac him wæs ealne weg wēste land on þæt stēorbord, būtan fiscerum ond fugelerum ond huntum, ond þæt wǣron eall Finnas; ond him wæs āwīdsǣ on þæt bæcbord. Þā Boermas heafdon sīþe wel gebūd hira land: ac hīe ne dorston þǣr on cuman. Ac þāra Terfinna land wæs eal wēste, būton ðǣr huntan gewīcodon, oþþe fisceras, oþþe fugeleras.

A translation:

Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that he of all Norsemen lived north-most. He quoth that he lived in the land northward along the North Sea. He said though that the land was very long from there, but it is all wasteland, except that in a few places here and there Finns [i.e. Sami] encamp, hunting in winter and in summer fishing by the sea. He said that at some time he wanted to find out how long the land lay northward or whether any man lived north of the wasteland. Then he traveled north by the land. All the way he kept the waste land on his starboard and the wide sea on his port three days. Then he was as far north as whale hunters furthest travel. Then he traveled still north as far as he might sail in another three days. Then the land bowed east (or the sea into the land — he did not know which). But he knew that he waited there for west winds (and somewhat north), and sailed east by the land so as he might sail in four days. Then he had to wait for due-north winds, because the land bowed south (or the sea into the land — he did not know which). Then he sailed from there south by the land so as he might sail in five days. Then a large river lay there up into the land. Then they turned up into the river, because they dared not sail forth past the river for hostility, because the land was all settled on the other side of the river. He had not encountered earlier any settled land since he travelled from his own home, but all the way waste land was on his starboard (except fishers, fowlers and hunters, who were all Finns). And the wide sea was always on his port. The Bjarmians have cultivated their land very well, but they did not dare go in there. But the Terfinn’s land was all waste except where hunters encamped, or fishers or fowlers.^[32]

Ayenbite of Inwyt[edit]

From Ayenbite of Inwyt («the prick of conscience»), a translation of a French confessional prose work into the Kentish dialect of Middle English, completed in 1340:^[33]

Nou wille þet ye hou is
þet þis boc is Engliss of Kent.
Þis boc is vor men
Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer
vor to vram alle manyere
þet ine ne no voul .
‘ ase god’ in his name ,
Þet þis boc made god him þet bread,
Of angles of hevene, and þerto his ,
And his þet he is . Amen.

The Canterbury Tales[edit]

The beginning of The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in poetry and prose written in the London dialect of Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century:^[34]

Whan that Aprill with his shoures
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in
Of which vertu engendred is the ;
Whan Zephirus with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the his half cours ,
And smale maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open
(So in ),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge ,
To , in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they ,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That whan that they were .

Paradise Lost[edit]

The beginning of Paradise Lost, an epic poem in unrhymed iambic pentameter written in Early Modern English by John Milton and first published in 1667:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Oliver Twist[edit]

A selection from the novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens in Modern English and published in 1838:

The evening arrived: the boys took their places; the master in his cook’s uniform stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out, and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared, the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver, while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity—

«Please, sir, I want some more.»

The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear.

«What!» said the master at length, in a faint voice.

«Please, sir,» replied Oliver, «I want some more.»

The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

See also[edit]

• Influence of French on English
• Phonological history of the English language
• Comparison of American and British English
• English phonology
• English studies
• Inkhorn debate
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• Middle English creole hypothesis
• Middle English declension
• History of the Scots language
• Changes to Old English vocabulary

Lists:

• List of dialects of the English language
• List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
• Lists of English words of international origin

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Bill Bryson (1990). The Mother Tongue — English And How It Got That Way. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0380715435.
• David Crystal (2013). The Story of English in 100 Words. Picador. ISBN 978-1250024206.
• David Crystal (2015). Wordsmiths and Warriors: The English-Language Tourist’s Guide to Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198729136.
• John McWhorter (2017). Words on the Move: Why English Won’t — and Can’t — Sit Still (Like, Literally). Picador. ISBN 978-1250143785.
• Hejná, Míša & Walkden, George. 2022. A history of English. (Textbooks in Language Sciences 9). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6560337 . A history of English. Open Access.

External links[edit]

• The History of English Podcast
• The Spread of English Language (video)
• Penn Corpora of Historical English
• Scandinavian loans in Old and Middle English, and their legacy in the dialects of England and modern standard English

Although @drm65 and @T.E.D. have given correct answers to the original question, I thought I would deal with the “not Angles but Angels” reference raised in the comments on the question by @Joe Blow.

The “not Angles but Angels” story has no bearing on the derivation of “English,” but it is a real story related by Bede in The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, book 2, chapter 1, near the end of the chapter. Bede relates a story concerning Pope Gregory the Great encountering some English slaves for sale in the marketplace at Rome (this was before he became Pope himself, though). When told that they were pagans, he said:

‘Heu, pro dolor!’ inquit, ‘quod tam lucidi uultus homines tenebrarum auctor possidet, tantaque gratia frontispicii mentem ab interna gratia uacuam gestat!’ Rursus ergo interrogauit, quod esset uocabulum gentis illius. Responsum est, quod Angli uocarentur. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit; ‘nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes. (Ecclesiastical History II.i)

Which translates as:

“Alas! what pity,” said he, “that the author of darkness is possessed of men of such fair countenances; and that being remarkable for such graceful aspects, their minds should be void of inward grace.” He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. “Right,” said he, “for they have an Angelic face, and it becomes such to be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven.” (Source, translator uncertain but likely L.C. Jane’s 1903 edition)

The exact phrase “non angli sed angeli” does not appear in the original Latin as you can see; it is a later distillation of the basic sentiment into a more succinct construction.

The original is much more fun than this translation; it’s basically an opportunity for Gregory — or for Bede — to show off his Latinity by making some amusing puns. I’m not fully familiar with how the story has been received in the centuries since Bede wrote, but as Joe Blow’s reference demonstrates, it retains some limited currency even today.

Lastly, note that it is not certain that the incident occurred, or if it did, that this is an accurate report. Fair and unbiased reporting of history was not a high priority for Bede, who was after all writing an ecclesiastical history connecting England more firmly to the rest of Christendom.

Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for language learners. Catch up on past installments here.

Hello, learners! For all of you learning a new language that isn’t English, you sure do have a lot of questions about… well, English! Which, of course, I love. So in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday on April 26, let’s take this week to learn a little bit more about English’s fascinating evolution!

Today’s question:

Dear Duolingo,

I’m studying French and noticed a lot of similar words to English. But, is English a Romance language? I thought it had German roots? Where did English come from?

Thanks!
English Speaker, History Seeker

The story of English involves conquests and defeats, bilingualism and language contact, and a language that hungrily incorporates new words from every community it touches.

It’s almost never clear when a language «starts» or is «born,» because people are always communicating – big language changes never happen from one day to the next! Instead, a new language is «born» more gradually, typically when some group’s way of communicating grows more and more different from former group members. That might happen because the group moves and no longer has contact with their old neighbors, or because a new group of people comes into town with their own language, or because the group has a particular change in culture or experience that increases differences.

In the case of English, all of those things happened!

Where did English come from?

If you guessed that English came from England, you’re right – sort of. And if you guessed that English did not come from England, you’re also sort of right!

If we were to land in the southern part of what we now call England about 1,600 years ago, we’d be in a land of many small groups, kingdoms, and tribes and a complex linguistic landscape. There would be speakers of Celtic languages, like the one that eventually became Welsh and Roman soldiers speaking one or more dialects of Latin. (Not to mention many Celts would have been speaking Latin, too!)

So linguistically, there was a lot going on on that relatively small island!

Around the 5th century, several groups of people from northern Europe (modern-day Germany and Denmark especially) moved to the southern part of that island. They were called the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, and they were Germanic, so they were different culturally, ethnically, religiously, and linguistically from the Celts and Romans already settled there. It’s not entirely clear what the dynamic was between the newcomers and the other groups, but in the end English (the language of the Angles and the Saxons) became the predominant language of Engla lond (the land of the Angles). Today we call that language variety Old English.

But that’s only the beginning. A few centuries later, they’d be joined by people of Scandinavian descent (Vikings!) speaking languages that originated in the places we now call Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Isn’t English a Romance language?

Some of that history may be surprising, given how much English has in common with other languages, like French. But English is not a Romance language like French; it’s a Germanic language related to other Germanic languages from northern Europe including German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic (which is no longer spoken). But English vocabulary does have a lot of overlap with Romance languages, especially French!

That’s because English continued to evolve after it made the move to southern England, and perhaps the biggest factor was French. Well, not the French we think of today – a thousand years ago, Latin dialects in modern-day France were doing their own mixing with local Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian languages, and one of these dialects was Norman French, spoken just across the English Channel in Normandy.

The big change came in 1066: William the Conqueror (aka William of Normandy) and the Normans invaded England and set up shop as the new ruling class. Over centuries, English speakers adopted a lot of vocabulary from Norman French, including words associated with prestige, education, government, and fancy things like food and art — and slipped them right into its Germanic grammar. Many of those French words and Germanic grammar rules have survived through the centuries!

If we look at the percent of English words that were borrowed from other languages, especially Latin and French, the number is enormous: as much as 80%. But that estimate is really deceptive because English has a huge number of words in dictionaries, but that doesn’t truly represent the words people actually use every day; for example, dictionaries naturally include specialized scientific and technical vocabulary (most of which comes from Latin and Greek). Here are some other stats about English vocabulary:

• Of the 100 most common words in English, 96 come from Old English, and three more (they, them, their) are from Old Norse and were already in use in Old English. The other word in the top 100, the one that’s neither Old English nor Old Norse? That’s the word very, from Old French!
• Of the 100 words on the Swadesh list (a list of core vocabulary most resistant to language change), 88 come from Old English, with four others from Old Norse and the rest from Latin and French. These include some numbers, close family terms, articles and question words (like these and what), the main body parts and needs (like eat and drink), and some basic nature and animal vocabulary.
• Of the 100 most common nouns in English today, about half come from Old English. There are 44 right from Old English and another 4 from Old French, Old Norse, or Latin but that were in use during the Old English period. And I bet you already know where the rest come from: French and Latin.

What was Old English like?

Despite Old English being spoken more than a thousand years ago, we know tons about it because it’s so well documented. You can easily find the epic poem Beowulf (alongside its Modern English translation 😅) in bookstores and online, not to mention Alfred, King of the West-Saxons, encouraged lots of writing of history and literature in the West-Saxon dialect of English. That dialect ended up becoming the Old English standard!

To a speaker of Modern English, Old English would look (and sound, and seem) like a totally different language. In order to understand it, you’d basically have to study it like you’d study any new language! And if you’re an English speaker who’s ever shaken your head about some frustrating feature in a European language you’re studying, I have news for you: Old English probably had it, too. For example, have you ever wondered…

Wow, what is up with these grammatical genders? Old English had three grammatical gender categories.

Literally why are there so many verb conjugations?! Old English verbs changed a lot, depending on the subject and tense.

Do normal people actually remember all these noun endings?? What even is the «dative»? Old English nouns changed their endings for (at least) four different cases.

Old English had even more in common with other Germanic languages than Modern English does, in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and word order in sentences. Here are some linguistic features you’d find in Old English:

• Different letters: Old English had a lot of letter combinations and diacritics (short marks like accents) that we don’t use today. It also had some actual letters that have fallen out of use, including two different letters for Modern English «th»: one for the sound in think (þ, called the letter «thorn») and another for the sound in those (ð, today called «eth»).
• Masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns: All nouns in Old English had a (mostly arbitrary!) grammatical gender. How arbitrary was grammatical gender in Old English? The word wīf, which meant «wife» or «woman,» was neuter, and another word for «woman,» wīfmann was masculine!
• Four noun cases: Old English nouns changed depending on their role in the sentence (is it a direct object? A subject? And so on.), and so each noun had different forms for nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative cases. And actually, there were different case endings for singular vs. plural nouns, and for the three different grammatical genders 🤯
• Formal and informal pronouns: In Old English, there were different ways to say «you,» depending on whether you wanted to be formal or informal with the person: þu (pronounced «thoo,» with the «th» sound like in think) was for informal situations, and ge (pronounced «yay») was formal. (Can you guess which one ended up falling out of use and which became formal and informal?)

What’s the difference between Old English, Middle English, and Modern English?

Very roughly speaking (heh heh 😏), Old English is the version of Anglo-Saxon spoken from the 5th century to the 11th century, Middle English is the stage of the language from the 11th to 15th centuries, and Modern English technically has its beginning around then, even before Shakespeare was born! And actually, all languages go through phases and big changes in their linguistic evolution – we could also talk about Old French, Classical Arabic, Modern Vietnamese, etc.

«Old,» «Middle,» and «Modern» are distinctions linguists make today to help refer to general properties and influences at different time points, but we know that changes and new stages of a language don’t happen overnight. Many of these changes were really gradual and took centuries to complete! We’ve seen a bit of the history and linguistic properties of Old English, and here’s the story behind Middle and Modern English:

Middle English

When: Roughly 11th century to 15th century. The traditional start of the Middle English period is the Norman Invasion of 1066.

What to look for: Loss of grammatical gender and most noun case endings – although the Germanic genitive case stuck around, so to say that something belonged to someone, you’d still add -es, like in a sowes erys (a sow’s ears). Word order became less flexible. A lot of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary was replaced with words from Norman French and later stages of French words. The Great Vowel Shift began, and if you have never before thought of anything with «vowels» being «great,» you are in for a treat: the pronunciation of Middle English vowels began shifting, with half of them acquiring an entirely new pronunciation within a couple of centuries. If you’ve ever cursed the inconsistency of English spelling and pronunciation, especially for vowels, you have cursed the Great Vowel Shift.

Major influences: French, French, and more French. Lots of Latin-origin vocabulary got to English through French during this stage, so you can find good Ol’ English words (ghost, house, cow) alongside fancier French-origin words (spirit, domicile, beef). Sometimes English acquired French words twice, centuries apart or from different French dialects, leaving English with pairs of borrowed French words! For example, cattle comes from Norman French, and chattel from Central French centuries later.

Where to find it: Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (not to be confused with the very Modern English The Green Knight).

Modern English

When: Roughly 15th century to today. Chaucer’s death is a sort of an informal end to the Middle English stage and the start of Modern English – which means I’m writing the same basic kind of English that Shakespeare wrote four hundred years ago. Clearly there have still been lots of changes to English! But remember that language change is most often a gradual process.

What to look for: The continued evolution of that -es ending for the old Germanic genitive case to express possession, which exists today as the ‘s in the child‘s toy* and the team‘s win. Eventually more standardized spelling conventions in the last 200-ish years. Verb conjugations significantly reduced so that most verbs have just two present tense forms (talk, talks; see, sees) and one or two past tenses (talked; saw, seen). Many new English dialects take root around the world.

Major influences: Colonization, slavery, and globalization. As English colonizers spread and settled around the world, they brought English to all corners of the globe, often to the great destruction of the people, languages, and cultures already in those places. As the language of the ruling class and sometimes a lingua franca, English developed new varieties that incorporated words and grammar from the colonized communities (like Indian English), influenced other languages (English words are frequently adopted in languages as geographically distant as French and Thai), sparked new pidgins and creoles (like Jamaican Creole and Cameroonian Pidgin English), and became the go-to language in some multilingual situations (like in every hostel I’ve ever stayed in).

Where to find it: William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, Billie Holiday’s music (and Billie Eilish’s, too!), Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, our Dear Duolingo column.

Englishes over time

It’s not hard to see the differences in English when you look at written examples! Here is a sample of the different stages using a text that was translated and updated at each stage – the Christian Lord’s Prayer.

	The Lord’s Prayer	Did you notice?
Old English	Úre Fæder, þú þe eart on heofonum sí þín nama gehálgod. Tócume þín ríce.	Written accents and two unfamiliar letters (þ and æ) are in use. «Ríce» (pronounced like «reech-ay»), for «kingdom,» isn’t so far from Germain Reich. If you know that ge- and tó are sort of prefixes, it’s not too hard to see «hallowed» in gehálgod and «come» in tócume.
Middle English	Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name. thi kyngdoom come to.	It’s starting to look more familiar! Spelling conventions have changed, and many prefixes and suffixes have been lost or reduced. Old English ríce by now replaced with another Old English word, kyngdoom.
(Early) Modern English	Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdome come.	Easily understood, even with some spelling oddities. The informal pronoun thy and the verb conjugation «art» had mostly fallen out of use in regular speech, but were still in use in some religious contexts.

English, a language as diverse as its users

Like most languages, the story of English involves lots of change and adaptation, as the people who used English to communicate evolved culturally and politically – and conquered others who were forced to change linguistically as well. As a result, the English varieties that we use today reflect influences from around the world. So of course I choose to believe that the British band Modern English was talking about English’s attitude toward linguistic borrowings when they wrote «I’ll stop the world and melt with you.»

To learn more about the inner workings of language and what that means for you as a learner, send your questions to dearduolingo@duolingo.com!