The document provides an overview of the history of the English language from its Germanic origins to its development after successive invasions and influences. It discusses how Old English emerged from Germanic tribal dialects and absorbed Latin influence with Christianity. It then describes how Old English was almost replaced by Old Norse after Viking invasions but was revived and absorbed Norse words under King Alfred the Great, leading to the development of Modern English through continued mixing of linguistic influences.

1. History Of The English
Language
A BBC Documentary
Chrisha Caliso

2. • Successive invasion introduced and threaten to destroy the English
language.
• 1st For 300 years English was forced underground
• 2nd tells how it survived and how it fought back
• 3rd How the English language took on the power block of Church and
State
• 4th How it became the language of Shakespeare
• American, Caribbean, India, Australia
• Language of business in 21st Century

3. GERMANIC FAMILY OF LANGUAGES
• There are words that we can recognize if we go to the Friesland,
Netherlands
• Modern Friesian and modern English can both be traced back to the
same family, the Germanic family of languages.
• Butter, bread, cheese, meal, sleep, boat, snow, see, storm
• The west Germanic tribes who invented these words were a war like
adventurous people. They’ve been on a move through Europe (1000
years) but now had settlements in the Lowlands of Northern Europe.
Holland, Germany, and Denmark.

4. 500 YEARS BEFORE THE GERMANIC TRIBE
• The Germanic tribes weren’t the
first one to invade. More than 500
years before, the Romans had also
come by sea to impose their will.
• But shortly there after, their empire
had crumbled and they’d abandoned
the Islands leaving the native
tribes, The Britons or Celts, to their
fate.
• Pevensey Castle- Roman Fort

5. THE ARRIVAL OF THE GERMANIC TRIBES
• The arrival of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons in the
5th Century in the Island of Tasheli. They also took
their language with them.
• 491- Germanic invaders laid siege and slaughtered
the Celts that had taken refuge in the Pevensey
castle. Other Celts did survived the invasion though,
a million or more of them in England.

6. • The Germanic tribe (1500 years ago) used to
describe them as Willas or Welsh that means
foreigner and slave.
• The Celts became servants and followers. They’re
the second class citizens.
• The only way up is to become part of the invaders
tribes to adopt their culture and their language.

7. CELTS AND THEIR LANGUAGE WERE
PUSHED TO THE MARGINS
• Only a handful of words from the Celtic languages survived
into Modern English.
• Crag= rock and Combe= deep valley
• There are also traces in place-names like Torpenhow (Tor=
peak), Carlisle( Car=fortified place), Tamils, Aven, Dover,
and London. But these were fragments. The language that
prevailed was that of the victors.

8. KINGDOMS OF THE 6TH CENTURY
• By the end of the
6th century these
Germanic tribes
occupied half of
mainland Britain.
• They have divided
into a number of
kingdoms.

9. MODERN PLACE NAME
• Ing= The people of
• Ealing, Dorking, Worthing, Reading
• Ton= enclosure or village
• Bridlington, Wigton, Taunton, Chessington
• Ham= Farm
• Birmingham, Grantham, Cheltenham, Tottenham

10. • The Germanic tribes, now settled down on the
country, all spoke their own dialects. One language
will emerge from among them, the Anglo-Saxons or
the Old English.
• There are still a hundred of words from the Old
English language that you can hear today. Keywords
from family names to numbers.

11. • Nouns: Youth, Sun, Daughter, Field, Friend, Home,
Ground
• Prepositions: In, On, Into, By, From
• Verbs: Drink, Come, Go, Sing, Like, Love
• And, The
• All the Numbers

12. IT’S SOUND A LITTLE DIFFERENT
• Sun- Suno
• Game- Gamun
• Ground- Grund
• “That’s not so very different” – Cassey Low
(Language Expert)

13. REVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY
• English took it’s first step away from it’s tribal roots with
revival of Christianity.
• 597- Friar Agustin led a mission from Rome to Kent. Within
a century Christians built churches and monasteries dated
from the 7th century.

14. • They’ve brought the international language of the
Christian religion, Latin. Latin terms became a
part of the English word horde.
• Altar, Apostles, Mass, Monk, Verse
• The layering of words taken from different source
languages- this would become a pattern of English.
• From Latin too the English took their script.

15. THE RUNIC ALPHABET
• The Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and
Jutes brought runes.
• The runic alphabet was made up
of symbols formed mainly of
straight lines so the letter can be
carved into stones or woods.
• Mainly used for short practical
messages or graffiti.

16. LATIN ALPHABETS
• The Latin alphabet’s curves and bows- it allowed words
to be easily written using pen and ink onto pages of
parchment or velum. If gather together to become a
book so it could be widely circulated.

17. THE GREAT ENGLISH MONK SCHOLAR
• At the monastery of St. Paul in Jairo, Bead
was born and educated in Northumbria. He
began writing the first ever history of the
English speaking people. He wrote of course in
Latin the language of scholarship.

18. • The prevailing language among
the people was still Old
English. But Latin, this
powerful medium, was now
amongst them.
• Now Old English was written
down using the Latin alphabet
while retaining some of the old
Runes as letters.
• From the 7th Century we find
English itself written on

19. • With writing: prayers were recorded, books of the bible
translated, and the laws of the land were written down.
• The language soon became capable of recording and
expressing and increasingly wide and subtle range of
human experience.
• And in the right hands, Old English is now powerful enough
to take you to imaginary world like poetry.

20. • Mid 7th and end of the 10th Century
• No on knows who composed the epic
Beowulf.
• It’s the first great poem in the English
language.
• The beginning of a glorious tradition that
will lead to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and
Bjorn.
• The poem celebrates the glory days of the
Germanic tribes.

21. • English at that time is a fully developed poetic
language. It’s capable of great elaboration. (Terrific
for telling what happened, action, and description.
• It’s written to be read aloud (but scholars are not
sure if it was written but there’s a writer dealing
with a traditional oral language).

22. MAKING EXTRA LANGUAGE

23. LATE 8TH CENTURY
• The Latin base scholarship which have
grown up and the cradle of Old English
faced extinction from across the sea.
• It was the Vikings who sacked and
burned the religious center that stood
here before. (Ruins of a Monastery in
Lindisfarne)

24. • These pagan pirates was rampaging with their long
ships in 793 in the great center of Christian piety
and scholarship.
• Their arrival was a signal to many people of an end
to civilization.
• Next was an abbey in Jairo. This stronghold of the
Latin word where English was written down was
burned to the ground.

25. • A start of a 70 years of attack.
• The Viking savage the Eastern half of
the country. Few stories survived
because few were left to tell the tale.
• In 865 landed a great army in East
Anglia.
• Within 5 years the Viking invader who
are now called Danes controlled the
North and East of the country.

26. • Of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
only Wessex still held out.
• Old Norse, the language of the
conquerors was spreading
throughout the land. Old English
potentially faced the same fate as
the Celtic language.

27. KING ALFRED THE GREAT
• His statue stand in Winchester (the capital of
Wessex).
• Dubbed by the Victorians
• He’s the only monarch in the history to be
known as the “great”.
• Often hailed as a Savior of England.
• He was a great defender of the English
language.

28. ALFRED’S BATTLE
• At first he can hardly hold the invaders back. In 878 have a
decisive battle at Chipinum and Mulcher. Alfred with only few
followers went on the run into the marshes of Somerset. He was
taking shelter in a poor woman’s cottage. But he proved to be an
enterprising warrior and a strategist. He discovered an irregular
warfare. Mounting guerilla attacks on the Danish invader at
Guthrun.
• Spring of 878 Alfred sent out a call for the men to join him. Around
4,000 men from Wilshire and Somerset armed only with battle axes
and throwing spears responded to the call.

29. • The battle was a slaughter but there
is no doubt that Alfred prevailed.
His crown and kingdom secured and
the English language.
• The Danes surrendered and the
leader was baptized as a Christian.
His victory was memorialized in the
land he’d saved.

30. • Alfred signed a peace treaty with the
Danes which established a border
running up through the country from
the Thems to the old Roman road of
Watling street.
• The land to the Northern East to be
known as the Danelaw would be
under Danish rule. The land to the
south and west would be for the
English.

31. • No one was to cross the line unless to trade.
• When Danes and English met they didn’t do so
to fight but to do business and intermarry.
• Communities mixed and so did the languages.
And English, rather than being engulfed by
the Danes’ language, began to absorb it.

32. DANISH SETTLEMENTS
• Place names ending in:
• By (farm)- Swainby, Rudby, Faceby, Easby, Birkby, Newby, Corby
• Thorpe (village)- Westthorpe, Nunthorpe, Fulthorpe,
• Thwaite (portion of land)- Huthwaite, Bassenthwaite
• Names ending in –son= a Danish way of making a name by adding
to the name of the father. (Dickinson, Harrison, Gibson, Watson).
These names are common in the Danish territories.

33. NORSE WORDS TODAY
• Some old Norse words stayed in a local dialect to the
north.
Beck-stream, garth-paddock
• All around the country overtime hundreds of Norse
words entered the mainstream of English and we still
use them everyday.
• Sk sound is a characteristics of old Norse. (Score, sky)
And a thousand others including bowl, anger, freckle,
knife, neck, root, skull, and window.

34. • When an old Norse and old English had a words for the
same thing both words lived on in English. Each taking on a
slightly different meaning.
• Old English= Craft, Hide, Sick
• Old Norse= Skill, Skin, Ill
(egg, law, husband, leg, ugly) (Pronouns: they, their, them)
(prepositions are also introduced)

35. LATE 9TH CENTURY
• The scholars and monasteries had once made England the
greatest powerhouse of Christian teaching in Europe. But 150
years had passed and the scholarly traditions had declined.
• In all the country, Alfred could barely find a handful of Priest
who could read and understand Latin. And if they couldn’t
understand Latin, they couldn’t pass on the teachings of their
religious books that told people how to lead virtuous lives and
then they couldn’t save souls.

36. PROMOTING ENGLISH LITERACY
• Alfred looked for a cure. One way was to
educate more clergy in Latin. But that
wasn’t enough. Alfred didn’t want to do
away with Latin but he realized that it
will be far easier to teach people to read
books written in the language they spoke.
• The best scholars could then go on to
Latin and join holy orders. The rest would
still have access to scholarship and
spiritual guidance but it will be written in
English.

37. He had a plan on promoting literacy
and restoring the English language by
translating all the necessary book that all
men should know. There are five books of
religious instructions, philosophy, and
history translated from Latin to English. A
laborious and costly undertaking. Copies
were sent out to the 12 bishops of his
kingdom for their wisdom to be spread as
widely as possible.

38. • Alfred sent a costly pointer (used
to underline the text) to each
bishop to emphasize the
importance and value of the
project. Discovered in 1693 in
Somerset and in now in show in
the museum in Oxford. Crafted in
jewel, enamel, and gold.
• Alfred the Great made the English
language the jewel of his crown.

39. • Alfred established a publishing house in Winchester.
• One of the projects was the commissioning of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicles detailing hundreds of years of history.
• 899 Alfred died.
• By the middle of the 11th Century, English seemed secure
but now other invaders were waiting and English was about
to face it’s greatest threat ever.

40. 1066 THE NORMANS
• William Duke of Normandy sailed with his
army to claim the English throne.
• The English King, Edward the Confessor,
had spent many years in Normandy and in
that time had come to regard William as a
brother or even a son and had named him as
his successor.

41. • Sensing of his impending death, the childless Edward had dispatched Harold
Godwinson (his wife’s brother) and his Earl of Essex (the riches and most
powerful of the English Lords) to Normandy to pledge loyalty to William.
• This Harold did and swearing on two caskets of holy relics. But when Edward
did died Harold had himself crown in Westminster abbey (supported by the
English nobility) on the very day Edward was laid to rest there.
• Invasion in maximum force was the only response by the ruthless William.

42. • The armies met in near
Hastings. Harold fell and was
pierced through the eye with
an arrow.
• The site was later named
after the engagement. But it’s
name was not from the
English word (fight) but the
word from the language of the
Norman victor (battle).

43. • Harold will be the last English speaking king of England for
3 centuries.
• On Christmas day on 1066. William was crowned in
Westminster Abbey. In a service conducted in both English
and Latin but William spoke French throughout.
• A new king and a new language were in authority in
England.

44. • Castle was one of the first French
words to enter the English language.
The Normans built a chain on them
to impose their rule on the country.
• By blood, the Normans were from the
same stock as the Norse men who’d
invaded in earliest centuries but
they no longer spoke of Germanic
language rather what we call old
French which have grown from Latin
roots.

45. • French is the language that spell out the new architectural
order.
• Crown, throne, court, Duke, baron, nobility, Peasant, vassal,
servant, governor.
• Liberty, authority, obedience, traitor.
• The Normans took law into their own hands
• Felony, arrest, warrant, justice, judge, jury, accuse, acquit,
sentence, condemn, prison, and jail

46. • In the 3 centuries after the conquest 10 thousand
French words colonized the English language.
• 500 words for food and eating
• City, market, porter, salmon, mackerel, oysters,
pork, sausage, bacon, fruit, orange, lemon, grapes,
tart, biscuit, sugar, cream, fry, vinegar, herb, olive,
appetite, plate, beef, mustard, salad, dinner

47. • Within 20 years of taking
control of the country, William
sent his officers out to take
stock of his Kingdom.
• The monks of Peterborough,
who was still recording the
events of history in English in
the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
noted disapprovingly that not
one piece of land escaped the
survey. Not even an ox, a cow,
or a pig.
• The domesday book (2
volumes) shows how complete
the Norman takeover of the
English land was. And how
widespread their influence
and their language.

48. • The native ruling class (from before the conquest) has been slaughtered,
banished, or disinherited in favor of William’s followers.
• Half of the country was in the hands of just 190 men half of that was just
held by 11 men. And not one of these spoke English.
• French and Latin became the languages of state, law, the church, and history
itself in England.
• The writing in English became increasingly rare. Even the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle guttered into silence.
• In a country of 3 languages, English became a poor 3rd. The English
language was forced underground. It will take 300 years for it to re emerge.
And when it did it would’ve changed dramatically.