3. History of English Language

Historical /comparative/ linguistics is a branch of linguistics which studies language change and language relationships. The greatest research was carried in the 19th century.

There is resemblance between certain languages, e.g. one sound in a language became another in the other language. They are genetically related and they establish major language families. There is genetic relation between Sanscript, Latin and Greek /Johnes William, Rasmus Rask/ = reconstruction of Indoeuropian source.

Neo-grammatians presented regular laws with no exception. The parent language has disappeared; only some of the daugher languages remained.

Indoeuropian family has nine groups:

I. Baltic languages: Lithuanian, Latvian; extinct: Prussian

II. Slavic languages:

i. West-Slavic languages: Polish, Slovak, Czech, etc.

ii. South-Slavic languages: Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Makedonian, Bulgarian

iii. East-Slavic languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Belarussian

iv. extinct languages: staroslovenstina, polabstina

III. Germanic languages: developed from the Proto-Germanic language

i. East-Germanic languages: extinct - Gothic, Vandalic, Langobardian, Burgundian

ii. West-German languages: English, Dutch, Frisian, Flamish, Africanian, German, Yiddish

iii. North-German languages: Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faerish

IV. Celtic languages: Irish, Scotch Gaelic, Welsh, Breton

V. Romanian /Italic/ languages:

i. West-Romanian languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian, Romansh, etc.

ii. East-Romanian languages: Roumanian

iii. extinct languages: Latin, etc.

VI. Hellenic languages: Greek, Old Greek - extinct

VII. Albanian language

VIII. Armenian language

IX. Indo-Iranian languages:

i. Indian languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Panjabi, Romanian - Gipsy language, etc.

ii Iranian languages: Persian, etc.

Others families are, e.g.: Uralic languages /Estonian, Finish, Hungarian/, African languages /Swahili, Zulu/, Altaic languages /Turkish, Mongolian/, isolated languages /Japanese, Basque/.

Extinct languages are those whose speakers are killed, or the speakers are absorbed by another culture /American-Indian languages, Gothic, etc./.

Revival movements - people try to resurrect the language /Hebrew/.

ENGLISH

1st period: Old English /Anglo-Saxon/ - 700 - 1100: inflective language, sufixes

2nd period: Middle English - 1100 - 1450 /1500/

3rd period: Modern English - 1500 - ...

Celtic speaking - 43 AD inhabited and colonized by Romans

Angles, Saxons and Jutes /5th century/ - Celts survived in remote corners, there were additional invasions - Vikings /8th century to the end of the 11th century/

1066 - Norman kingdom established, French - language of England's ruling class, the subjects did not understand the language of their kings

c. 1300 - John left Normandy to French Philip II

about 10,000 words to English concerning army, religion, court, government, art, etc.

the complex system of Old English was simplified + from Latin: via strata /rovna cesta/ - street, London - Londinium, + Scandinavian