英语发展史
英语发展史_百度文库
http://wenku.baidu.com/view/b0bf3dd726fff705cc170aa6.html
449 Anglo-Saxon invasions.
English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. This broad family includes most of the European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several major branches: Latin and the modern Romance languages (French etc.); the Germanic languages (English, German, Swedish etc.); the Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit etc.); the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech etc.); the Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian; the Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish Gaelic etc.); Greek. The influence of the original Indo-European language can be seen today, even though no written record of it exists. The word for father, for example, is vater in German, pater in Latin, and pitr in Sanskrit. These words are all cognates, similar words in different languages that share the same root. By the second century BC, this Common Germanic language had split into three distinct sub-groups:East Germanic was spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No East Germanic language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language that survives is Gothic. North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic (but not Finnish, which is related to Hungarian and Estonian and is not an Indo-European language). West Germanic is the ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English.West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes,began to settle in the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian - the language of the northeastern region of the Netherlands - that is called Old English. Four major dialects
of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in the Southeast. These invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words. These Celtic languages survive today in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland and in Welsh. Cornish, unfortunately, is, in linguistic terms, now a dead language. (The last native Cornish speaker died in 1777) Also influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse invasions and settlement, beginning around 850, brought many North Germanic words into the language, particularly in the north of England. Some examples are dream, which had meant 'joy' until the Vikings imparted its current meaning on it from the Scandinavian cognate draumr, and skirt, which continues to live alongside its native English cognate shirt.The majority of words in modern English come from foreign, not Old English roots. In fact, only about one sixth of the known Old English words have descendants surviving today. But this is deceptive; Old English is much more important than these statistics would indicate. About half of the most commonly used words in modern English have Old English roots. Words like be, water, and strong, for example, derive from Old English roots.Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted until about 1100. Shortly after the most important event in the development and history of the English language, the Norman Conquest. 英语语言的历史发展可以分为三个阶段,分别是:古英语,中世纪英语和现代英语. 古英语。有记载的英语语言起始于449年,当时包括央格鲁-撒克逊人)在内的德国部落入侵大不列颠。他们把原来的居民凯尔特人赶到不列颠的北部和西部角落。凯尔特人的
领袖King Arthur 带领部队勇敢作战,英勇抗击德国入侵者。这之后在不列颠岛上央格鲁人、撒克逊人和一些德国部落都说着各自的英语。尽管85%的古英语词汇现在已经不再使用,但一些常用词汇还是保留下来。和现代英语相比,古英语中的外来词很少,但派生词缀较多。古英语中还有较多描述性的复合词。787年,来自丹麦及斯堪的纳维亚地区的北欧海盗陆续进入英国。在之后的三百年里,他们袭击、侵占了大部分的英格兰。古英语无论从发音还是拼写上都与现代英语大相径庭。
1066 The Norman Conquest.
The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD. The new overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman. The Normans were also of Germanic stock ("Norman" comes from "Norseman") and Anglo-Norman was a French dialect that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin roots. Prior to the Norman Conquest, Latin had been only a minor influence on the English language, mainly through vestiges of the Roman occupation and from the conversion of Britain to Christianity in the seventh century (ecclesiastical terms such as priest, vicar, and mass came into the language this way), but now there was a wholesale infusion of Romance (Anglo-Norman) words.The influence of the Normans can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and cow. Beef, commonly eaten by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while the Anglo-Saxon commoners, who tended the cattle, retained the Germanic cow. Many
legal terms, such as indict, jury , and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the Normans ran the courts. This split, where words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romantic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.French words replaced Old English words; crime replaced firen and uncle replaced eam. Other times, French and Old English components combined to form a new word, as the French gentle and the Germanic man formed gentleman. Other times, two different words with roughly the same meaning survive into modern English. Thus we have the Germanic doom and the French judgment, or wish and desire.In 1204 AD, King John lost the province of Normandy to the King of France. This began a process where the Norman nobles of England became increasingly estranged from their French cousins. England became the chief concern of the nobility, rather than their estates in France, and consequently the nobility adopted a modified English as their native tongue. About 150 years later, the Black Death (1349-50) killed about one third of the English population. And as a result of this the labouring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance, and along with them English increased in importance compared to Anglo-Norman. This mixture of the two languages came to be known as Middle English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Unlike Old English, Middle English can be read, albeit with difficulty, by modern English-speaking people.By 1362, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was largely over. In that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made English the language of the courts and it began to be used in Parliament.The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of Modern English. 1066年的诺曼底征服事件在英语语言发展史上是一个标志性的转折点。在这年,威廉带领军队从法国诺曼底省出发,穿过英吉利海峡,想在英国
称王并在伦敦成立一个法国法庭。之后的近三百年里,法语一直是英国的官方语言,成为统治阶级用语,而平民百姓说的英语被认为市低等语言。到1300年左右,法语的使用开始减少。到14世纪末期,英语又重新成为官方语言。乔叟写于14世纪末期的《坎特伯雷故事集》反映了政治、经济、社会等方面的变化对英语语言的影响。在近四百年时间里,诺曼人给英语带来了近一万的外来词,深深影响了英国人的社会和生活。英语语言在这一时期借用了较多法语中的派生词缀,如-able, -ess 。当然也有一些拉丁语直接进入英语,而且多用于书面语。由于贸易的发展,还有少量的荷兰词语在这时期融入英语中。中世纪英语的语音变化较少,但句法上已经形成了固定的词序,并且扩展了情态动词、助词结构。不规则动词越来越少,很多不规则动词的过去式和过去分词也趋向规则化。到1000年,语言使用中已确定了-s 作为名词复数的构成,而古英语中曾以-en 结尾表示复数便渐渐不再被人们使用。
Early Modern English (1500-1800)
The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival of classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek words into the Language. These borrowings were deliberate and many bemoaned the adoption of these "inkhorn" terms, but many survive to this day. Shakespeare's character Holofernes in Loves Labor Lost is a satire of an overenthusiastic schoolmaster who is too fond of Latinisms. Many students having difficulty understanding Shakespeare would be
surprised to learn that he wrote in modern English. But, as can be seen in the earlier example of the Lord's Prayer, Elizabethan English has much more in common with our language today than it does with the language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless idioms are his. Newcomers to Shakespeare are often shocked at the number of cliches contained in his plays, until they realize that he coined them and they became cliches afterwards. "One fell swoop,""vanish into thin air," and "flesh and blood" are all Shakespeare's. Words he bequeathed to the language include "critical,""leapfrog,""majestic,""dwindle," and "pedant." Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate Middle and Modern English. The first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change in pronunciation that began around 1400. While modern English speakers can read Chaucer with some difficulty, Chaucer's pronunciation would have been completely unintelligible to the modern ear. Shakespeare, on the other hand, would be accented, but understandable. Vowel sounds began to be made further to the front of the mouth and the letter "e" at the end of words became silent. Chaucer's Lyf (pronounced "leef") became the modern life. In Middle English name was pronounced "nam-a," five was pronounced "feef," and down was pronounced "doon." In linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major changes occurring within a century. The shift is still not over, however, vowel sounds are still shortening although the change has become considerably more gradual.The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of the printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476. Books became cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. Publishing for the masses became a profitable enterprise, and works in English, as opposed to Latin, became more common. Finally, the printing press brought standardization to English.
The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in 1604.
Late-Modern English (1800-Present)
The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but Late-Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height, Britain ruled one quarter of the earth's surface, and English adopted many foreign words and made them its own. The industrial and scientific revolutions created a need for neologisms to describe the new creations and discoveries. For this, English relied heavily on Latin and Greek. Words like oxygen, protein, nuclear, and vaccine did not exist in the classical languages, but they were created from Latin and Greek roots. Such neologisms were not exclusively created from classical roots though, English roots were used for such terms as horsepower, airplane, and typewriter.This burst of neologisms continues today, perhaps most visible in the field of electronics and computers. Byte, cyber-, bios, hard-drive, and microchip are good examples.Also, the rise of the British Empire and the growth of global trade served not only to introduce English to the world, but to introduce words into English. Hindi, and the other languages of the Indian subcontinent, provided many words, such as pundit, shampoo, pajamas, and juggernaut. Virtually every language on Earth has contributed to the development of English, from Finnish (sauna) and Japanese (tycoon) to the vast contributions of French and Latin.The British Empire was a maritime empire, and the influence of nautical terms on the English
language has been great. Phrases like three sheets to the wind have their origins onboard ships.Finally, the military influence on the language during the latter half of twentieth century was significant. Before the Great War, military service for English-speaking persons was rare; both Britain and the United States maintained small, volunteer militaries. Military slang existed, but with the exception of nautical terms, rarely influenced standard English. During the mid-20th century, however, a large number of British and American men served in the military. And consequently military slang entered the language like never before. Blockbuster, nose dive, camouflage, radar, roadblock, spearhead, and landing strip are all military terms that made their way into standard English. 现代英语(1500――至今)。1476年,卡克斯顿(William Caxton )在英国开始引进印刷机的使用,标志着中世纪英语转入现代英语阶段。由于读物数量的增多,范围扩大,词汇拼写开始趋向规范化,标准化,固定化。这样一来,读音和拼写之间的差距扩大。另外,随着探险、殖民、以及贸易等各方面走向世界化,给现代英语带来一定的冲击。超过50种语言的外来词涌入英语,如阿拉伯语,法语,德语,荷兰语,俄语,希伯来语,西班牙语,汉语,意大利语等。为体现英语语言的威望,文艺复兴时期有更多的拉丁和希腊词汇加入英语。一些现代希腊语、拉丁语中的科技用语如aspirin, vaccinate 也被当作英语使用。另外,一些外来语仍保留了原来词语的复数形式。还有一些更保留了当时的拼写和发音.
American English and other varieties
Also significant beginning around 1600 AD was the English colonization of North America and the subsequent creation of American English. Some pronunciations and usages "froze" when they reached the American shore. In certain respects, some varieties of American English are closer to the English of Shakespeare than modern Standard English ('English English' or as it is often incorrectly termed 'British English') is. Some "Americanisms" are actually originally English English expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost at home (e.g., fall as a synonym for autumn, trash for rubbish, and loan as a verb instead of lend). The American dialect also served as the route of introduction for many native American words into the English language. Most often, these were place names like Mississippi, Roanoke, and Iowa. Indian-sounding names like Idaho were sometimes created that had no native-American roots. But, names for other things besides places were also common. Raccoon, tomato, canoe, barbecue, savanna, and hickory have native American roots, although in many cases the original Indian words were mangled almost beyond recognition.Spanish has also been great influence on American English. Mustang, canyon, ranch, stampede, and vigilante are all examples of Spanish words that made their way into English through the settlement of the American West.A lesser number of words have entered American English from French and West African languages. Likewise dialects of English have developed in many of the former colonies of the British Empire. There are distinct forms of the English language spoken in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and many other parts of the world. 开始在公元1600年左右的英国殖民北美和随后的美国英语的产生。一些发音和用法“冻结”当他们到达美国海岸。在某些方面, 一些品种的美式英语更接近莎士比亚的英语比现代标准英语(英国英语或经常被错误地称为“英式英语”)。一些“美国式”实际
上是最初英语英语表达, 保存在殖民地。同样的方言英语已经开发出许多大英帝国的前殖民地。有不同形式的英语口语在澳大利亚、新西兰、南非、印度和世界其他地区。
Global English
English has now inarguably achieved global status. Whenever we turn on the news to find out what's happening in East Asia, or the Balkans, or Africa, or South America, or practically anywhere, local people are being interviewed and telling us about it in English. To illustrate the point when Pope John Paul II arrived in the Middle East recently to retrace Christ's footsteps and addressed Christians, Muslims and Jews, the pontiff spoke not Latin, not Arabic, not Italian, not Hebrew, not his native Polish. He spoke in English. Indeed, if one looks at some of the facts about the amazing reach of the English language many would be surprised. English is used in over 90 countries as an official or semi-official language. English is the working language of the Asian trade group ASEAN. It is the de facto working language of 98 percent of international research physicists and research chemists. It is the official language of the European Central Bank, even though the bank is in Frankfurt and neither Britain nor any other predominantly English-speaking country is a member of the European Monetary Union. It is the language in which Indian parents and black parents in South Africa overwhelmingly wish their children to be educated. It is believed that over one billion people worldwide are currently learning English.One of the more remarkable aspects of the spread of English around the world has been the extent to which Europeans are adopting it as their internal lingua franca. English is spreading from northern Europe to the south and is now firmly entrenched as a second language in countries such as
Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. Although not an official language in any of these countries if one visits any of them it would seem that almost everyone there can communicate with ease in English. Indeed, if one switches on a television in Holland one would find as many channels in English (albeit subtitled), as there are in Dutch.As part of the European Year of Languages, a special survey of European attitudes towards and their use of languages has just published. The report confirms that at the beginning of 2001 English is the most widely known foreign or second language, with 43% of Europeans claiming they speak it in addition to their mother tongue. Sweden now heads the league table of English speakers, with over 89% of the population saying they can speak the language well or very well. However, in contrast, only 36% of Spanish and Portuguese nationals speak English. What's more, English is the language rated as most useful to know, with over 77% of Europeans who do not speak English as their first language, rating it as useful. French rated 38%, German 23% and Spanish 6% English has without a doubt become the global language. 英语现在已经无可争议地取得了全球地位。每当我们打开新闻发现在东亚发生的事情, 或巴尔干半岛, 或非洲或南美, 或几乎任何地方, 当地人民正在用英语采访。英语是工作语言的亚洲贸易组织东盟。世界上有超过十亿人正在学习英语。更为引人注目的一个方面英语的传播世界各地的欧洲人在多大程度上采用它作为其内部的通用语。英语从欧洲南部和北部蔓延已经得到确立作为第二语言在国家, 报告证实,2001年年初的英语是最广为人知的外国或第二语言。
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20821/how-and-in-what-way-did-the-danes-come-to-influence-english
1016 Danish King Cnut rules England.
The source you cite seems to confuse two different sources of Danish influence in the English Language: the Jutes and the Danes.The Jutes are one of the peoples who invaded Britain from 449 onwards, along with the Angles, the Saxons and the Frisians.The Danes came as a second wave 4 centuries later (roughly from 850 to 878) and, as shown in @Robusto's answer, carved themselves the kingdom named the Danelaw.The confusion comes from the fact that modern Denmark and Jutland are today the same place. However it is not certain that the Jutes came from modern Jutland. Let me quote an excerpt of the book "Origin of the English Language - A social and Linguistic History"So it was first thought that the Jutes came from what we now call Jutland; the Angles from the western side of the Jutish peninsula and the east bank of the Elbe; the Saxons from the Elbe to perhaps the mouth of the Rhine. More recent Archaeological evidence locates the Angles farther south-east and the Jutes on the coast, near the Frisian islands off the coast of Germany and the Netherlands"As a matter of fact, the real identity of the Jutes and their place of origin cannot be reliably established just from ancient texts because they contradict each other. Venerable Bede for instance, often cited as a source lived more than 250 years after the Anglo-Saxon
migrations. If you hypothesise that the Jutes migrated to Jutland after the 5th century then the Wikipedia article stating that "many Danish speakers are able to understand some spoken Frisian" makes perfect sense. After all, people migration and splitting was quite common in these times. Consider for instance the migration of Goths, splitting and then travelling to Spain, Italy and Russia or that of the Vandals: to Sicily through Spain, Morocco and Tunisia.Furthermore, as you have rightly pointed out, the distance between the Frisian islands and England is much shorter than the distance between modern Jutland and England. The most convincing observation is that the Jutes are said to have landed in Kent... That is quite possible if they came from Friesland but less likely if they came from Jutland. The Danelaw does lie "in front" of Denmark but Kent surely doesn't .I do not mean to underestimate the contribution of Old Norse to English; it is instead, well established. One often cites for instance many words in "sk": (sky, score, skirt, skill, scab, scale, scrap), or such important words as get, die, call, egg, raise, take. Nevertheless one has to be careful when ascribing the etymology of an English word to Danes. It could be from Danish influence or it could be of more ancient Anglo-Saxon origin.As for ta and thank , the origin of thank is believed to be Proto Germanic (thankojan ) and was already present in Anglo Saxon English before the Danish invasions. However, the Old English (臘ancian ) and Old Norse (臘akka ) versions followed parallel evolution paths and met again when Danes
landed in Britain. So yes "ta" looks like Old Norse indeed but it caught up because it met an already well established cognate.It must be remembered that the Saxon king lfred the Great (A.D. 849-899) presided over the southwestern part of England in his time (little beyond what were then known as West Seaxe and Suth Seaxe, and that for several hundred years the Danes had the rest. Here is a map (c. 10th century) of the Danelaw (the area of Danish settlement and dominant influence).In fact, the Norman Conquest was only the second conquest of England in the 11th century. The first was begun by Svein Forkbeard, the Danish king, and was completed by his son Cnut in 1016. King Cnut (also styled "the Great") ruled all of England for nearly 20 years. It is against this backdrop that we must consider the English language to have been profoundly influenced by the Nordic tongue.
A couple more points on the influence of Old Norse on English.The various forms of the third-person plural personal pronoun, "they/them/their" are believed to come from Old Norse 镁eir/镁aim/镁eira. I'm sure there are many other words, but this shows at what a fundamental level the language was influenced. Also, Danish/Norse influence helped to make English simpler. It was during that period of history that the language lost some of its more difficult grammatical features - in particular declensions , the complex system of word endings used to distinguish subject from object ("who did what to whom").Old English used a horribly complicated system
with over 300 endings (5 cases 脳 3 genders 脳 2 numbers 脳 (7 types of noun + 6 types of adjective) = 312. Plus there were additional rules for personal pronouns, and some irregular nouns that didn't follow the usual rules.It is thought that the influence of Old Norse helped to get rid of the Old English system of declensions. ModernEnglish (and Middle English) instead use a much simpler system of word order and prepositions.England before 1066 (and after) isn't one place.Especially so; Northern England was very different historically and literally than the South. Until the Norman conquest everywhere north-east of roughly London-Chester was a Viking country not an Anglo-Saxon one. This is still obvious in the place names. See for example this link.
1492 Columbus’s voyage to the New World.
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/latinamericatheconquest/p/Columbusfirst.htm
The First Voyage of Christopher Columbus:Having convinced the King and Queen of Spain to finance his voyage, departed mainland Spain on August 3, 1492. He quickly made port in the Canary Islands for a final restocking and left there on September 6. He was in command of three ships: the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María. Although Columbus was in overall command, the Pinta was captained by Martín Alonso Pinzón and the Niña by Vicente Yañez Pinzón.
First landfall: San Salvador:
On October 12, Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor aboard the Pinta, first sighted land. Columbus himself later claimed that he had seen a sort of light or aura before Triana did, allowing him to keep the reward he had promised to give whomever spotted land first. The land turned out to be a small island in the present-day Bahamas. Columbus named the island San Salvador, although he remarked in his journal that the natives referred to it as Guanahani. There is some debate over which island was Columbus’ first stop; most experts believe it to be San Salvador, Samana Cay, Plana Cays or Grand Turk Island.
Second landfall: Cuba:
Columbus explored five islands in the modern-day Bahamas before he made it to Cuba. He reached Cuba on October 28, making landfall at Bariay, a harbor near the eastern tip of the island. Thinking he had found China, he sent two men to investigate. They were Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, a converted Jew who spoke Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic in addition to Spanish. Columbus had brought him as an interpreter. The two men failed in their mission to find the Emperor of China, but did visit a native Ta 穩no village. There they were the first to observe the smoking of tobacco, a habit which they promptly picked up.
Third Landfall: Hispaniola:
Leaving Cuba, Columbus made landfall on the Island of Hispaniola on December 5. The natives called it Haití, but Columbus renamed it La Española, a name which was later changed to Hispaniola when Latin texts were written about the discovery. On December 25, the Santa María ran aground and had to be abandoned. Columbus himself took over as captain of the Niña, as the Pinta had become separated from the other two ships. Negotiating with the local chieftain Guacanagari, Columbus arranged to leave 39 of his men behind in a small settlement, named .
Return to Spain:
On January 6, the Pinta arrived and the ships were reunited: they set out for Spain on January 16. The ships arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 4, returning to Spain shortly thereafter.
Historical Importance of the First Voyage:
In retrospect, it is somewhat surprising that what is today considered one of the most important voyages in history was something of a failure at the time. Columbus had promised to find a new, quicker route to the lucrative Chinese trade markets and he failed miserably. Instead of holds full of Chinese silks and spices he returned with
some trinkets and a few bedraggled natives from Hispaniola: some ten more had perished on the voyage. In addition, he had lost the largest of the three ships entrusted to him.
Columbus actually considered the natives his greatest find. He thought that a new slave trade could make his discoveries lucrative. Columbus was hugely disappointed a few years later when Queen Isabela, after careful thought, decided not to open the New World to slave trading.
Columbus never believed that he had found something new: he maintained, to his dying day, that the lands he discovered were indeed part of the known Far East. In spite of the failure of the first expedition to find spices or gold, a much larger was approved, perhaps in part due to Columbus’ skills as a salesman. 哥伦布曾承诺要找到一个新的,更快的路线到利润丰厚的中国贸易市场和他失败得很惨。而拥有全中国丝绸和香料,他带着一些小饰品和一些脏兮兮的当地人从西斯潘尼奥拉号:超过十人死亡在航行。此外,他已经失去了最大的三艘托付给他。哥伦布认为他最大的发现当地人。他认为,一个新的奴隶贸易可以使他的发现有利可图的。哥伦布是非常失望,几年后,当女王伊莎贝拉,经过认真考虑后,决定不到新世界的开放的奴隶贸易。哥伦布不相信他找到新的东西:他坚持,他死的那一天,他发现,土地上的已知远东部分。在寻找香料或黄金
第一远征军虽然失败了,一个更大的第二次被批准,也许部分由于哥伦布的技能作为一个推销员。