______________ Where did it
Come
From ?
Two thousand years ago, several tribes lived in a country that is now called England. These tribes had to fight another people from another parts of Europe who came to make war on them. When the enemy won, they stayed and continued speaking their native language. They also tried to make everyone else speak it. After some time several language were being spoken there at the same time.
The first people who came were the Celts, about the
year 400 BC they spoken the Celtic language, which is little the language the
people in Ireland
speak now.
In 55 BC the Romans came for the first time. However,
they did not quite succeed in conquering the natives. When they came again
about a hundred years later. They were more successful and stayed for about
three centuries. These Romans spoke Latin.
Next the Teutonic tribes came, first Angelo Saxons
and then the Danes. They brought their several language. And as the years went
by, the many languages became one : The Angelo Saxon language is the origin of
the English.
Finally came the Norman Knights who rode on fine
horses. They spoke French. In the beginning they tried hard to make everyone
speak their language, but they were not successful. So three languages were
really being spoken then. Anglo Saxon was the language of the people, French
the language of Government, and Latin the language of the church.
Historically, the English is different from modern
English. Indeed it is more like modern German, which was also of the same
origin. Unlike modern English, both German and the old English have a great
many adjective endings. Therefore, for speakers of the modern English, studying
the English is like a foreign language.
In the middle English grammar, word order and
structure words became more important than word endings. Also the stress in
many words was moved to the first syllable. Many French words were added during
the middle English period.
The modern English is the English that native
speakers have been using for the last 500 years. More and more word Endings
have become lost still there are only a few left now. They are –s in plural
nouns and the third person singular of verbs ; book – books, jump – jumps, the
–ed in the past tense of regular verbs : jump – jumped, the –ing in verb forms
such as the word “singing” in : “he is singing” or “his singing is loud”’ and
the –er and est of adjectives : louder – loudest.
The
modern English began from the dialect
that had developed around London
by the end of the fifteenth century. The people of British Isles, the United
States, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, South Africa and others areas now speak
it. It has more speakers, either as a first or as a second language, than any
other language in the world. Estimating the exact number of its native speakers
is difficult, but 300 million would be about right Estimating the number of
people who speak it as a second language is even more difficult. Again,
strangely enough, it is probably about 300 million. If we add the two groups
above, so the sum is 600 million or 20% of the world population.
