about.com
English language

Definition:

The primary language of several countries (including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and a second language in a number of multilingual countries (including India, Singapore, and the Philippines). See Observations, below.

English is conventionally divided into three historical periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.

Varieties of English:

African American Vernacular English, American, Australian, Babu, Banglish, British, Canadian, Caribbean, Chicano, Chinese, Euro-English, Hinglish, Indian, Irish, Japanese, New Zealand, Nigerian, Nonstandard English, Pakistani, Philippine, Scottish, Singapore, South African, Spanglish, Standard American, Standard British, Standard English, Taglish, Welsh, Zimbabwean

also:

• American Spelling and British Spelling
• Basic English
• Broken English
• Controlled English
• Earliest English Dictionaries
• English As an Additional Language
• English As a Foreign Language
• English As a Native Language
• English As a Second Language
• English Language Timeline
• English-Only Movement
• Global English
• Globish
• History of the English Language: A Mini-Anthology
• Inner Circle, Outer Circle, Expanding Circle
• Key Events in the History of the English Language
• Linguistic Complaint
• New Englishes
• Notes on English as a Global Language
• Plain English
• Present-Day English (PDE)
• A Quick Quiz on the History of the English Language
• A Quirky Quiz on the English Language
• Spoken English
• Webster's Dictionaries
• What Is Standard English?
• Why Study English?
• World English
• Written English

Etymology:

"English" is derived from "Anglisc", the speech of the "Angles" (one of the three Germanic tribes that invaded England during the fifth century).
...

Amtssprache von UK
Amtssprache von United Kingdom

• Englisch
• Schottisch-Gälisch, Vereinigtes Königreich: Schottland (zusammen mit Englisch)
• Walisisch, in Wales (zusammen mit Englisch)

antonomasia (W3)

• 'Einstein' to refer to a 'scientific genius'
• 'Solomon' to mean 'a wise ruler'

• 'Kleenex' für 'Tissue'
• 'Uhu' für 'Klebstoff'

antonomasia

arrantpedantry.com
Celtic and the History of the English Language

A little while ago a link to this list of 23 maps and charts on language went around on Twitter. It’s full of interesting stuff on linguistic diversity and the genetic relationships among languages, but there was one chart that bothered me: this one on the history of the English language by Sabio Lantz.

The Origins of English

The first and largest problem is that the timeline makes it look as though English began with the Celts and then received later contributions from the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and so on. While this is a decent account of the migrations and conquests that have occurred in the last two thousand years, it’s not an accurate account of the history of the English language. (To be fair, the bar on the bottom gets it right, but it leaves out all the contributions from other languages.)

English began with the Anglo-Saxons. They were a group of Germanic tribes originating in the area of the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark, and they spoke dialects of what might be called common West Germanic. There was no distinct English language at the time, just a group of dialects that would later evolve into English, Dutch, German, Low German, and Frisian. (Frisian, for the record, is English’s closest relative on the continent, and it’s close enough that you can buy a cow in Friesland by speaking Old English.)
...

babbel.com
Babbel Magazine

• The Collective Nouns Quiz
• How good is your English? As good as Shakespeare's himself? Well, even William may have had a bit of trouble identifying his collective nouns. See how far you get in our medley of marvellous menageries...
• Unkind Ravens and Murderous Crows: Collective Nouns in English
• Have you ever wondered why fish swim in schools, stairs are measured in flights or worms come in cans? As with so many things in life, the French are to blame. Let me back up a little. If languages were carpets, English would be a vast patchwork...
• The 7 Day Turkish Challenge
• I was convinced of their talent, but I wanted to know if there was a limit to their abilities. What would happen, I asked myself, if we gave them one week to learn a language that they had never touched before? I put it to them and they both...
• 10 Steps to Germanize Yourself
• Germans love their Hausschuhe (house shoes) so you must too. View anyone who doesn't wear house shoes as a primitive savage: part human, part dirt distribution device. For bonus German points add a little...
• ¡Oprima Dos! Tune in to Spanish
• This is the story of how I learned to speak Spanish long after I gave it up for dead, how it dawned on me that I was constantly surrounded by a living language rather than just a compulsory school subject, and...
• Tips to learn Spanish (and any other language)
• Spanish is the most studied second language in the United States. Many Americans start learning it in middle school or high school, but most of us never reach a level where we can really communicate in Spanish. I studied...
• Valentine’s Day Tales from Europe
• Valentine’s Day: the day of love. Every day should be a day of love, but having one day dedicated to it makes it more special, with millions of people around the world declaring their love for each other. Despite the assumption that it’s actually a holiday made up by florists and chocolatiers to sell more flowers...
• My German Girlfriend's English
• Many birds have flown their native nest in pursuit of border-busting love. And yet it still seems to remain a novelty to people I meet when I disclose that my girlfriend is not English, but German. This invariably leads to a swift interrogation that almost always begins with the same question: and which language do you speak with one another...
• 11 Steps to Frenchify Yourself
• 1. While eating a delicious meal, talk about OTHER appetizing meals you ate, could eat, will eat, should eat, want to eat, definitely have to eat. 2. Make sure your sense of humor is strong and resilient. The French live for irony and tend to tease everyone. Don’t mistake a harmless joke for rudeness...
• The Tongue-Twister Challenge
• When you're learning a new language, tongue-twisters are a great way to practice your pronunciation. Tongue-twisters are sentences or series of words that are hard to say. They often have similar alternating sounds, like 's' and 'sh' or 'p' and 'b'. Although they are typically nonsense...
• Twins and Secret Languages
• Secret forms of communication have been around for as long as people have had secrets to keep - from the substitution ciphers used by the Romans to encrypt military intelligence to slang that can insulate a community from outsiders. But some secret codes are so esoteric that they are known by only two people and...
• 143 English Words That Are Actually Spanish
• Thanks to the popularity of Mexican cuisine north of the border (around the world, actually), there are plenty of Spanish words that English speakers knowingly adopt in day-to-day use: taco, tortilla and quesadilla are pretty standard imports. But you may be surprised to learn that hundreds more Spanish words are...
• Let’s Bust Some Myths About Fluency
• For all you fluent English speakers out there, don't you think it's interesting that the Kronecker pairing on the homology and cohomology of a space should be thought of as an analogue (in fact it is a generalization) of integrating a differential n-form along an n-dimensional submanifold? This excerpt is from a lecture on algebraic...
• How to Answer the Phone in Different Languages
• Saying “Hello?” when answering the phone is pretty much an automatic reflex, but why *that* word and not another, and why do so many languages use some version of “hello” as a telephone greeting? If you think that people simply decided to answer the phone the same way they greeted each other in person, you've...
• Why I Choose to Learn Minority Languages
• If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. This quotation from the late Nelson Mandela perfectly expresses my motivations to focus on learning minority languages. We take it for granted that a few super languages dominate...
• My New Year's Resolution: Learn Two More Languages
• A brand new year brings fresh ideas and a new release of impetus. Whether it's saving up for the trip of a lifetime, finally unpacking those boxes and arranging the spare room, or having a proper crack at Italian, there is no better time than the first of January to decide what 2015 will hold in store for you. I’ve decided...
• Meet the Super Polyglot Brothers!
• Just as training with a partner can make it easier to get through your gym routine, studying a language with a partner can make language learning much easier too. And if your language partner knows more than you, or starts making more progress, well, that certainly sets the blood racing! A healthy rivalry is always...
• 10 Steps to Swedify Yourself
• In addition to learning Swedish, following these ten steps will get you well on your way to being mistaken for a resident of Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. Ett (one): start interjecting vocal sounds like mmmm, a questioning ååååh? or a surprised oy-doh! into normal conversations. Två (two): eat jam on your...
• Why Age is No Barrier to Learning a Language
• Dear reader, are you in the prime of your teenage years? Or are you twenty, fit and raring to go? Is your life laid out before you like a majestic Persian rug? Good for you. Now shoo. That’s it, skedaddle. Vamoose. Go and read something else. Ah, that’s better. Now they’ve all cleared out, we can talk about...
• How to Travel without a Guidebook
• Language is a crucial resource for travelers, a key that unlocks doors to worlds you could not have imagined. I began traveling through Central and South America with only a basic command of Spanish, and learned much of what I know through conversation...
• My Favorite Italian Words
• I’ve written about my favorite German words and my favorite Spanish words, two languages with which I am fairly well acquainted. My experience of Italian is nothing like as rich as of German or Spanish - I have never lived in the country, I have never walked in their shoes. But I have visited...
• The World’s Favourite Words
• Babbel is running a competition called ‘My Favourite Word’ where users are invited to send in a video about their favourite word in a foreign language. It got me thinking. How do people fall in love with a word? Often it’s a very arbitrary decision. They say you can’t choose who you love...
• The Art of Making a Fool of Yourself
• When I first landed in Berlin, Germany, I didn’t speak a word of German. Or rather, I spoke about six. I arrived with a short vocabulary list my teenage cousin had given me, notes from his high school German class, which included such helpful phrases as “Sumpfmonster” (“swamp monster”) and “Zombie-Angriffen” (“zombie attacks”)...
• Going Undercover: Donning the Disguise of Language
• Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate a group of people to learn more about how they see the world, gain access to incredible first-hand stories, make lasting friendships, and seamlessly immerse yourself into a vibrant, stimulating atmosphere...
• Día de los Muertos: Phantoms of the Cultural Subconscious
• The Day of the Dead, El Día de los Muertos, is about airing grief colorfully, creatively, exuberantly; the living honoring the dead with lovingly decorated graves and shrines...
• Boogeymen from Around the World
• Every country has a long, rich tradition of invoking supernatural threats in order to keep kids in line. Maybe parents save it for a last resort, but when they can't get their kids to behave there is a certain terrifying monster who can. He has many names and...
• A Flâneur in Paris: How I Discovered a Secret City Hiding in Plain Sight
• The idea of the “flâneur” is peculiarly French - though it may appear scattered throughout several other cultures as well. Deriving from the French verb, “flâner”, meaning “to stroll” or “to saunter”, a “flâneur” is, simply put, “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”...
• Does Learning a Foreign Language Actually Pay Off?
• For a more well-rounded take on how knowing a foreign language can pay off, we asked our friend Rob, who carved himself a lucrative niche thanks to his language skills. He’s had a rewarding and exciting career specifically because he knows multiple languages...
• 7 Reasons Why Every American Should Learn Spanish
• Do you want to improve your job prospects, increase your chances of finding love and immerse yourself in another culture without leaving your hometown? Look no further than the Spanish language! It’s America’s second most spoken, and most widely taught, non-English language. It’s also the country’s fastest growing language - period...
• How I Learned to Love the French Language
• When I started learning French as a freshman in high school, I remember experiencing a deep sense of inadequacy, an abundance of self-doubt, and a general feeling of oafishness.This lasted for about six months, causing me to question my intelligence, my worthiness, and my reasons for being there in the first place...
• How the Rosetta Stone Cracked The Hieroglyphic Code
• In today’s world, where businesses are international and broadcasts are multilingual, lots and lots of text needs to be translated every day, the bulk of it by non-digital professionals. So what does any of this have to do with the Rosetta Stone? Patience. There’s a story here, but to start we have to flashback - way back - all the way back to Egypt circa 500 B.C. ...
• You Can’t Say That in English! Untranslatable Words from Around the World
• By some estimates the English language has more than a million words. It’s impossible to nail down an exact figure, but it’s generally agreed that no other language has nearly as many. It’s not like any of us *use* all one million words, but still - you would think that English must have a word for everything, right? No way. Not even close. There are over 6,000 languages spoken on Earth...
• 139 Old Norse Words that Invaded the English Language
• The Old Norse noun víking meant an overseas expedition, and a vikingr was someone who went on one of these expeditions. In the popular imagination, the Vikings were essentially pirates from the fjords of Denmark and Norway who descended on medieval England like a bloodthirsty frat party; they raped, pillaged, murdered, razed villages and then sailed back across the North Sea with the loot. But the truth is far more nuanced...
• How to Eat Like an Italian
• The first meal you ever eat in Italy is an adventure. I had just arrived in Florence with my friend Tom, armed only with a phrasebook and plenty of self-confidence. We strolled along the Arno river and took selfies in front of the Ponte Vecchio. As the last rays of the sun gleamed off il Duomo, we spotted a quiet restaurant overlooking the river. This was the moment we had been waiting for. Our first meal in Italy...
• My Favorite Spanish Words
• When I left university I felt like I was bursting through a set of saloon swing doors, arms loaded with qualifications about to hold up the professional world until they handed over the job of my dreams. I think many graduates feel like this, and this misplaced confidence compounds the disappointment when...
• Why People Learn Languages
• There are as many different answers to this question as there are language learners. So Babbel decided to conduct a survey to start narrowing it down a bit. Over 5,000 Babbel users in six countries took part - in France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, and the USA. They were asked about their...
• The Polyglot Game
• Polyglots Matthew & Erika turn their multilingual skills into a game. Just how quickly and easily can these polyglots switch from one language to another? They both use their language skills every day in their work at Babbel. But our resident polyglots...
• 5 Quotes to Inspire Any Language Learner
• Are you desperate to learn a language, or already taking on the challenge, but find it difficult to stay motivated? When your ultimate goal, language fluency, seems months or years away motivation becomes the most important factor during the long haul. So here are five inspiring quotes to remind you that learning a foreign language is totally worth...
• Public Viewings, Wellness and Shootings: How to Not Speak Denglish
• British kids usually learn French, Spanish or German at school. I loved learning German. So much so that I studied German to A-Level (entspricht etwa Abitur) and then at university. I was finally able to read Schiller, Goethe and Brecht in the authors’ own words. So imagine my disappointment when I found the language actually spoken in Germany was somewhat… familiar. Double Whopper mit leckerem Bacon und Cheddar Cheese...
• The Pigeon Without Wings, and other Brazilian Soccer Expressions
• It’s undeniable that Brazil is “o País do Futebol” (the country of football), but not everyone may be aware that Brazilians also have their own “língua do futebol”. I consulted Pedro, our resident carioca da gema, to learn about his favorite Brazilian-Portuguese football expressions...
• How to Name Animals in German
• The German language has a pretty special ability: nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives can be stuck together like lego bricks to create new words that describe new things. With German you can invent a name for just about anything. Call it the language’s lego brick-like quality, or Legosteineigenschaft (see what I just did there?)...
• My Favorite German Words
• As I settled into the barber’s chair and once again attempted to allay my long-held fear of a man with a sharp implement in his hand and questionable politics, I readied my mind. I had been coming to this barber ever since my follicles first demanded it...
• 5 Ways that Speaking a Language is Like Playing Music
• Erika can’t really say where she’s from. Not because she doesn’t know (she was born in Soriano nel Cimino, Italy) but because her family history is one of such incessant wanderlust that there are actually too many places she could claim as home (the last three generations of her family have lived on four different continents)...
• 25 American Movies with Hilarious Foreign Titles
• There seem to be several strategies when translating the name of a film into another language, and none of them work perfectly. You can go for a literal word-for-word translation, try to describe the film in the title, guess what the name might be based on the poster, or make up something completely new. Famous examples of bad translations include...
• Top 10 Tips to Learn A Language by Matthew the Polyglot
• Matthew Youlden speaks nine languages fluently and understands more than a dozen more. We work in the same office in Berlin, so I constantly hear him using his skills, switching from language to language like a chameleon changing colors. In fact, for the longest time I didn’t even know he was British...

Barbarian
Vandals, barbarians, and cosmopolitans
Barbarians and Savages
blahs and barbarians

bartleby116
Fowler, H.W.
The King’s English

• (1) to pass by all rules, of whatever absolute importance, that are shown by observation to be seldom or never broken; and
• (2) to illustrate by living examples, with the name of a reputable authority attached to each, all blunders that observation shows to be common.

• PART I
• Chapter I. Vocabulary
• General Principles
• Familiar and far-fetched words
• Concrete and abstract expression
• Circumlocution
• Short and long words
• Saxon and Romance words
• Requirements of different styles
• Neologisms
• Americanisms
• Foreign words
• Formation
• Slang
• Individual
• Mutual
• Unique
• Aggravate
• Chapter II. Syntax
• Case
• Number
• Comparatives and superlatives
• Relatives
• Defining and non-defining relative clauses
• That and who or which
• And who, and which
• Case of the relative
• Miscellaneous uses of the relative
• It … that
• Participle and gerund
• Participles
• The gerund
• Distinguishing the gerund
• Omission of the gerund subject
• Choice between gerund and infinitive
• Shall and will
• The pure system
• The coloured-future system
• The plain-future system
• Second-person questions
• Examples of principal sentences
• Substantival clauses
• Conditional clauses
• Indefinite clauses
• Examples of subordinate clauses
• Perfect infinitive
• Conditionals
• Doubt that
• Prepositions
• Chapter III. Airs and Graces
• Certain types of humour
• Elegant variation
• Inversion
• Exclamatory
• Balance
• In syntactic clauses
• Negative, and false-emphasis
• Miscellaneous
• Archaism
• Occasional
• Sustained
• Metaphor
• Repetition
• Miscellaneous
• Trite phrases
• Irony
• Superlatives without the
• Cheap originality
• Chapter IV. Punctuation
• General difficulties
• General principles
• The spot plague
• Over-stopping
• Under-stopping
• Grammar and punctuation
• Substantival clauses
• Subject, &c., and verb
• Adjectival clauses
• Adverbial clauses
• Parenthesis
• Misplaced commas
• Enumeration
• Comma between independent sentences
• Semicolon with subordinate members
• Exclamations and statements
• Exclamations and questions
• Internal question and exclamation marks
• Unaccountable commas
• The colon
• Miscellaneous
• Dashes
• General abuse
• Legitimate uses
• Debatable questions
• Common misuses
• Hyphens
• Quotation marks
• Excessive use
• Order with stops
• Single and double
• Misplaced
• Half quotation
• PART II
• Some less important chapters had been designed on Euphony, Ambiguity, Negligence, and other points. But as the book would with them have run to too great length, some of the examples have been simply grouped here in independent sections, with what seemed the minimum of comment.
• Euphony
• Jingles
• Alliteration
• Repeated prepositions
• Sequence of relatives
• Sequence of that, &c.
• Metrical prose
• Sentence accent
• Causal as clauses
• Wens and hypertrophied members
• Careless repetition
• Quotation, &c.
• Common misquotations
• Uncommon misquotations of well-known passages
• Misquotation of less familiar passages
• Misapplied and misunderstood quotations and phrases
• Allusion
• Incorrect allusion
• Dovetailed and adapted quotations and phrases
• Trite quotation
• Latin abbreviations, &c.
• Grammar
• Unequal yokefellows and defective double harness
• Common parts
• The wrong turning
• Ellipse in subordinate clauses
• Some illegitimate infinitives
• Split infinitives
• Compound passives
• Confusion with negatives
• Omission of as
• Other liberties taken with as
• Brachylogy
• Between two stools
• The impersonal one
• Between … or
• A placed between the adjective and its noun
• Do as substitute verb
• Fresh starts
• Vulgarisms and colloquialisms
• Meaning
• Tautology
• Redundancies
• As to whether
• Superfluous but and though
• If and when
• Maltreated idioms
• Truisms and contradictions in terms
• Double emphasis
• Split auxiliaries
• Overloading
• Demonstrative, noun, and participle or adjective
• Ambiguity
• False scent
• Misplacement of words
• Ambiguous position
• Ambiguous enumeration
• Style
• Antics
• Journalese
• Somewhat, &c.
• Clumsy patching
• Omission of the conjunction that
• Meaningless while
• Commercialisms
• Pet Phrases
• Also as conjunction; and &c.

bbc
English language History Trail

The invaders of Britain left their indelible mark on the English language and culture - from the royal coat of arms to our place names and the words we use everyday. Discover the roots of English by creating your own poem or try to spot the origins of a selection of objects.

bbc
English language in different era

bbc
Evolving English
englische Sprache
Beiträge der BBC

Evolving English

• Home - Melvyn Bragg returns to Cumbria and finds that the old ways of speaking are being lost.
• The Dawn of English - English takes on Latin! - eventually becoming the world language of instruction.
• France and England - Where better than Hastings to look at the impact of the French on the English language?
• Tabard Inn to Canterbury - Jul 27 2000 - The language of sex and death, as Chaucer and others capture English speech of the time.
• The Power of English... - ...and the English of Power, as the language extends its influence from Court to Edinburgh.
• Import/Export - Conquest, trade and immigration have woven dozens of languages into English.

Humour and Cussing

• Coining It - When a new concept or product comes along, how does it get its name?
• Language at Play - Melvyn has fun and games with puns, wordplay and tongue twisters.
• A Better Class of Language - 'By your vowels, your station shall be known'. How accents and social class are entwined.
• Unspeakable English - Bad language is no new thing. Some swear words originated centuries ago!
• Freezing the River - English is constantly evolving but some linguists have tried to 'freeze' it for all time.
• A World of Many Englishes - "Two countries separated by a common language", but there're more than two Englishes

Accents and Dialects

• Pitmatic - Talk of the town, talk of the pit in Ashington, Northumberland
• Stroke City - Local talk in the city known variously as Londonderry, Derry and, more recently, as Stroke City
• Cornwall - Melvyn travels west in search of the increasingly elusive Cornish dialect
• No Pigeon - Melvyn visits Brixton to discover the most imitated, influential form of spoken English today.
• Oswestry - Melvyn travels to the Blue Remembered Hills of Shropshire
• Conclusion - The final programme in the series considers the future of English dialects

People and Places

• What is Spanglish? - We explore the rise of powerful non-English linguistic forces in the United States
• Raj to Riches English - English in India, despite being the imposed language of the imperial power, had equally the force to unite the nation.
• The Hurricane Speaks - Here we take up the story of Caribbean English where the Brixton Routes left off.
• Beyond the Cringe - In the 1950s Australian English was more Westminster than Woolloomooloo - the last days of the "colonial cringe".
• The Long Trek to Freedom - English becomes the language of liberation as Afrikaans takes on the label of oppression
• Whose English Is It, Anyway? - Used on the internet, the UN and between speakers for whom it is native language for neither - Is it English?

bbc
Language Map of UK

bbc
Languages
language site

bbc
Language Gene discovered

bbc
Sound of the Saxons

Play 'Sound of the Saxons'

Imagine giving a speech to the turbulent, unpredictable England which existed under the Vikings. The country is being ravaged by the invaders and King Ethelred has fled to France, leaving the throne empty.

In 1014, Archbishop Wulfstan, a prominent government member, made such a speech. But what did an Anglo-Saxon speech sound like? What did it look like? Find out in 'Sound of the Saxons'.

bbc
The Ages of English Timeline

From a West Saxon dialect to a global phenomena, from runes to rap, the development of English follows a fascinating trail.

Ever wondered how Beowulf sounded? Why "pickleherring" was one of Johnson's choice insults? Explore the ten ages of English in this interactive timeline and find out.

bbc
The Roots of English

• Do You Know What You Are Saying? - Melvyn Bragg explores how computing and science are affecting the way we use our language.
• Churchill's Roar - Melvyn Bragg on Sir Winston Churchill's powerful use of the english language.
• Talking Posh - Melvyn Bragg turns his attention to the mysterious speech patterns of Britain's aristocrats.
• People and Places - series with world service. Melvyn Bragg tells the story of the spread of spoken english round the world. programme 6:
• Accents and Dialects - How are our local dialects surviving the pervasive influence of estuary english?
• Humour and Cussing - Language to play with, to abuse, to impress - and constantly changing.
• Evolving English - English has become a world power, but it is not one language. we look at its past and future
• Theme Music - it's called "floorwashing", by thomas newman - from the cd "oscar and lucinda".listen

bbc
URP - upper received pronunciation

Routes of English Special - Talking Posh
In this special edition of Routes of English, Melvyn Bragg turns his attention to the mysterious speech patterns of Britain's aristocrats for whom Cadogan Square will forever be "squaur".
But was it ever thus? And is toffs' talk the product of a lineage that in many cases stretches back to the Middle Ages?
...

bbc
Word of Mouth

bl.uk
The British Library
Evolving English
English Timeline
The evolution of English language and literature

About the exhibition

Explore the English language in all its national and international diversity

Exhibition supported by the American Trust for the British Library

In this ground-breaking exhibition, the roots of Old English, slang dictionaries, medieval manuscripts, advertisements and newspapers from around the world come together - alongside everyday texts and dialect sound recordings. Follow the social, cultural and historical influences on the English language... and see how it’s still evolving today.

This interactive timeline allows you to explore the evolution of English language and literature, from the 11th century to the present day. Scroll through decade by decade to investigate the richness and diversity of our poetry and prose, as well as the many social, cultural and political strands from which our language has been woven.

The timeline includes a fascinating combination of texts: Anglo Saxon tales and medieval illuminations; iconic literary manuscripts and printed texts; as well as letters, newspapers, handbills, posters, charters, speeches and campaign leaflets.

Explore the content

• 1000s - Beowulf, Anglo Saxon monsters & more... - Explore the 1000s
• 1100s - The beginnings of Middle English & more... - Explore the 1100s
• 1200s - Medieval music, illuminators & more... - Explore the 1200s
• 1300s - Sir Gawain, an early cookery manuscript & more... - Explore the 1300s
• 1400s - Canterbury Tales, Western printing & more... - Explore the 1400s
• 1500s - The first printed bible in English & more... - Explore the 1500s
• 1600s - Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, plague & more... - Explore the 1600s
• 1700s - Revolution, abolition, William Blake & more... - Explore the 1700s
• 1800s - Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Wilde & more... - Explore the 1800s
• 1900s - Wilfred Owen, Virginia Woolf & more... - Explore the 1900s
• 2000s - Poetry by Moniza Alvi and Mimi Khalvati... - Explore the 2000s

...
One of the reasons Chaucer is so important is that he made the decision to write in English and not French. In the centuries following the Norman invasion, French was the language spoken by those in power. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first major works in literature written in English. Chaucer began the tales in 1387 and continued until his death in 1400. No text in his own hand still exists, but a surprising number of copies survive from the 1500s - more than 80. This suggests the tales were enormously popular in medieval England. This early and handsomely ornamented manuscript copy, from c.1450, was made within a generation of Chaucer's death.
...

Animated Timeline

blackwellpublishing.com
Studying HEL Today
History of the English Language

History, English, Language

Studying HEL Today

Michael Matto and Haruko Momma

blogspot.com - SbaCL
Separated by a Common Language

About Lynneguist

Hi, I’m Lynne Murphy. When I'm at work, I'm Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex. (Here's where I have to say: the views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sussex.)

Since 2006, my alter ego Lynneguist has used this blog to explore the often subtle differences in American and British English. At first this was a distraction from the linguistic research I do at my day job, but increasingly my professional work has been inspired by the topics here.
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dummies
Language Arts

• Asserting Jane Austen's Georgian-ness
• Because of the charm of her plots, their setting in merry old England, and the Victorian-styled costumes and 1850 setting used in the first film adaptation of [more…]
• Avoiding Common Mistakes with Adjectives and Adverbs
• A few words - even, almost, only, and others - often end up in the wrong spots. If these words aren't placed correctly, your sentence may say something that you didn't intend. [more…]
• Boosting Your Vocabulary for Standardized Tests
• During the years of your formal education, you face numerous standardized tests - at least in the U.S. school system. The following suggestions can help you get your skills up to speed for the reading [more…]
• Budgeting Your Time to Complete a Research Paper
• In a perfect world, writing a major research paper would be such a delightful experience that you would eagerly jump right in and start writing a brilliant paper that's just the right length and completed [more…]
• Choosing to Use Who and Whom
• The whole topic of pronouns is enough to give you a headache, but the time has come to put to rest one of the peskiest pronoun problems once and for all. The rule for knowing when to use [more…]
• Committing a Few Number-Editing Rules to Memory
• Most rules are rife with exceptions in the publishing industry, but a few are so standard and ubiquitous that they're well worth memorizing. One set of rules that are pretty standard is how to deal with [more…]
• Crafting Your Character's Dialogue in Your Screenplay
• A well-crafted verbal exchange is like a catchy song. Diction provides the lyrics; music provides the tune. Dialogue relies on the sounds of words as well as their definitions, on the rhythm of a conversation [more…]
• Creating Emotional Conflict and Tension in a Romance Novel
• The conflict, or tension, between your hero and heroine should always drive your plot. Your novel should also have a certain story-related momentum, but the key factor that keeps your reader turning pages [more…]
• Debunking Some Myths about Copyediting and Proofreading
• Maybe you're carrying around some archaic images in your skull about what copyediting and proofreading entail. If you assume that taking this career path means you'll be wearing nerdy glasses while forever [more…]
• Decoding Medical Lingo
• If you're watching a TV drama about doctors, it doesn't matter whether you understand exactly what's being said. But when you're sitting in a doctor's office and he or she is talking about your child, [more…]
• Designing a Computer-Based Training Process
• In any good architecture, the vision drives the details, and the details shape the vision. Therefore, a good outcome depends on a good design. It requires knowledge of how people learn, and it deserves [more…]
• Discovering the Key to Every Romance Novel: The Heroine
• Most romance readers are women, and naturally, they want to see themselves reflected in their choice of reading. That desire for reflection doesn't mean that every heroine has to be straight from everyday [more…]
• Examining the World of the Technical Writer
• People who write technical documents come from all walks of life - and most aren't technical writers per se. Here are some actual situations of people who were called upon to write technical documents [more…]
• Exploring the Different Types of Fiction
• Fiction is a general term used to describe an imaginative work of prose, either a novel, short story, or novella. Recently, this definition has been modified to include both nonfiction works that contain [more…]
• A Few Jane Austen-Related Places to Visit
• England has numerous sites where you can explore the life and work of Jane Austen. The following are just the tip of the iceberg. When you get to your hotel or bed and breakfast in London, find one of [more…]
• Finding Ideas for Your Writing
• So you know you want to write a book - you just don't know what you want to write about. For many people, it's not uncommon to think that you need to write about something exotic or different or strange [more…]
• Forming a Thesis Statement
• You've got a subject ("human-bear interactions") and a topic ("the relationship between Goldilocks and the three bears"). Now it's time to come up with a thesis statement - the point that you want to make [more…]
• Getting Your Arms around a Technical Document
• The purpose of writing a technical document is to explain or report on a technical or complex subject. Therefore, unless you're the technical guru writing about something you know intimately, you must [more…]
• Knowing Where and When to Have Love Scenes in a Romance Novel
• You have to know where to place the love scenes in your book to make them really effective. Even a beautifully written love scene jars the reader when you put it in the wrong place, making her question [more…]
• Living Better with Better Grammar
• Stuck in English class, you probably thought that grammar was invented just to give teachers something to test. But in fact grammar - or to be more precise, formal grammar instruction - exists to help [more…]
• Meeting the Most Often Used Suffixes
• Some suffixes are used so frequently in the English language that you may not even think of them - much less recognize them - as suffixes. These include [more…]
• Notetaking on the Computer
• As far back as stone slabs and as recently as handheld computers, human beings have found ways to take note of information that they do not want to forget. And now that we're officially in the Information [more…]
• Preparing to Pitch Your Screenplay to a Studio
• Pitching a script is an art form, and although it can be stressful, it's something every writer has to perfect before approaching executives or agents. So what is pitching exactly? [more…]
• Proofreading for Common Errors
• Proofreaders don't see things the way other people do. They scrutinize. When something is awry, their warning buzzers go off and they swoop down for a better look. They are charged with catching the errors [more…]
• Quoting Correctly
• A quotation is a written repetition of someone else's words - just one word or a whole statement or passage. You see quotations in almost all writing: newspapers, magazines, novels, essays, letters, and [more…]
• Slipping Between the Covers of a Technical Document
• When you prepare a lengthy user manual, include all the information readers need and make the information easy to find. Following are guidelines for what to include. [more…]
• Snuggling Up to the Language of Poetry
• At times, language seems spiritual, as insubstantial as breath on a winter's day. Everything seems slathered and permeated with language - it's how we think and how we see. Yet language is also a physical [more…]
• Submitting Your Work of Fiction
• The selling of fiction is different from nonfiction, requiring different submission materials. The good news is a fiction submission is much easier to prepare than a nonfiction proposal because in order [more…]
• Tending to Word Roots
• A root is the basic element of a word, and it is the foundation on which the meaning of a word is built. Many roots are real words in their own right: [more…]
• Tracing Jane Austen's Popularity
• Austen is now so popular that even non-novel readers recognize the name from seeing it in various, unexpected places like tea mugs and dating guides. Her immediate Regency siblings and her future Victorian [more…]
• Trying to Make Sense of the English Language
• For many reasons (most of them too ugly to go into here), English is a pretty tough language to learn. If you're a native speaker of English, you're probably familiar with the idiosyncrasies that make [more…]
• Tuning Into the Market for Romance Novels
• Many aspiring writers sit down to tell a story without a clear idea about what kind of story they're writing, whether (and where) a market exists for it, or what they'll do with the manuscript when they're [more…]
• Understanding the Players in the Publishing Game
• The core members of any publishing acquisition team are made up of two very different types: The creative, editorial types and the more financially driven sales and marketing types. Generally speaking, [more…]
• Using Apostrophes to Show Possession
• Apostrophes are those little curved marks you see hanging from certain letters. They look harmless enough, so why do even well educated people throw them where they don't belong and leave them out where [more…]
• Using Em Dashes and En Dashes Properly
• Although they are each a simple horizontal line, hyphens and the various dashes have their own appearances and specific uses. The shortest and most common is the hyphen, which is used for clarifying open [more…]
• Writing a Sonnet
• Learn to write a sonnet in iambic pentameter, just like Shakespeare did. Discover the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the quatrains and couplets that make up a Shakespearean sonnet. [more…]
• Writing Act I of Your Screenplay
• Every act in the three-act structure has a set of tasks to accomplish. The first act serves as your audience's introduction to the entire world of the script - people, places, time frame, and all. Remember [more…]
• Writing Poetry
• Millions of people have tried their hand at writing poetry. Often, people turn to writing verse at times of great emotion, insight, or need. And many people who always loved poetry think about writing [more…]

eng-lang
English Language Issues

Articles
This is a selection of articles I have written on English language issues, mostly as a result of questions that kept coming up in various places about correct usage of apostrophes and suchlike.

• Rules for correct use of apostrophes
• Problems with apostrophes
• Style issues
• My technical style guide: Web site or website?
• Common errors in grammar, punctuation or spelling
• Incorrect corrections: things people believe to be poor English, but which are in fact fine.

This is an index to the words discussed on other pages (about writing style, errors and superstitions).

agenda | alternatives | among | apostrophes with single letters | arena | averse to | beg the question | between | cheap prices | clichés | criteria | criterion | consensus | could of | data | different to | discreet | discrete | e-mail | enormity | extension | fewer | foreign words - plurals of | hot temperatures | hyphens | it's | it is | lay | less | liaise | lie | licensed | loose | lose | minuscule | none | practising | prepositions at the end of sentences | principal | principle | raises a question mark | referenda | referendum | refute | sat | should of | split infinitive | stadia | stadium | stood | supersede | track records | who's | whose | would of | vocal cords.

The apostrophe page looks at apostrophe use with: abbreviations (CDs | 70s) | adjectival and attributive phrases (sports car) | initialisms (USA) | it's and its | Master's Degree | Mother's Day | names | non-living things | noun phrases (hotel room | car door) | personal pronouns (everybody | everyone | somebody | someone | no-one | nobody) | plurals (disco's) | possessive pronouns (mine | yours | his | hers | its | ours | theirs | whose) | times | titles (Land Rover Owners Club | Masters Tournament | Hundred Years War) | words ending in s.

englishclub.com
History of English

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from "Englaland" [sic] and their language was called "Englisc" - from which the words "England" and "English" are derived.

• Old English (450-1100 AD)
• Middle English (1100-1500)
• Early Modern English (1500-1800)
• Late Modern English (1800-Present)
• Varieties of English
• A brief chronology of English

ethnologue.com
Languages of United Kingdom
Sprachen von United Kingdom (Europe)

ethnologue.com
Albannach Gaidhlig - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Angloromani - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Arabic, Judeo-Iraqi - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Arabic, Moroccan Spoken - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni Spoken - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Assyrian Neo-Aramaic - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Belfast - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Bengali - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Birmingham - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Bolton Lancashire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - British Sign Language - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Brummie - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Brummy - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - BSL - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Central Cumberland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Hakka - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Mandarin - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Yue - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Cockney - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Cornish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Cornwall - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Craven Yorkshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Cumberland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Curnoack - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Cymraeg - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Devonshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Dgernesiais - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Dorset - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Durham - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - East Anglia - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - East Devonshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - East Sutherlandshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Edinburgh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - English - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - English Romani - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Erse - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Erse - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Estonian - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Farsi, Western - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - French - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaeilge - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaelg - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaelic - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaelic, Hiberno-Scottish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaelic, Irish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaelic, Scottish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gàidhlig - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gailck - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gaoidhealg - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Greek - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Gujarati - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Hebrew - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Hiberno-Scottish Classical Common Gaelic - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Hindi - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Insular - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Irish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Italian - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Japanese - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Jerriais - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kalderash - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kashmiri - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kernewek - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kernowek - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kirmanjki - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Kurdish, Northern - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Latvian - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Lithuanian - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Lovari - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Lowland Scottish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Malayalam - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Maltese - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Manx - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Manx Gaelic - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Newcastle Northumberland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Norfolk - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Norn - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - North Lancashire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - North Wiltshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - North Yorkshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Northern Scots - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Northern Welsh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Northumberland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Old Kentish Sign Language - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Palari - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Palarie - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Panjabi, Eastern - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Panjabi, Mirpur - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Panjabi, Western - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Parlare - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Parlary - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Parlyaree - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Parsi - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Pashto, Northern - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Pashto, Southern - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Patagonian Welsh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Pogadi Chib - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Polari - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Portuguese - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Posh `N' Posh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Radcliffe Lancashire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Rom - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Romani English - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Romani, Vlax - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Romani, Welsh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Romanichal - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Romenes - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Saraiki - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Scots - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Scots Gaelic - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Scottish Cant - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Scottish Traveller Cant - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Scouse - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Seraiki - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Sheffield Yorkshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Shelta - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Sindhi - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Somali - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Somerset - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - South Wales - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Southern Scots - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Southern Welsh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Southwestern Caribbean Creole English - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Sussex - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Sylheti - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Tagalog - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Tamil - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Traveller Scottish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Tsigane - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Turkish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Tyneside Northumberland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Urdu - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Vietnamese - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Welsh - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - West Country - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - West Yorkshire - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Westmorland - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Yinglish - Language of GB

ethnologue.com - Yoruba - Language of GB

furman
The Great Vowel Shift

• See and Hear the GVS
• What is the Great Vowel Shift?
• Dialogue: Conservative and Advanced Speakers
  Explanation | Middle English | 1450 to 1550 | 1550 to 1650 | 1650 to 1750 | Words from the dialogue
• English Literature and the GVS
  Chaucer | Shakespeare | Later Literature
• Terminology/FAQ
  What is a long vowel? | What is this trapezoid? | What do these "letters" represent? | What is PDE?
• Links, Sources, and Credits

This site is designed for my students--undergraduates with limited linguistic knowledge who are being introduced to the Great Vowel Shift.

The "Great Vowel Shift" was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift. Any standard history of the English language textbook (see our sources) will have a discussion of the GVS. This page gives just a quick overview; our interactive See and Hear page adds sound and animation to give you a better sense of how this all works.

When we talk about the GVS, we usually talk about it happening in eight steps. It is very important to remember, however, that each step did not happen overnight. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able to pronounce the same word two or more different ways. The same thing happens today, of course: I can pronounce the word "route" to rhyme with "boot" or with "out" and may switch from one pronunciation to another in the midst of a conversation. Please see our Dialogue: Conservative and Advanced section for an illustration of this phenomenon.

furman
The History of English Phonemes

This Website was constructed by William E. Rogers of the English Department at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, and Diana Ervin, an English major at Furman. The site is intended to supplement four courses currently taught at Furman: English 38 (History of the English Language), English 39 (English Grammar), English 40 (Medieval English Literature), and English 60 (Chaucer). The construction of this site was made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Furman University and Wofford College (Furman/Wofford Mellon Program).

This Website is designed to help students of the English language trace the development of the phonemes of English from the Old English period into Present-Day English. The information contained in the site is available in any good textbook on the history of the language, but printed texts normally present the information in a linear fashion corresponding to the chronological development of English. The value of the Website is the hypertextual treatment of the information, which is meant to keep students from having to spend a great deal of time leafing through textbooks.

The navigation bar on the left-hand side of this page mirrors the structure of the site. Click on "Instructions" in the navigation bar for instructions on using the site, or click on the green button here.

ENGLISH PHONEMES:
Instructions for Using Site
Phonology: Consonants | Vowels
Phonemes:
Old English (OE): Consonants | Vowels
Middle English (ME): Consonants | Vowels
Early Modern English (EME): Consonants | Vowels
Present-Day English (PDE): Consonants | Vowels
Sound-Changes
Spelling
Useful Links

Geschichte der Englischen Sprache (W3)

getwords.com
English History and Its Development

In the history of English, there are two particular groups which are of central importance to the development of modern English

The first group of significance is the Romance languages: classical Latin, the literary language of ancient Rome; and French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian, which evolved from Vulgar Latin, the language of the common people, who had spread through the Western Roman empire.

The role of Latin and French, in particular, in the growth of English vocabulary has been immense. We acquired a sizable proportion of our English words from one or the other of these two sources.

The second important group, of course, is the Germanic languages: because that is the group to which English itself belongs. The existence of the Germanic people as a separate speech community dates back at least 3,000 years.

At this time, they all spoke the same language, which is generally known as Common Germanic. About the second century B.C., this began to split up into three distinct dialects.

One was East Germanic. The only east Germanic language of which any written evidence survives is Gothic. Now extinct, it was spoken by Germanic people who migrated back eastwards to the area of modern Bulgaria and the Crimea.

It provides us with our closest glimpse of what prehistoric Common Germanic must have been like. The second was North Germanic, which has evolved into modern German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

The forerunners of English crossed the Channel in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

The major Germanic contributors to English were brought by people from the northeastern corner of the European mainland, around Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.

They spoke a mutually intelligible set of Germanic dialects (whose closest modern continental relative is Frisian), which formed the basis of what is now known as "Old English" (the alternative term "Anglo-Saxon" is no longer used as often).

This was a more, or less, homogeneous language, but with marked geographical differences reflecting the areas in Britain into which the various Germanic people had moved: the Angles into the Midlands (where Mercian was spoken) and the North (whose form of Old English is now called Northumbrian); the Jutes into Kent; and the Saxons into the rest of southern and western England (their speech was known as West Saxon).

The end of the Old English period is conventionally associated with the Norman Conquest of 1066

In practice, the transition into the next historical phase of English, which we term "Middle English", was a gradual process not a sudden result of the Norman Conquest.

Its crucial feature, from the point of view of vocabulary, was the beginning of the importation of non-native words which over the centuries have transformed English from a limited and narrow character of a northeast European dialect into a lexical tapestry of astonishing richness and diversity.

Some Latin words entered English following the conversion of the English to Christianity in the seventh century, but it was the Vikings who first introduced new ingredients to the lexical blend in a big way.

Their introductions began in the mid-eighth century and lasted for several hundred years. Their impact on English was greatest in northern areas of Britain, where they settled, but the language as a whole is indebted to Old Norse for such basic words as "anger", "egg", "knife", "law", and "leg".

Undoubtedly the single most significant event in the history of the English language was the Norman invasion of 1066

The Norman invasion provided the impetus for a huge influx of vocabulary from Normandy, France, across the English Channel into Britain.

These new words came both by way of Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Old French spoken in England by the new ruling classes, which was based on the northern variety of French; and directly from Old French itself (Old French, the ancestor of modern French, was spoken from the ninth century to roughly the middle of the sixteenth century).

It was this lexical infusion, which lasted from the eleventh to the sixth centuries, which truly laid the basis for the hybrid English language of today.

It would be useless to try to give a representative sample of the words Anglo-Norman French introduced into English, because they are so all-pervasive. From "supper" to "justice", from "action" to "money", from "village" to "receive"; they all came in by the thousands.

Some words were Gaulish in ultimate origin. Gaulish was the Celtic language spoken in what is now France before the French language deleted it from common usage. The great majority of these French imports were descended from earlier Latin ancestors.

It was Latin itself, together with Greek, that formed the next wave of lexical innovations in English. With the Renaissance, came a revival in classical scholarship, and in the sixteenth and seventh centuries, hundreds of Latin and Greek words were naturalized into English; among them: "apparatus", "area", "crisis", "maximum", "poem", and "pollen", to name just a minute fraction of them.

English is still growing, probably faster since the late twentieth century than at any previous time in its history. Over half of the new words come from combinations of old ones, and there continues to be a lot of borrowing from other languages.

Much of this page is based on information from the introduction of "Dictionary of Word Origins" by John Ayto, Arcade Publishing, Inc., New York, 1990.

google.com - HEL
HEL on the Web
History of the English Language

• News
• HEL
• Old English
• Middle English
• Modern English
• Dictionaries
• E-texts
• Corpora
• Bibliographies
• Journals
• Publishers
• Books
• Events
• Researchers
• Others
• Sitemap

googlealert.com
Language-Links per E-Mail

History of English
A Brief Look at the History of English

• Old English (or Anglo-Saxon),
• Middle English, and
• Modern English.

historychannel

historyofenglishpodcast
The History of English Podcast

Episodes

• Episode 1: Introduction
• Episode 2: The Indo-European Discovery
• Episode 3: The Indo-European Family Tree
• Episode 4: A Grimm Brother Resurrects the Dead (..language)
• Episode 5: Centum, Satem and the Letter C
• Episode 6: Indo-European Words
• Episode 7: More Indo-European Words
• Bonus Episode 1
• Episode 8: Indo-European Grammar
• Episode 9: Who Were the Indo-Europeans?
• Episode 10: Early Indo-European Migrations
• Episode 11: Germanic Ancestors
• Episode 12: Early Greek, Hittite and the Trojan War
• Episode 13: Greece, Phoenicia and the Alphabet
• Episode 14: The Greek Word Horde
• Episode 15: Etruscans, Romans and a Modified Alphabet
• Episode 16: The Rise of Rome - and Latin
• Episode 17: Ancient Celts and the Latin Invasion of Gaul
• Episode 18: Keeping Time with the Romans
• Episode 19: The Romanization of Britain
• Episode 20: Early Germanic Tribes
• Bonus Episode 2: History of the Alphabet
• Episode 21: Early Germanic Words
• Episode 22: Early Germanic Grammar
• Episode 23: Tacitus and Germanic Society
• Episode 24: Germanic Mythology
• Episode 25: Germanic Markings and the Runes
• Episode 26: Imperial Crisis of the Goths
• Episode 27: Broken Empire and Fractured Languages
• Episode 28: Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians
• Episode 29: The Anglo-Saxon Invasion
• Episode 30: The Celtic Legacy
• Episode 31: Saxons, Franks and Other West Germans
• Episode 32: The Oldest English
• Bonus Episode 4: Let Me ‘Buoy’ Your Spirits
• Episode 33: Missionaries and Manuscripts
• Episode 34: Sounds Like Old English
• Episode 35: English Sounds and Roman Letters
• Episode 36: Finalizing the Alphabet
• Episode 37: Seafarers, Poets and Traveling Minstrels
• Episode 38: Nobles, Nuptials and a Cowherd Poet
• Episode 39: Not Lost in Translation
• Episode 40: Learning Latin and Latin Learning
• Episode 41: New Words From Old English
• Bonus Episode 5: Odds and Ends
• Episode 42: Beowulf and Other Viking Ancestors
• Episode 43: Anglo-Saxon Monsters and Mythology
• Episode 44: The Romance of Old French
• Episode 45: To Coin a Phrase - and Money
• Episode 46: Cynewulf and the Kindred Kings
• Episode 47: The Man Who Saved English
• Bonus Episode 6: Beowulf Deconstructed
• Episode 48: The Unity of Alfred’s English
• Episode 49: Vikings Among the English and French
• Episode 50: A Unified Family of English Speakers
• Episode 51: Norse Words and a New English
• Episode 52: Bloody Axes and a Battle Royal
• Episode 53: The End of Endings
• Episode 54: Pronoun Pros and Cons
• Episode 55: To Be or Not To Be
• Episode 56: The Weak vs The Strong
• Episode 57: The Wessex Literary Revival
• Episode 58: Bibliophiles and Bookworms
• Episode 59: Let’s Make A Deal
• Episode 60: Danes, Death and Taxes
• Episode 61: Earls and Churls
• Episode 62: Flesh and Blood
• Episode 63: Restorations and Remedies
• Bonus Episode 7: Stuffed Animals
• Episode 64: Feudalism and Early Normans
• Episode 65: Norman Dukes and Dialects
• Episode 66: Broken Promises and the Eve of Conquest
• Episode 67: The Year That Changed English
• Episode 68: Rebels With a Cause
• Episode 70: Mind Your Manors For Pete’s Sake
• Episode 71: On The Hunt
• Episode 72: The Dark Ages of English
• Episode 73: Possessions, Power and Checkmate
• Episode 74: Head Cities and Home Towns
• Episode 75: Mixed Languages and Scrambled Eggs
• Episode 76: The Gender Problem
• Episode 77: Rival Relatives and the Land of Scots
• Episode 78: Under Siege
• Episode 79: Anarchy
• Episode 80: Knight Life
• Episode 81: Love Songs and Troubadours
• Episode 82: A Marriage for the Ages
• Episode 83: A Trilingual Nation
• Episode 84: Law, Order and Murder
• Episode 85: How to Run an Empire
• Episode 86: Family of Rebels
• Episode 87: The First Spelling Reformers
• Episode 88: The Long and Short of It
• Episode 89: ‘I Before E’ and All That
• Episode 90: Healers, Hospitals and Holy Wars
• Episode 91: Traders and Traitors
• Episode 92: The Lion Kings
• Episode 93: The Two Arthurs
• Episode 94: From British Legend to English King
• Episode 95: Old School and New School
• Episode 96: From Alpha to Omega
• Episode 97: Let’s Put It In Writing
• Episode 98: The Great Debates
• Episode 99: The Second French Invasion
• Episode 100: Decoding English
• Episode 101: The Birth of English Song
• Episode 102: A Medieval Glossary
• Episode 103: Solitary Confinement
• Episode 104: Prefix Preferences
• Episode 105: Suffix Summary
• Episode 106: An Illuminating Development
• Episode 107: Parlez-Vous Anglais?
• Episode 108: On The Move

historyofenglishpodcast.com
Germanic Markings and the Runes

Episode 25: Germanic Markings and the Runes

We explore the expansion of Germanic tribes into the Danube region where the Germans encounter the Etruscan alphabet. The Germanic runes develop and provide the first opportunity for the Germanic tribes to write their own language.

• engl. "mark"
• frz. "Marquis"
• engl. "Denmark"

Map Prepared by Louis Henwood

Audio Player: 36:55

Many scholars think the runes were influenced by an early version of the alphabet, perhaps the Etruscan version. But it doesn’t appear that the order was maintained. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it was because the runes were influenced by the alphabet, but they weren’t really intended to be a proper borrowing of the alphabet.

infoplease
English language

infoplease
History of English

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Language Toolbox

Look up words to find out what they mean, how to spell or pronounce them. Translate words, phrases and whole texts into other languages. Solve word games with the language toolbox full of the best vocabulary reference tools

Dictionary - Language reference for words with meaning, pronunciation, and etymology

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Thesaurus - Language reference: Look up the words that are related - that have the same meaning (synonyms), or the opposite meaning (antonyms) or are pronounced similarly

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Quotes - Quotations and famous quotes on pretty much any subject

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Specialized Words - Gain understanding of a technical or industry-specific terminology

• Law.com Legal Dictionary Home
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King James Bible (W3)

• From time to time
• the apple of the parents' eye
• as old as the hills
• at death's door
• at our wits' end
• gone through a baptism of fire
• be about to bite the dust
• the blind are leading the blind
• casting pearls before the swine
• buttering someone up
• casting the first stone
• haves and have-nots
• heads on plates
• thieves in the night
• scum of the earth
• best until last
• sackcloth and ashes
• streets paved in gold
• skin of one' teeth

• no contentious notes in the margins
• no language inaccessible to common people
• a true and accurate text, driven by an unforgivingly exacting level of scholarship.

• Lancelot Andrews (Experte in alten Sprachen, Dekan von Westminster)
• John Layfield (Teilnehmer im Krieg gegen Spanien in Puerto Rico, der noch seiner Zeit in der Karibik nachtrauerte)
• George Abbott (Verfasser einees Eltführers)
• Hadrian à Saravia (halb Flame, halb Spanier)
• arabische Gelehrte
• William Bedwell (Mathematiker)
• Henry Savile (Mathematiker)
• Richard "Dutch" Thomson (Alkoholiker, und hervorragender Lateiner)
• John Overall (Dekan von St. Paul's, dem nachgesagt wurde nur noch LAtein zu sprechen, und dessen Frau ihn wegen eines nicht Lateinisch sprechenden Höflings verließ)

• -500 Hebrw Bible
• -250 Septuagint
• 50-150 New Testament
• 200 Old Latin Translations
• 383-405 Latin Vulgate Translation
• 800 Alcuin Bible
• 1200 Paris Bible, Dominikaner und Franziskaner in Paris und Bologna standardisierten die Ordnung der Bücher der Bibel und teilten sie in Kapitel ein.
• 1382 Wycliff Bible
• 1455 Gutenberg Bible
• 1526 Erasmus Translation
• 1522-1534 Luther Bible
• 1526 Tyndale Translation
• 1535 Coverdale Bible
• 1537 Matthew Bible
• 1539 Great Bible
• 1560 Geneva Bible, eine protestantische, französisch-sprachige Ausgabe mit einer ersten Nummerierung aller Verse
• 1568 Bishops' Bible
• 1582-1610 Douai-Rheims Bible
• 1611 King James Bible

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers
• Deuteronomy
• The Book of Joshua
• The Book of Judges
• The Book of Ruth
• The First Book of Samuel
• The Second Book of Samuel
• The First Book of the Kings
• The Second Book of the Kings
• The First Book of the Chronicles
• The Second Book of the Chronicles
• Ezra
• The Book of Nehemiah
• The Book of Esther
• The Book of Job
• The Book of Psalms
• The Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• The Song of Solomon
• The Book of the Prophet Isaiah
• The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah
• The Lamentations of Jeremiah
• The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel
• The Book of Daniel
• Hosea
• Joel
• Amos
• Obadiah
• Jonah
• Micah
• Nahum
• Habakkuk
• Zephaniah
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Malachi

• The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
• The Gospel According to Saint Mark
• The Gospel According to Saint Luke
• The Gospel According to Saint John
• The Acts of the Apostles
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans
• The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians
• The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians
• The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians
• The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians
• The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy
• The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Titus
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Philemon
• The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews
• The General Epistle of James
• The First Epistle General of Peter
• The Second General Epistle of Peter
• The First Epistle General of John
• The Second Epistle General of John
• The Third Epistle General of John
• The General Epistle of Jude
• The Revelation of Saint John the Devine

Manifold Greatness: Bodleian Library Oxford recounts the Making of the King James Bible

• King James Bible 1611 (auch als PDF-File)
• Douay-Rheims and King James Bibles

Words in the King James Bible:

• 12,143 individual words in the English,
• 783,137 total words,
• 8,674 individual words in the Hebrew Old Testament
• 5,624 individual words in the Greek New Testament

• King James Bible
• King James Bible Reference Suite
• King James Bible with Strong's Dictionary and Hebrew and Greek Concordance
• King James Sacred Name Bible

The New English Bible
Kenneth Rexroth compares the New English Bible with the King James Version

krysstal
Languages and Linguistics

krysstal
English-Speaking Countries
History of English
The Origin and History of the English Language

• Languages and Linguistics
• 30 Most Spoken Languages in the World is a table.
• Borrowed Words
• The Origin of Words and Names
• Writing came after the spoken language.
• UK and US English differences
• Cockney Rhyming Slang
• An Introduction to Grammar
• Travel and Photography
• The Acts of the Democracies
• Eclipses, Occultations and Transits
• Kings and Queens lists the monarchs of England.
• Astronomy
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Football
• Fantasy Television
• Cookery
• Other
• Essays on other topics not covered by previous sections: social, cultural, historical, religious, biological, geographical.
• Inventions tabulates the time and location of humanity's greatest inventions.
• Religions of the World describes the world's major religions and includes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and others with tables and evolution.
• Biblical Contradictions contains a short table of contradictions in the Bible.
• Astrology and Astronomy looks at the differences between astronomy (the science) and astrology (the beleif system).
• It's a WORLD Wide Web, looks at communication on the internet. It discusses how to write for an audience that could be from any of 200 countries without making assumptions that may baffle or offend.
• Animal Kingdom lists the numbers of species of animals by the main divisions of phylum, class, and order.
• Rain explains how different types of rain are caused with diagrams.
• Countries lists the world's countries, including dates, previous names, capitals, form of government and main languages.
• The Frank Zappa Memorial Page is a tribute and contains an album listing and brief biography.

ku-eichstaett
Englische Sprachwissenschaft
Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

• Some Dates on the History of the English Language (von J.G.)
• American English vs. British English (kleines Rätsel und Überblick von J.G.)
• The Lord's Prayer (in Old, Middle and Early Modern English) (von J.G.)
• On the History of Last Names (von J.G.)
• Neologisms in American English: Acronyms and Blendings (Seminararbeit von Claudia König - Word-Dokument)
• People who went "down in language" (Über einige Personennamen, die zu ganz normalen Substantiven wurden - von J.G.)
• Warum Dinge ihren Namen ändern (populärwissenschaftliche Essays TeilnehmerInnen eines sprachgeschichtlichen Seminars bei J.G.)
• Zum Thema "Feministische Linguistik" (ein Einblick in das Thema Feministische Sprachkritik und Sprachreform von Volker Sperber)
• Fragebogenuntersuchung zum Thema "Political Correctness" (Seminararbeit von Kirsten Handke - Word-Dokument)
• Humor in Australia, England and the USA (Seminararbeit von Daniel Knauer - Word-Dokument)
• Sprachwissenschaft für den Sprachunterricht: Einige Hinweise für Englischlehrer (Zusammenfassung eines sprachwissenschaftlichen Proseminars bei J.G.)
• Unterschiede zwischen der Early Version und der Late Version der Wyclifbibel (Seminararbeit von Richard Fischer - PDF-Format)
• Der Einfluss des Irisch-Gälischen auf die irische Varietät des Englischen im Bereich landwirtschaftlicher Wörter (Seminararbeit von Christian Karl - PDF-Format)
• The fate of Middle English loanwords from French (Seminararbeit von Diana Sklarzik - PDF-Format)
• Language Policy in Scotland and Northern Ireland (Essay von Daniel Knauer - PDF-Format)
• English Language Teaching across Europe (Website zum Erfolg des Englischunterrichts in Deutschland, Litauen und Ungarn, von Birgit Legeland und Vanessa Schnitzler)
• Häufig gestellte Fragen zur englischen Sprache im Klassenzimmer (Seminararbeit von Kathrin Lindner - PDF-Dokument)

Language (W3)

Language Code (W3)

language-game (W3)

...
It was the maverick philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who coined the term "language-game". He contended that words acquire meaning by their use, and wanted to see how their use was tied up with the social practices of which they are a part. So he used "language-game" to draw attention not only to language itself, but to the actions into which it is woven. Consider the exclamations "Help!" "Fire!" "No!" These do something with words: soliciting, warning, forbidding. But Wittgenstein wanted to expose how ‘words are deeds’, that we do something every time we use a word. Moreover, what we do, we do in a world with others.
...

Latinisierung Englands
Latinisierung der englischen Sprache (W3)

• Harald II. Godwinson, schon am 05. Januar 1066 zum neuen König gewählt, war der Sohn von Godwin von Wessex, dem Führer einer angelsächsischen Gruppierung in England.
• König Harald III. Hardrada von Norwegen, der Enkel Knuds des Großen, der England von 1016 bis 1035 regiert hatte.
• Der Normannenherzog Wilhelm, der seinen Anspruch auf den englischen Thron von der Zusage des 1064 in der Normandie weilenden König Eduard ableitete.

Großbritannien in römischer Zeit

• 1 Vorrömisches Britannien
• 2 Erster Feldzug Caesars 55 v. Chr.
• 3 Zweiter Feldzug Caesars 54 v. Chr.
• 4 Eroberung Britanniens 43 n. Chr.
• 5 Abschluss der Eroberung
• 6 Festigung der Nordgrenze
• 7 Romanisierung
• 8 Spätantike
• 9 Dunkles Zeitalter
• 10 Wirtschaft
• 11 Provinzen und Verwaltung
• 11.1 Bekannte Civitates Britanniens
• 12 Zeittafel
• 13 Siehe auch
• 14 Literatur
• 14.1 Quellen
• 14.2 Sekundärliteratur
• 15 Weblinks

Angelsachsen

• 1 Herkunft der Angelsachsen
• 1.1 Der Name
• 2 Anfänge bis zur Besiedlung der britischen Insel
• 3 Siedlungsgeschichte in England
• 3.1 Angelsächsische Stämme
• 3.2 Siedlungswesen- und Formen
• 3.3 Wikingerzeit
• 4 Kultur der Angelsachsen
• 4.1 Sprache und Schrift
• 4.2 Heidnische Religion
• 4.2.1 Christianisierung
• 5 Siehe auch
• 6 Literatur
• 7 Weblinks
• 8 Einzelnachweise

Geschichte Englands

• 1 Vor-Römisches England
• 2 Römische Zeit
• 3 Die Sächsische Eroberung
• 3.1 Die Kleinkönigreiche
• 3.2 Christianisierung
• 4 Die Wikingerzeit
• 4.1 Erste Angriffe und Entstehung des dänischen Siedlungsgebiets
• 4.2 Entstehung des Königreiches England
• 4.3 England im dänischen Großreich
• 4.4 Die letzten angelsächsischen Könige
• 5 England im Hochmittelalter
• 5.1 Aufbau der normannischen Herrschaft
• 5.3 Entstehung des englischen Parlamentarismus
• 5.4 Ausdehnung in die benachbarten Territorien
• 5.5 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Hochmittelalter
• 5.6 Geistesleben im Hochmittelalter
• 6 England im Spätmittelalter
• 6.1 Der Hundertjährige Krieg
• 6.3 Die letzte Erhebung der Waliser
• 6.4 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Spätmittelalter
• 7 Die Tudor-Epoche
• 7.1 Konsolidierung der Tudor-Herrschaft
• 7.2 Erste Regierungsjahre Heinrichs VIII.
• 7.3 Der Bruch mit Rom
• 7.4 Die Krise der Tudors
• 7.5 Die Herrschaft Marias I.
• 7.6 Geistesleben im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit
• 8 Das Elisabethanische Zeitalter
• 8.1 Durchsetzung der Reformation
• 8.2 Wachsender Einfluss auf Schottland
• 8.3 Konflikt mit Spanien
• 8.4 Letzte Herrschaftsjahre Elisabeths
• 8.5 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im 16. Jahrhundert
• 8.6 Geistesleben im 16. Jahrhundert
• 9 Die Stuart-Epoche
• 9.1 Jakob I. - Der erfolglose Reformer
• 9.2 Karl I. - Ringen mit den Parlamenten
• 9.3 Der Bürgerkrieg
• 10 Commonwealth of England
• 11 Wiederherstellung und neue Krise der Monarchie
• 12 „Glorreiche Revolution“
• 12.1 Die Vorgeschichte
• 12.2 Die Revolution
• 12.3 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im 17. Jahrhundert
• 12.4 Geistesleben im 17. Jahrhundert
• 13 Fußnoten
• 14 Siehe auch
• 15 Literatur (in Auswahl)
• 16 Weblinks

Bretagne

• 1 Geographie
• 2 Klima
• 3 Geschichte
• 3.1 Die Römer
• 3.2 Bretonische Einwanderung
• 3.3 Königreich, Karolinger, Herzogtum Bretagne
• 3.4 Mittelalter und Französische Feudalzeit
• 3.5 Die Neuzeit
• 3.6 Der Erste Weltkrieg
• 3.7 Die Zwischenkriegszeit
• 3.8 Der Zweite Weltkrieg
• 3.9 Nach 1945
• 4 Bevölkerung, Sprache und Kultur
• 4.1 Sprache
• 4.2 Religion
• 4.3 Kultur
• 5 Politik
• 6 Politische Gliederung
• 7 Wirtschaft
• 7.1 Energie
• 8 Verkehr
• 9 Literatur
• 10 Weblinks
• 11 Quellen

...
Bretonische Einwanderung

Ab etwa 450 n. Chr., nach dem Niedergang des Römischen Reiches, wanderten christianisierte Waliser auf die bretonische Halbinsel ein. Gleichzeitig dehnten sich die Siedlungsgebiete der heidnischen Sachsen, Angeln und Jüten auf der britischen Hauptinsel immer weiter aus. So setzten etwa zwei Jahrhunderte lang in unregelmäßigen Abständen sogenannte Inselkelten in die Bretagne über. Sie besiedelten und christianisierten Aremorica und brachten ihre Sprache in das bereits lange romanisierte Gallien. Das Bretonische geht also nicht auf die zu Caesars Zeiten in der Bretagne gesprochene keltische Sprache, das Gallische zurück. Im Zuge der Stärkung der keltischen Sprache und Kultur wurden die Gallorömer immer weiter zurückgedrängt, bis sie die Vorherrschaft um 580 endgültig verloren.
...

Leeward Caribbean Creole English
Sprache von UK
Language of UK

Official Name: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
...
Immigrant Languages

Afrikaans, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (5,000), Bengali (400,000), Eastern Punjabi (471,000), Greek (200,000), Gujarati (140,000), Hakka Chinese (10,000), Hebrew (8,000), Hindi (480,000), Iranian Persian (12,000), Italian (200,000), Japanese (12,000), Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, Kashmiri (115,000), Leeward Caribbean Creole English, Lithuanian, Malayalam (21,000), Maltese (40,900), Mandarin Chinese (12,000), Morisyen (1,000), Moroccan Spoken Arabic (5,800), Northern Kurdish (23,800), Northern Pashto, Northern Zazaki, Pahari-Potwari (20,000), Parsi (75,000), Portuguese (17,000), Saraiki, Shelta (30,000), Sindhi (25,000), Somali (1,600), Southern Pashto (87,000), Southwestern Caribbean Creole English (170,000), Spanish (112,000), Standard Estonian (14,000), Standard Latvian (12,000), Sylheti (300,000), Tagalog (74,000), Ta’izzi-Adeni Spoken Arabic (29,000), Tamil, Turkish (60,000), Urdu (400,000), Vietnamese (22,000), Western Punjabi (103,000), Yoruba (12,000), Yue Chinese (300,000)
...

merriam-webster.com
What are the origins of the English Language?

The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called "Old English" (or "Anglo-Saxon"), "Middle English", and "Modern English". The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A.D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down.
...

mhhe
The Mayfield Handbook of Technical Scientific Writing

• 1. Planning and ProducingDocuments
• 2. Document Types
• 3. Elements of TechnicalDocuments
• 4. Graphs and Figures
• 5. Paragraphs
• 6. Sentences
• 7. Words
• 8. Punctuation
• 9. Mechanics
• 10. Citing Sources and ListingReferences
• 11. Parts of Speech
• 12. Parts of Sentences
• 13. Sentence Types and WordOrder
• 14. Usage Glossary
• 15. Writer's Resources

natcorp
British National Corpus (BNC)

...
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written. ...
If you just want a taste of what is in the BNC, you can perform a simple search using the World Wide Web. You can do this directly from the web browser you are currently using to read this page, without registering.
The restricted search interface will not return more than 50 hits, with a maximum of one sentence of context for each, but it will support any legal CQL query.
...

• A0U 2313 On even days he whispered about the five different meanings of how's your father and the etymology of knackered, Bob's your uncles , and taking the piss out of X or Y .
• A6B 215 The falling of Burbank, taking us down the moral ladder, and the "saggy bending of the knees"; of Bleistein, taking us down the evolutionary ladder, lead to the declining "smoky candle end of time"; which prepares Burbank and the reader to ponder over "Time's ruins";, the etymology of "ruins"; being important.
• AML 1422 Systematic investigation of the authenticity of the names and of their etymology has not been attempted, although the orthography has been brought up-to-date.
• ASV 361 Callahan had advised me to devote myself to one simple and perhaps impossible mission: to discover the etymology of the word cowabunga.
• B7F 422 The guiding principles then of etymology and precedent would not be acceptable today.
• B7G 2203 I admit that there is something absurd in the notion of machines built around the simple rigour of Boolean logic having to cope with words whose spelling in some cases derives from Dr Sam Johnson's incorrect etymology.
• BMK 1178 As for boffin, although the Oxford English Dictionary states that its etymology is unknown, I have conjectured that this same purist Huxley may inadvertently have been responsible for it.
• CB1 994 I am presumably using words literally when the metaphor is a matter only of etymology ("insight";), and feel still more confident of it when the etymology belongs to the Latin ancestor of the word ("intuition";, from intueor "gaze at";).
• CB1 994 I am presumably using words literally when the metaphor is a matter only of etymology ("insight";), and feel still more confident of it when the etymology belongs to the Latin ancestor of the word ("intuition";, from intueor "gaze at";).
• CB1 998 No doubt many users of the word "introspection"; are unaware of its Latin etymology (from introspicio "look within"), yet they are surely influenced by its affinities with "inspect";, "spectator";, "spectacle"; otherwise, why do they claim to introspect entities as not physical but mental because not extended in space, treating introspection as analogous with sight, which reveals spatial extension, rather than with hearing, smell or taste, which just as much as consciousness of love or anger, hope or fear, exhibit temporal change without spatial extension?
• CBB 136 The siting of the Roman Ermine Street just to the west of Stamford prompted Francis Peck in 1727 to suggest that Stamford was formerly the important Roman town of Durobrivae , originally called Doorebriff He supported the claim with some incoherent etymology that related the name to the Saxon word "Welland";, irrespective of the fact that the gentle Welland does not rage or boil (according to Ekwall's English River Names , Welland means "good stream";).
• CBB 142 Popular etymology has claimed that "Bredcroft"; was the place where the town's medieval bakers kept their ovens and Burton claims there was a court house there, but there is no evidence.
• CCE 125 The etymology of the word Devil and the influence of pagan religion on Christianity, though perhaps interesting in themselves, are of no great theological significance.
• CCV 811 There are cases where technical terms are conventionally used, but add nothing to what could be said in simpler ways: e.g. etymology simply means `;the history of a word';, and morphology simply means `;word structure,.
• CDV 225 It is also rather odd, in that no etymology of it is known.
• CGF 1292 This might be called a "metalinguistic"; strategy since it involves self-conscious reflection on words --; their history, their etymology, even sometimes their spelling.
• CGF 1296 She preferred to use vagina --; until she looked it up in the dictionary, which gave its etymology (vagina is Latin for "sheath";, as in where you keep your sword).
• CGF 1299 At other times it is more effective to ignore history and etymology in order to make a feminist point.
• CGF 1303 Similarly, some feminists spell women as wimmin or womyn to avoid including the element men --; even though that is not the true etymology and indeed, the element is not even pronounced.
• CGF 1307 (Incidentally, in this case men have not been above etymologising the word to suit them: Dennis Baron documents the very prevalent early etymology of woman as meaning either "womb-man"; or "woe-to-man";!)
• CGF 1397 Daly and Caputi are especially preoccupied with reclaiming the spiritual powers women were once invested with --; powers hinted at in the etymology of words like glamour , as noted above.
• CKN 485 Tolkien had been brought from South Africa at the age of four; Lewis was a Belfast man schooled in England for whom, like his Mend Tolkien, the Western Front had proved the deepest trauma of a largely bookish life; Charles Williams, an Oxford publisher who died in 1945, was a Londoner; Dorothy Sayers, who died a dozen years later, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman; and Owen Barfield a London solicitor who shared with his friends a passion for all things lexical, and above all for the etymology of words.
• CKN 536 It is also playfully lexical, in a manner that engagingly unites the bookish child and the ageing professor of Anglo-Saxon, and its word-games are totally unlike those of Joyce --; more to do with etymology than punning, more Germanic than Latin, and ultimately populist and patriotic in their insistence on how English arose out of its pre-Conquest roots.
• CRM 7538 etymology.
• EA3 950 Non-literate Africans can explain the etymology of words as non-literate English-speakers cannot…
• EAT 306 One might wish to replace the obsolete name of a country or language with the modern name in every definition or etymology.
• EVA 304 The etymology here could well indicate the contact during sleep between the living and the dead, in which case sleep may be regarded as a miniature death that takes a person away from the conscious life of the day.
• EVB 592 Most people are fascinated by the way words change their meanings and their form and spelling: your pupils may not know that the history of any one word can be a story in itself (like the etymology of the word" history").
• FAD 1160 Amongst other things, this type of study can contribute to problems in English etymology, for example in dealing with pairs of the type: pack/peck .
• G1N 128 As Jonathan Culler points out, the pun is to the synchronic dimension of language what etymology is to the diachronic dimension (1988:2), and Julia plays on this parallel by confusing the two.
• G1Y 1439 His dismissal of McQueen's argument contrasts the man of the world with the islander, the widely-read man of learning and classical scholarship with the local pastor who had an amateur interest in the etymology of his own language.
• GT4 1172 Thus, in his own commentary, he was able to make apposite reference to Hebrew etymology and exegesis, and to Jewish tradition.
• H0Y 2132 etymology
• HB2 1142 Looking at it another way it is perhaps a neat coupling of the word's etymology.
• HGH 51 Apart from anything else, it leads us into several fascinating areas, such as etymology, linguistic fashion, verbal humour, and the expression of gender --; the last two being particularly difficult roads to travel along, and where the bones of many an unwary linguist can be found along the way.
• HGR 1597 The definitions contained in this dictionary are voluminous descriptions of the etymology of the words, the dictionary being designed for people with a deep interest in the English language.
• HXS 16 The etymology of the medieval French word carries some suggestion of what the characteristic features of tales of this genre were originally considered to be, although nothing detailed enough to form a definition.
• HY0 70 His account of their arrival and his etymology for their name cannot be trusted.
• J7U 14 His view of this" delirious" material (note the etymology of délire) is that it breaks the rules of language (grammar, syntax, semantic cohesion) but that it does not mean nothing.
• J7U 40 My favourite comes when he is lamenting the decline of etymology as a linguistic discipline; he talks of" the death-toll of etymology" being" sounded"… by the Neo-Grammarians (p. 187).
• J7U 40 My favourite comes when he is lamenting the decline of etymology as a linguistic discipline; he talks of" the death-toll of etymology" being" sounded"… by the Neo-Grammarians (p. 187).
• K93 323 Kingdon (1958b) produced a detailed survey of stress tendencies in a corpus of many thousands of words; the analysis is based not only on phonological structure but also on etymology and morphology.

neatorama
New Word Order

The Oldest Words in the English Language
Posted by Alex in Book & Lit on February 26, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Mark Pagel, evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and colleagues have identified some of the oldest words in the English language using computer analyses:

Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years. [...]

At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to represent concepts that have not changed across nations or millennia.
...

ntu
History of the English Language

omniglot
Links: English language

• General sites about the English language
• Dialects of English
• Guides to various varieties of English
• English slang
• Online English language courses
• Online English language dictionaries
• Online literature in English
• Online audio books in English and other languages
• Alternative spelling systems for English

oxforddictionaries
The history of English

peaklearn
Language Arts
Long List of Links

portmanteau, Portmanteau Words (W3)

psa
English: A Language for the next millenium

ENGLISH: A LANGUAGE FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM
Territorial Politics
CHRIS JULIOS
(QMW, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON)
International ethnolinguistic estimates suggest that the English language is currently spoken by nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Amongst approximately 5,000 existing tongues worldwide, no other language can match this growth. The present paper explores the origins and evolution of this linguistic phenomenon. From the expansion of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, through the rise of the United States to world leadership, to the latest unprecedented technological explosion of the English-speaking North American-led Internet. As the new millennium dawns upon increasingly ‘multicultural’ and ‘multilingual’ societies, a paradoxical ‘globalisation’ of the English language seems to be taking place. Against the background of an heterogeneous European Babel, the significance of one single tongue’s supremacy is examined.

• LINGUISTIC COLONIALISM
• LINGUISTIC POST-COLONIALISM
• NORTH AMERICA’S BEST EXPORT
• LANGUAGE AND MIGRATION
• THE EUROPEAN BABEL PARADOX
• ENGLISH: A LANGUAGE FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

queens-english-society
Queens English Society

Welcome to the website of the Queen's English Society, dedicated to preserving and improving the beauty and precision of the English language.

questia
The History of the English Language

• -Title Page
• -Preface
• -Contents
• -Abbreviations
• -I: The Relationship of English to Other Languages.
• -Chapter I: The Indo-European Family
• -Chapter II: The Teutonic Languages--Common Characteristics.
• -Chapter III: The Old English Period
• -II: The Standard Language and the Dialects.
• -Chapter IV: The Middle English Period and the Norman Conquest.
• -Chapter V: The Written Language and the Rise of Literary English.
• -Chapter VI: English in Modern Times.
• -Chapter VII: The Growth of the English Vocabulary
• -III: The English Vocabulary.
• -Chapter VIII: The Native Element in English.
• -Chapter IX: The Foreign Element in English.
• -Chapter X: The Foreign Element in English (Continued).
• -Chapter XI: Changes which may Affect Words
• -IV: The Principles of English Etymology.
• -Chapter XII: The History of English Vowel Sounds.
• -Chapter XIII: Mutation and Gradation.
• -Chapter XIV: The Consonants.
• -Chapter XV: The English Accent.
• -Chapter XVI: Analogy in English.
• -Chapter XVII: Inflectional Levelling in English
• -V: The History of English Inflections.
• -Chapter XVIII: The Noun.
• -Chapter XIX: The Adjective.
• -Chapter XX: The Pronouns.
• -Chapter XXI: The Verb.
• -Chapter XXII: The Verb (Continued).
• -Chapter XXIII: Adverbs and Other Participles
• -Index

questia
The English Language in Modern Times, since 1400

• -Title Page
• -CONTENTS
• -PREFACE
• -ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• -ABBREVIATIONS
• -PHONETIC SYMBOLS
• -LIST OF MAPS
• -Chapter I Formation of the National Language: 14th Century Backgrounds
• -Chapter II Formation of the National Language Continued: 15th and Early 16th Centuries
• -Chapter III The Literary Language in the 16th Century: Its Words and Its Sounds
• -Chapter IV Grammatical Structure and Style in the Later Renaissance
• -Chapter V The Latter 17th and the 18th Centuries
• -Chapter VI Modern English Dialects and Their Literary Uses
• -Chapter VII The English Language in the New World
• -Chapter VIII The English Language Today
• -Illustrative Materials
• -GLOSSARY
• -INDEX

questia
Modern English, Its Growth and Present Use

• -Title Page
• -Preface
• -Contents
• -I: Introduction
• -II: The English People
• -III: The English Language
• -IV: English Inflections
• -V: English Sounds
• -VI: English Words
• -VII: English Grammar
• -VIII: Conclusion
• -Appendix: The Old English Chronicle, Laud, 636.
• -Bibliography
• -Indices

Received Pronunciation, RP (W3)

rice.edu - HoE
History of English

A Brief History of English, with Chronology

by Suzanne Kemmer © 2001-2005

Pre-English | Old English | Middle English | Modern English

Welcome to the Words in English Website

The English language is a West-Germanic language which originated in England and has since spread throughout the British Isles and into various regions where Britain held overseas colonies. English is the third most popular world language, as measured by the number of native speakers, which was around 402 million in 2002 . It is also the most popular non-native acquired language in the world, as the cultural, economic, military, political and scientific importance of the United States of America and the United Kingdom for the last two centuries has given English pre-eminent status as a language of international communication.

This website is a resource for those who want to learn more about this fascinating language – its history as a language, the origins of its words, and its current modern characteristics.

RP (W3)

scitechdaily

SPELL (W3)

spellingdoctor

spellorg

studyenglishtoday.net
A Brief History of the English Language

The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest undoubted living relatives of English are Scots and Frisian. Frisian is a language spoken by approximately half a million people in the Dutch province of Friesland, in nearby areas of Germany, and on a few islands in the North Sea.
...

swan

• Language, Language Teaching/Learning and Linguistics
• Language:
• Dialects/Regional Variants
• Handwriting and Type
• History
• Pronunciation
• Spelling
• Translation
• For reference works, see Reference

• Organisations
• CALL
• Other Resources

• Organisations/Institutions
• Journals
• Other Resources
• Directories and Links Pages

synonym
Synonyms, Antonyms and definitions for English words!

theatlantic
Word Watch

thehistoryofenglish.com
The History of English

INTRODUCTION
...
English-speaking Britain was the leading colonial nation in the 17th and 18th Century, as well as the leader of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 18th Century; in the late 19th and 20th Century, English-speaking America was the leading economic power, and was also at the forefront of the electronic and digital revolution of the late 20th Century.

But, it has also proved itself the most flexible and resilient of languages, remarkable for its ability to adopt and absorb vocabulary from other cultures. It has survived incursions by invading armies, outfaced potential extinction on more than one occasion, and navigated the changing cultural zeitgeist, growing ever stronger in the process. Its continued vitality is evidenced by the number and diversity of its worldwide variations today.

The main part of this website, the History, can be read as a kind of story, in chapters, following the development of the English language from its Indo-European origins, through Old English and Middle English to Early Modern English and Late Modern English, before a brief look at English Today. But there is also section on Language Issues (including How New Words are Created, Language and Geography and English as a Global Language), a Timeline of important dates in the development of English, a Glossary of some of the technical and historical terms used, and a list of Sources and Links.
...
HISTORY

• Before English (Prehistory - c. 500AD) (including Indo-European, Spread of Indo-European Languages, Germanic, The Celts, The Romans)
• Old English (c. 500 - c. 1100) (including Invasions of Germanic Tribes, The Coming of Christianity and Literacy, The Anglo-Saxon or Old English Language, The Vikings, Old English after the Vikings)
• Middle English (c. 1100 - c. 1500) (including Norman Conquest, French (Anglo-Norman) Influence, Middle English After the Normans, Resurgence of English, Chaucer and the Birth of English Literature)
• Early Modern English (c. 1500 - c. 1800) (including Great Vowel Shift, The English Renaissance, Printing Press and Standardization, The Bible, Dictionaries and Grammars, Golden Age of English Literature, William Shakespeare, International Trade)
• Late Modern English (c. 1800 - Present) (including The Industrial and Scientific Revolution,Colonialism and the British Empire, The New World, American Dialect, Black English, Britain’s Other Colonies, Language Reform, Later Developments, 20th Century)
• English Today (including Who Speaks English?, English as a Lingua Franca, Reverse Loanwords, Modern English Vocabulary, Modern English Spelling)

TIMELINE
LANGUAGE ISSUES

• How New Words Are Created (including by Creating from Scratch, by Adoption or Borrowing, by Adding Prefixes and Suffixes, by Truncation or Clipping, by Fusing or Compounding Existing Words, by Changing the Meaning of Existing Words, by Errors, by Back-Formation, by Imitation of Sounds and by Transfer of Proper Nouns)
• Language and Geography (inlcuding National Boundaries, Multilingual Countries, Endangered Languages)
• English as a Global Language (including What is a Global Language?, Why is a Global Language Needed?, Is a Global Language Necessarily “A Good Thing”?, Is English a Global Language?, Is English Appropriate for a Global Language?, What About The Future?)

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

• Accent | Affix (Prefix and Suffix) | Anglicism | Compound (Portmanteau) Words | Creole | Dialect | Etymology | Inflection | Jargon | Language | Lingua Franca | Linguistics | Loanwords (Borrowings) | Multilingualism | Neologism | Patois | Pidgin | Semantics | Slang | Standard English | Synonym | Vocabulary (Lexicon) | Word

SOURCES & LINKS

towerofenglish
The Tower of English

The Tower of English is here to help ESL students and teachers quickly find the best places on the Internet to practice real English! You'll find about 300 fun and interesting websites in 34 different categories.

The Tower is easy to use. Just choose a page from the ESL Internet Guide at left. You'll find a list of sites for you to visit. Read about the site to see if you're interested. Read Your Turn for a fun idea for a related activity. Some of these activities can be done at home, and some can be done in your classroom.

We have also added some fun and interesting interactive activities that we hope you will enjoy. We will keep adding new activities all the time, so come back often! If you want to know when new activities and resources are added, sign up below for our free Tower Tipsheet newsletter!

| 1000 Most Common Words | 1000 Years | The 1900 House | 2002 Best Inventions | 21 Reasons Why I Love You! | 50 Places of a Lifetime | 50States.com | 6 Billion Human Beings | The New 7 Wonders of the World | The $95,000 Adventure | A, An, The | A. Pintura: Art Detective | About.com | About.com Listening Exercises | Aha! Jokes | Alice in Wonderland | All About Ceiva | AllRecipes.com: The Recipe Network | All Things Considered | The AmbiGallery | The America Project | American Flag History | American Sign Language | Ananova: Virtual Newscaster | Animal Crackers | Animal News Center | | Antimoon.com | | Ask the Magic 8-Ball! | Astounding Space Thrills | Attack on the U.S. | Autowraps | | Bad Fads Museum | Band-Aid AP Stylebook | Banned for Life | Be an Architect! | Beach 'n Billboard | Beatles Lyrics | Bed and Breakfast | Biography.com | Boggler | BookBrowse | The Book of Clich? | Brain Bowl | Bud's Journal | Burma Shave Slogans | Business Meetings | CNN Learning Resources | Calvin and Hobbes | Candlelight Stories | Carmine's Portraits | Casey at the Bat | Castaway | Chain Stories | Changing Illusions | Chat with John Lennon | Cobuild Definitions Game | Collective Creation | Common American Slang | Comenius Idioms | The Communication Station | The Complete Works of Pooh Bear | Country Reports | Culture Shock: A Fish Out of Water | Daily Buzzword | Daily Grammar | Dating Ideas | Dave's ESL Cafe | Dave Sperling's ESL Slang Page | This Day in Rock and Roll History | Dear Abby | D.FILM MovieMaker | Disney Sony Lyrics | Ditto | Don't Throw a Brick Straight Up! | Dumb Laws | ELT News | The ELT Two Cents Cafe | ESL Cafe Web Guide | ESL Independent Study Lab | esllessons.com | ESL Lounge | ESL Point | The ESL Wonderland | Easy English News Stories | Echo the Bat | Egg Shell Art | The Electric Postcard | Enchanted Forest | Encyclopedia.com | English Cafe Australia | EnglishCLUB.net | The English Global Village | English On-line Reading Comprehension Project | English Learner Movie Guides | "English" Signs from Around the World | English Web Guide | Eric Conveys an Emotion | Evolution of the Alphabet | Exotic/Alternative Pets | Fact Cat | Fake Book Jackets | Famous Last Words | Fantastic Dinner Party | Fast Hangman Games | Favorite Poem Project | Flags and Countries Quiz | Fluency Through Fables | Foreignborn.com | Fred the Webmate | Fridge Magnet Poetry | Full Moon | funhits.com | A Game a Day | GetLyrical | Ghost Stories | Giggle Poetry | GlobalStudy | GoEnglish.com Idiom Dictionary | Going Places | Grammar and Vocabulary Assessment Tests | Grammar Goofs | Grammar Gorillas | Grimms' Fairy Tales | Groaners | A Guide to Web Surfing (for ESL Students) | Guess the Name | Haiku Movie Reviews | | Hawaiian Shirts | Hazardous Waste in the Home Quiz | Headless Mike | Healthy Dining Quiz | | History Channel Speeches | The History of Ice Cream | The History of Thanksgiving | The Hollywood Sign | Home Video Library | How Christmas Works | How Old Are You? | How to Make a Pop-Up | The Idiom Connection | IPIX Images | Illustrated Idioms | Internet Bumper Stickers | Internet Movie Database | The Internet TESL Journal | Inventors Museum | Isabel's ESL Site | JigZone | John's ESL Community | John Lennon Assasination | Karin's ESL PartyLand | King Features Comics | The Language of Love | Lateral Puzzles | LawBuzz Stories | The Leaning Tower of Pisa | Lemondade Stand | Library Cats Map | LIFE Magazine Dream House | LIFE Images of the Century | The Longevity Game | Looking at Language | Lost and Found Sounds

MP3000 Music Maker | Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade | Magic Card Tricks | The Many Faces of Santa | Map Machine | Meet Mei Xiang and Tian Tian | The Mercury Theatre on the Air | Miss Kitty's Storybook | The Moller Skycar | Momisms! | The Moonlit Road | Mother's Day Message | MovieFlix | Movie Poster Quiz | Movie Scripts | Mystery! A Gorey Murder | NPR Online | NY-Taxi.com | NetGrammar | The Neverending Tale: The Stacks | News Directory | Notorious Confusables | NotQuite Comics | The Online English Grammar | The Open Diary | Optimist or Pessimist? | Origin of Phrases | Owl Cam | OxymoronList.com | Oz Stories | Paint by Idioms | Peanut Butter | Peanuts | PencilNews | Penguins Around the World | Penguin Misconceptions | Pet Peeves | Phrasal Verb Dispenser | Phrase Fun | A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words | Picture Puzzles | Plant-Parts Salad | Plumb Design Thesaurus | Poetry Pool | Postscript Magazine | Project Denny's | Proofreading Exercises | Pun of the Day | Puzzlemaker | Quiz Box | Randall's ESL Listening Lab | Reader's Theater Editions | Really Bad Jokes | Revealing Things | | RiddleNut.com | Rivertrout.com | Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer | Schackne.com | SearchShots | SeaRoom Habitats | See-n-Solve Mystery | Sendomatic.com | Silly Survey | The Simile Satellite | Slapdash City | Slip-Ups | Sniglets | The Snowflake Man | SoloTrek | Songs Connection | Sounds of English | Spark Online | SpellaRoo | A Spelling Test | Spider-Man Activities | | Sports Cliche List | St. Patrick's Irish Word Puzzle | Steven Wright Jokes | Stickman Murder Mystery Games | Strawberry Fields | The Streetplay Galleries | StupidHead Test | The TEFL Farm | TOEFL Practice | Takako's Great Adventure | Tales of Wonder | | Ten-word Movie Reviews | That Explains It! | Things Sold in Vending Machines | Timed Reading | Today's Cartoon | Tongue Twister Database | Toonopedia | Totally Absurd | Treasure Hunt | A Trip to the Grand Canyon | Twenty-two Things To Do With French Fries Besides Eat Them | Twist Mini-mystery | U.S. Tipping Guide | Unofficial Smiley Dictionary | The Un-Matching Game | Vanity License Plates | Vintage Thanksgiving Cards | Virtual English Center | Virtual Museum of Arts El Pais | Volterre-Fr | Voycabulary | Wacky Web Tales | Web Links for Learners of English | What Time is it? | Whatchamacallits | Where Were You? | | Who2 Loops | Word Perhect | Words in the News | World of English | World Talk Radio | Worldview! Christmas Around the World |

Ulster
Language of GB
Sprache in GB

Uni Laval
Histoire de la langue anglaise

• Section 1: Les origines de l'anglais : jusqu'à 700
• Section 2: La période du Old English (vieil anglais ou anglo-saxon): de 700 ~ 1100
• Section 3: La période du Middle English (moyen anglais): de 1100 ~ 1500
• Section 4: La période du Modern English (anglais moderne): de 1500 ~ aujourd'hui
• Section 5: Bibliographie

Uni Wuppertal

usingenglish
English Language Tips

• Adjuncts | Adverbials | Adverbs | Articles | As | Auxiliary Verbs | Conjunctions 2 | Conjuncts | Countable & Uncountable Nouns | Demonstratives | Determiners | Disjuncts | Ditransitive Verbs | Interrogative Adjectives | Interrogative Adverbs | Interrogative Pronouns | Its & It's | Like | Modal Verbs | Monotransitive Verbs | Negative Pronouns | Noun Phrase | Numerals
• Parts of Speech: Alone - Because - But - Few - How - If - Just - Little - Many - Much - Nevertheless - Since - These & Those - This & That - What - Where - Which - While - Who - Whom - Why
• Personal Pronouns | Possessive Adjectives | Possessive Pronouns | Prepositions | Pronouns | Quantifiers | Reciprocal Pronouns | Reflexive Pronouns | Relative Pronouns | So | So & Such 1 | Some & Any 1 | Spell | Such | Themself & Themselves | They're, Their & There | Transitive & Intransitive Verbs
• Examples: Adjectives that look like Adverbs 1/2 - Adverbials - Adverbs of degree 1/2 - Adverbs of frequency 1/2 - Adverbs of manner 1/2/3 - Adverbs of place 1/2 - Adverbs of time 1/2 - Auxiliary Verbs 1/2/3 - Conjunctions 1/2/3/4/5/6 - Conjuncts - Definite Article - Demonstrative Adjectives - Demonstrative Pronouns - Disjuncts 1/2 - Indefinite Article - Interrogative Pronouns - Modal Verbs - Negative Pronouns - Numerals (Cardinal Numbers) - Numerals (Ordinal Numbers) - Irregular Adjectives - Some, Any & No 1/2/3 - Parts of Speech - Personal Pronouns (Object) - Personal Pronouns (One) - Personal Pronouns (Subject) - Possessive Adjectives - Possessive Pronouns - Prepositions 1/2/3/4/5/6 - Quantifiers 1/2/3 - Reciprocal Pronouns - Reflexive Pronouns - Relative Pronouns - Sentencial Adverbs 1 - Words that can give emphasis 1/2/3/4

verbivore

vimeo.com - HoTEL
History of The English Language

History of The English Language (1943)

Acting as an excellent layman's introduction to the origins of one of the most common languages on the planet, 'History of the English Language' demonstrates how language changes over time, and presents England as being multicultural right down to its roots.

von British Council Film

vt
History of the English Language

vt
The Evolution of Present-Day English

• Introduction/Brief Overview
• "...sprung from some common source" (Sir William Jones, 1786): Indo-European and the Pre-History of English
• "Came they of three folk, the strongest of Germania, that of Saxons, and of Angles and Jutes" (Bede): The Beginnings of English in England
• "...and were seen fiery dragons in the air flying" (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793): Vikings & the Influence of Old Norse
• "Thus came, lo! England into Normandy's hand" (Robert of Gloucester, ca. 1300): The Norman Conquest and Early Middle English
• "And for ther is so gret diversite / In Englissh and in wrytyng of oure tonge..." (Chaucer, ca. 1400): Late Middle English
• "I take this present period of our English tung to be the verie height thereof..." (Richard Mulcaster, 1582): Early Modern English
• "we had no lawful standard of our language set up" (Lord Chesterfield, 1754): The Development of English Dictionaries
• "How barbarously we yet write and speak..." (Dryden, 1679): The Development of English Grammars
• "...at the hands of Americans" (Henry Alford, 1863): The American (English) Language
• "Do de rite ting": World Englishes
• Glossary of Key Terms

• Language types
• Prescriptive Grammar/Correctness
• Nouns
• Pronouns
• Sounds & Spelling
• Vocabulary
• Standard Englishes
• Nonstandard Englishes

• From Angles to Americans

wikipedia
Englische Sprache

wikipedia.org - EL
English language

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca. Named after the "Angles", one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, it ultimately derives its name from the "Anglia" ("Angeln") peninsula in the Baltic Sea. It is closely related to the Frisian languages, but its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly "Norse" (a North Germanic language), as well as by "Latin" and "Romance languages", especially "French".
...

wikipedia
English language

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries and of the United States since the mid 20th century, it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world. It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organizations.

Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. The language was influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders. After the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from 12th century Old English: englisc or Engle, and plural form Angles; definition of, relating to, or characteristic of England. [3] Modern English developed with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words. A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and ancient Greek.

Contents

• 1 Significance
• 2 History
• 3 Classification and related languages
• 4 Geographical distribution
• 4.1 Countries in order of total speakers
• 4.2 Countries where English is a major language
• 4.4 Dialects and regional varieties
• 4.5 Constructed varieties of English
• 5 Phonology
• 5.1 Vowels
• 5.1.1 Notes
• 5.2 Consonants
• 5.2.1 Notes
• 5.2.2 Voicing and aspiration
• 5.3 Supra-segmental features
• 5.3.1 Tone groups
• 5.3.2 Characteristics of intonation
• 6 Grammar
• 7 Vocabulary
• 7.1 Number of words in English
• 7.2 Word origins
• 7.2.1 Dutch and Low German origins
• 7.2.2 French origins
• 8 Writing system
• 8.1 Basic sound-letter correspondence
• 8.2 Written accents
• 9 Formal written English
• 10 Basic and simplified versions
• 11 See also
• 12 References
• 12.1 Bibliography
• 12.2 Notes
• 13 External links

...

wikipedia.org - HoE
History of English

History of English

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Germanic invaders and settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominated.

The Old English of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English, which was spoken from the Norman Conquest to the late 15th century. A significant influence on the shaping of Middle English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered and colonised parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries; this contact led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. Another important influence came from the conquering Normans, who spoke a Romance langue d'oïl called Old Norman, which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered the language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. The system of orthography that became established during the Middle English period is by and large 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 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 ongoing Great Vowel Shift, which affected the qualities of most long vowels. Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today, was in place by the late 17th century. The English language 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 United States influence, English gradually took on the status of a global lingua franca in the second half of 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. English-speaking Christian missionaries spread English to many lands. It became a second language for most of the people groups where the missionaries went.

Old English consisted of a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant; however, a greater input to Middle English came from the Anglian dialects. Global geo-social variation among different English dialects and accents remains significant today. Scots, a form of English traditionally spoken in parts of Scotland and the north of Ireland, is sometimes treated as a separate language.

Contents  

• 1 Proto-English
• 2 Old English
• 2.1 Scandinavian influence
• 3 Middle English
• 4 Early Modern English
• 5 Modern English
• 6 Phonological changes
• 6.1 Introduction
• 6.2 Vowel changes
• 6.3 Examples
• 7 Grammatical changes
• 7.1 Evolution of English pronouns
• 7.1.1 Interrogative pronouns
• 7.1.2 First person personal pronouns
• 7.1.3 Second person personal pronouns
• 7.1.4 Third person personal pronouns
• 8 Examples
• 8.1 Beowulf
• 8.2 Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan
• 8.3 Ayenbite of Inwyt
• 8.4 Canterbury Tales
• 8.5 Paradise Lost
• 8.6 Oliver Twist
• 9 See also
• 10 Notes
• 11 References
• 12 External links

wordinfo.info
English History and Its Language Development

• A condensed and illustrated version of "English History and Its Development" - The illustrated version of "English and its Historical Development" starts with Indo-European words, Part 1.
• An English History and Its Development, Introduction, Part 01 - Importance of Latin and Greek in English.
• An English History and Its Development, Introduction, Part 02 - Etymological approach to learn more about English words.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 01 - Indo-European words.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 02 - Celts settled in Britain.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 03 - Romans invaded Britain and ruled the Celts from A.D. 43-410.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 04 - Romans had to conquer the Celts with many battles.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 05 - Icenian Queen, Boadicea, made the Romans pay a heavy price.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 06 - Romans built Hadrian's wall to protect themselves from the Picts.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 07 - Picts broke through Hadrian's wall in A.D. 300.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 08 - Roman troops went back to Italy to defend Rome from invading "barbarians".
• English and its Historical Development, Part 09 - In A.D. 410, the last Roman legions withdrew from Britain, leaving the Celts to defend themselves against the Picts and Irish.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 10 - Old English Period, A.D. 450-1150.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 10A - Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, Teutonic tribes settled in Britain.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 10B - St. Augustine arrived in England with 40 priests in A.D. 597.

• English and its Historical Development, Part 10C - Caedmon, wrote "Caedmon's Hymn" in A.D. 657-680.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 11 - Beowulf, Old English literature.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 12 - A.D. 731, the Venerable Bede, a monk at Jarrow, England.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 13 - A.D. 789, the Vikings began raiding and plundering Britain.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 14 - A.D. 871-899, Alfred the Great served as the first king of England.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 15 - Danelaw and English territory.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 16 - A.D. 1016-1035, reign of King Canute (Cnute).
• English and its Historical Development, Part 17 - Accession of Edward the Confessor restored King Alfred's line.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 19 - 1150-1500, Middle English Period.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 20 - 1258, the "Provisions of Oxford", first official document to use English since the Norman Conquest.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 21 - 1350-1400, period of great literary production in Britain.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 22 - Modern-English Period, A.D. 1500 to present.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 23 - English writers used Greek and Latin to present their ideas.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 24 - Human activities developed new objects and concepts, requiring new terms, many were still from Latin and Greek origins.

• English and its Historical Development, Part 25 - Scientific presentations used Latin and Greek as their nomenclature.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 26 - New inventions required more technical terms.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 27 - Improved travel methods and communication have developed standards of speech.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 28 - Uniformity of American English resulted from improved modes of travel and communication.
• English and its Historical Development, Part 29 - Space-age generation continues to utilize terms from Latin and Greek.
• English and its Historical Development, Warrior Queen Boadicea Background - Getting better acquainted with Queen Boadicea.
• English and its Historical Development, Warrior Queen Boudicca Rebellion Described by Tacitus - Tacitus describes rebellion of Boudicca, A.D. 60-61.
• English Chronology - English Events through the centuries.

Newsletter: A List of Current and Back Issues.

• Newsletter #1: Latin phrases you should know. - News about the unusual. - It’s [sic], but that’s the way it is.
• Newsletter #2: Lose/Loose, How [sic] Can It Be? - Playing with Words. - Quotes Worth Your Time.
• Newsletter #3: Changing English Words to Make New Ones. - Auf Wiedersehen, English. - Letters from Readers.
• Newsletter #4: Instructions for use of actual products. No kidding. - Principal/Principle and mnemonic devices. - More letters from readers. - More Denglish.
• Newsletter #5: Words in the News. - More Mnemonic Devices for Greater Spelling Accuracy - The Greek Element tribo- and Its Practical Commercial Applications. - “Lawyer Idiocy” - Some Examples
• Newsletter #6: Responses to letters. - Quid Novum? Erratum, Errata. - Cyber-Legerdemain—Don’t miss this cyber magic! - Think about the Correct Use of Pronouns. - New Additions to the Search Areas. - Some Serious Considerations—Think about It!
• Newsletter #7: There are dictionaries and there are dictionaries. - Did they say what I think they said? - New Additions to the Search Areas.
• Newsletter #8: Sesquipedalian Challenges. - Logical Sequence Activity. - Educational Sources. - Golden-Oldies Poems.
• Newsletter #9: U.S. Teachers and cheating (many quotes from - news sources).
• Newsletter #10: Reader responses to teachers and cheating - Comments about book: Words for a Modern Age - Did they really write those headlines? - New words from old words - Dan Quayle and Groucho Marx Quotes - Access to cross-references search area
• Newsletter #11: Political Quotes on Target - Inventory (completed lists) of Cross-Reference Units - Access to search areas
• Newsletter #13: An Obfuscation Chart for Creating Bureaucratic Jargon. - Words poem.
• Newsletter #14: Explanation of the Sesquipedalians in Newsletter #13. - Ponder These Quotations. - Newsletter-Subscription Statistics.
• Newsletter #15: Political Quotes on Target - Inventory (completed lists) of Cross-Reference Units. - Access to search areas.

yaelf
English language history

English language history

• The Lawgiver of English Usage: Henry Watson Fowler
• "Ow we spake" (the dialect of the Black Country)
• Earliest English cookbook rediscovered
• "No lawful standard...": The Evolution of English Dictionaries
• Is English the "Official" Language of the UK?
• 12th & 13th Century English Textile Surnames
• The origin of the @ symbol
• Civil War Slang
• Glossary of Old Names (for diseases)
• The History of American English
• The Protean N-Word
• Deciphering Old Handwriting
• The Great Vowel Shift
• Improve your writing
• Is the English language changing?
• Articles on the history of English
• Herder: An essay on the origin of language. Superb!
• A brilliant set of pages on the early history of human languages
• AUE Contributors John Lawler and Aaron Dinkin provide an *excellent* reference for Latin sources for grammatical terms.
• Tony Jebson's site on learning Old English. This site includes articles on the history and origins of Old English.
• "The Old English Pages". An acclaimed site with a mailing list, downloads, and further links.
• The "Perseus Digital Library". An Internet treasure!
• The Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (SASLC) is a collaborative project that aims to produce a reference work providing a convenient summary of current scholarship on the knowledge and use of literary sources in Anglo-Saxon England. Departing from
• Ansaxdat is the full-text database for the Listserv discussion group ANSAXNET. It is stored on the library server of the Queen Elizabeth II Library at Memorial University, St John's, Newfoundland.
• Search The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
• The Great Vowel Shift: The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the "long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r's, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both e
• English Usage Site Map

The Lawgiver of English Usage

Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933)

Educated at Rugby and Oxford's Balliol College, H.W. Fowler began his career by teaching English grammar for seventeen years at a Yorkshire secondary school for boys. When offered a promotion to housemaster, he quit and move to London. There, while proving to himself that it was possible to live on 100 pound sterling a year, he was a freelance journalist. Fowler made his real mark on the English language only after moving to the remote island of Guernsey in 1903. He and his brother, Francis George Fowler, proposed to write "a sort of English composition manual, from the negative point of view, for journalists & amateur writers." The outcome, The King's English, was published by the Oxford University Press and quickly became a de facto standard. Exposing the shortcomings of eminent writers, the tome offering but five basic commandments:

• 1. Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
• 2. Prefer the concrete to the abstract.
• 3. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
• 4. Prefer the short word to the long.
• 5. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

The majority of "Old English" words are lost to modern usage and have no descendants. Of the small core of survivors, most are readily familiar and seldom have abstract meanings. The roots are typically short and often contain a single syllable. Some have taken on meanings only indirectly related to those in Saxon times. And, others are downright awkward in contemporary usage. Fowler addressed these point in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, first published in 1926 and still in print. He warns that:

"...conscious deliberate Saxionism is folly, that the choice or rejection of particular words should depend not on their descent but on considerations of expressiveness, intelligibility, brevity, euphony, or ease of handling, & yet that any writer who becomes aware that the Saxon or native English element in what he writes is small will do well to take that fact as a danger-signal." This lexicon of Modern English words contains many of those Saxon words that Fowler would have us prefer. May it - along with Fowler's sage advise - lead to a betterment of your understanding of Modern English and its usage!

youtube.com - HoE
History of English

youtube.com - THoEitM
The History of English in ten Minutes

The History of English in ten minutes.

Chapter One: Anglo-Saxon or whatever - happened to The Jutes?

The English Language begins with the phrase "Up yours, Caesar", as the Romans leave Britain and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in. Tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons, who together gave us the term "Anglo-Saxon" and the "Jutes" who didn't. The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of their Latin language.

The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful, as it was mainly words for simple everyday things, like "house", "woman", "loaf" and "werewolf". Four of our days of the week were named in honour of Anglo-Saxon gods, they didn't bother with "Saturday", "Sunday" and "Monday" as they'd all gone off for a long weekend. While they were away, Christian missionaries stole in, bringing with them leaflets about jumble sales and more Latin.

Christianity was a hit with the locals and made them much happy to take on funky new words from Latin like "martyr", "Bishop" and "font" along came the Vikings with their action-man words like "drag", "ransack", "fast" and "die". They may have raped and pillaged, but they were also into give and take, two of around 2000 words they gave English, as well as the phrase "watch out for that man with the enormous axe."

Chapter Two: The Norman Conquest or excuse my English.

1066, true to his, name William the Conqueror invades England bringing new concepts from across the channel like the French language, the Doomsday Book and the duty-free Gauloise multi-pack. French was de rigueur for all official business, with words like "judge", "jury", "evidence" and "justice", coming in and giving John Grisham's career a kick start. Latin was still used at nauseam in church, but the common man spoke English, able to communicate only by speaking more slowly and loudly until the others understood him. Words like "cow", "sheep" and "swine" come from the english-speaking farmers, while the a la carte versions, "beef", "mutton" and "pork" come from the french-speaking tops, beginning a long-running trend for restaurants having completely indecipherable menus. All in all, the English absorbed about 10,000 new words from the Normans, though they still couldn't grasp the rules of cheek kissing.

The Boname all ended when the English nation took their new war-like lingo of "armies", "navies" and "soldiers" and began the Hundred Years War against France. It actually lasted 116 years but by that point no one could count any higher in French and English took over as the language of power.

Chapter Three: Shakespeare or a plaque on both his houses.

As the dictionary tells us, about 2,000 new words and phrases were invented by William Shakespeare; he gave us handy words like "eyeball", "puppy dog" and "anchovy", and more show-offy words like "dauntless", "besmirch" and "lacklustre". He came up with the word "alligator" soon after he ran out of things to rhyme with "crocodile". And a nation of tea drinkers finally took him to their hearts, when he invented the "hobnob". Shakespeare knew the power of catchphrases as well as biscuits, without him we would never eat our flesh and blood out of house and home. We'd have to say good riddance to the green-eyed monster and breaking the ice will be as dead as a door nail. If you try to get your money's worth you'd be given short shrift and anyone who laid it on with a trial could be pushed with his own petard. Of course, it's possible other people use these words first but the dictionary writers liked looking them up in Shakespeare, because there was more cross-dressing and people taking each other's eyes out. Shakespeare's poetry showed the world that English was a rich, vibrant language with limitless expressive and emotional power, and he still had time to open all those tea rooms in Stratford.

Chapter Four: The King James Bible or let there be light reading.

In 1611, the powers that be turned the world upside down with a labour of love, a new translation of the Bible. A team of scribes with the wisdom of Sullivan went the extra mile to make King James translation all things to all men. Whether from their heart's desire, to fight the good fight, or just for the filthy lucre. This sexy new Bible went from strength to strength getting to the root of the matter in a language even the salt of the earth could understand. The writing wasn't on the wall, it was in handy little books with fire and brimstone preachers reading it in every church. Its words and phrases took root to the ends of the earth, well at least the ends of Britain. The King James Bible is the book that taught us that a leopard can't change its spots, that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, that a wolf in sheep's clothing is harder to spot than you would imagine, and how annoying it is to have a fly in your ointment. In fact, just as Jonathan begat Maribel and Maribel begat Myka, the King James Bible begat a whole glossary of metaphor and morality that still shapes the way English is spoken today. Amen.

Chapter Five: The English of Science or how to speak with gravity.

Before the 17th Century scientists weren't really recognised, possibly because lab coats had yet to catch on. But suddenly Britain was full of physicists, there was Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and even some people not called Robert, like Isaac Newton. The Royal Society was formed out of the invisible college after they put it down somewhere and couldn't find it again. At first they worked in Latin after sitting through Newton's story about the "Pomum" falling to the "Terra" from the "Arbor" for the umpteenth time, the bright sparks realised they all spoke English and they could transform our understanding of the universe much quicker, by talking in their own language. But science was discovering things faster than they could name them, words like "acid", "gravity", "electricity" and "pendulum" had to be invented just to stop their meetings turning into an endless game of charades. Like teenage boys, the scientists suddenly became aware of the human body, coining new words like "cardiac" and "tonsil", "ovary" and "sternum" and the invention of "penis" and "vagina" made sex education classes a bit easier to follow. Though "clitoris" was still a source of confusion.

Chapter Six: English and Empire or the Sun never sets on the English language.

With English making its name as the language of science, the bible and Shakespeare, Britain decided to take it on tour, asking only for land, wealth, natural resources, total obedience to the crown and a few local words in return.

They went to the Caribbean looking for gold and a chance to really unwind, discovering the "barbecue", the "canoe" and a pretty good recipe for rum "punch". They also brought back the word "cannibal" to make their trip sound more exciting.

In India, there was something for everyone. "Yoga" to help you stay in shape while pretending to be spiritual. If that didn't work there was the "cummerbund" to hide the paunch, and if you couldn't even make it up the stairs without turning crimson, they have the "bungalow".

Meanwhile in Africa, they picked up words like "voodoo" and "zombie" kicking off the teen horror film.

From Australia, English took the words "nugget", "boomerang" and "walkabout" and, in fact, the whole concept of chained pubs. All in all, between toppling Napoleon and the First World War, the British Empire gobbled up around ten million square miles, four hundred million people, and nearly a hundred thousand gin and tonics. Leaving new varieties of English to develop all over the globe.

Chapter Seven: The Age of the Dictionary or the definition of a hopeless task.

With English expanding in all directions, along came a new breed of men called lexicographers who wanted to put an end to this Anarchy, a word they defined as what happens when people spell words slightly differently from each other. One of the greatest was Dr. Johnson, whose Dictionary of the English Language took him nine years to write. It was 18 inches tall and contained forty two thousand seven hundred and seventy three entries, meaning that even if you couldn't read, it was still pretty useful if you wanted to reach a high shelf. For the first time when people were calling you a "pickle herring", a "jobbernowl" or a "fopdoodle" you could understand exactly what they meant, and you'd have the consolation of knowing they were all using the standard spelling. Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented, and in 1857 a new book was started that would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took another seventy years to be finished after the first editor resigned to be an archbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of them ended up in an asylum. It eventually paid in 1928 and it's continued to be revised ever since, proving the whole idea you can stop people making up words is complete snuffbumble.

Chapter 8: American English or not English but somewhere in the ballpark.

From the moment Brits first landed in America they needed names for all the new plants and animals, so they borrowed words like "raccoon", "squash" and "moose" from the Native Americans, as well as most of their territory. Waves of immigrants fed America's hunger for words, the Dutch came sharing "coleslaw" and "cookies", probably a result of their relaxed attitude to "drugs".

Later the Germans arrived selling "pretzels" from "delicatessens" and the Italians arrived with their "pizza", their "pasta" and their "mafia", just like mama used to make.

America spread a new language of capitalism, getting everyone worried about the "break-even" and the "bottom line", whether they were "blue chip" or "white collar". The commuter needed a whole new system of "freeways", "subways" and "parking lots", and quickly, before words like "merger" and "downsizing" could be invented. American English drifted back across the pond, as Brits got the hang of their cool movies and their groovy jazz.

There are even some old forgotten English words that lived on in America, so they carried on using "fall", "faucets", "diapers" and "candy", while the Brits moved on to "autumn", "taps", "nappies" and NHS dental care.

Chapter 9: Internet English or language reverts to type.

In 1972, the first "email" was sent, soon the "internet" arrived: a free global space to share information, ideas and amusing pictures of cats. Before the Internet, English changed through people speaking it, but the net brought typing back into fashion and hundreds of cases of repetitive strain injury. Nobody had ever had to "download" anything before, let alone use a "toolbar" and the only time someone set up a "firewall" it ended with a massive insurance claim and a huge pile of charred wallpaper. Conversations were getting shorter than the average attention span. Why bother writing a sentence when an abbreviation would do and leave you more time to blog, poke and reboot when your hard drive crashed. In my humble opinion became "IMHO", by the way became "BTW" and if we're honest that life-threatening accident was pretty hilarious, simply became "FAIL". Some changes even passed into spoken English, for your information people frequently asked questions like how can "LOL" mean "laugh out loud" and "lots of love", but if you're gonna complain about that, then you U'v Go 2 Be Kidding.

Chapter 10: Global English or whose language is it anyway?

In the 1500 years since the Romans left Britain, English has shown a unique ability to absorb, evolve, invade and if we're honest, steal. After foreign settlers got it started, it grew into a fully-fledged language all of its own, before leaving home and travelling the world, first via the high seas then via the high-speed broadband connection, pilfering words from over 350 languages and establishing itself as a global institution. All this, despite a written alphabet that bears no correlation to how it sounds, and a system of spelling that even Dan Brown couldn't decipher. Right now, around 1.5 billion people speak English. Of these, about a quarter are native speakers, a quarter speak it as their second language and half are able to ask for directions to a swimming pool.

There's "Hinglish" which is "Hindi English", "Chinglish" which is "Chinese English" and "Singlish" which is "Singaporean English" and not that bit where they speak in musicals. So in conclusion, the language has got so little to do with England these days it may well be time to stop calling things. If someone does think up a new name for it, it should probably be in Chinese.

Bähr, Dieter
Abriß der englischen Sprachgeschichte

Bähr, Dieter
Einführung in das Altenglische

Bähr, Dieter
Einführung ins Mittelenglische

Kurzbeschreibung:
Dieses Lehrbuch bietet eine synchronisch strukturelle Analyse des Mittelenglischen anhand des reich glossierten Prolog der "Canterbury Tales" von Chaucer. Der beigefügte Prolog und das sehr umfangreiche Glossar ermöglichen vor allem dem Anfänger ein selbständiges Arbeiten und den Erwerb des nötigen Ausbildungs- und Prüfungsstoffes.

Bierma, Nathan L. K. (Autor)
The Eclectic Encyclopedia of English

Product Description
Culled from his On Language column in The Chicago Tribune, Nathan Bierma conducts a wide-ranging discussion of topics related to English language. He gets under the hood to find out what etymologists do to arrive at their conclusions (they get under the hood), looks at dictionaries through the eyes of those who make them (and catches them making up a word to catch would-be word pirates), and ponders simple usage questions (lay or lie? bring or take? could care less or couldn't care less?) in ways you may not have considered before. He also fields questions from his readers and shows off some of the more interesting Australian slang, horse racing cliches, untranslatable terms, birding vocabulary, and lots more.

Burridge, Kate (Autor)
Blooming English
Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language

Kurzbeschreibung
Fascinating well-crafted look at the quirks of the English language.

Cloutier, Robert A.
Hamilton-Brehm, Anne Marie
Kretzschmar, Jr., William A.
Studies in the History of the English Language V

Kurzbeschreibung
Twelve articles about contemporary approaches to variation and change in historical English grammar and lexicon, with commentaries and responses by the authors, show the main issues and discussion in the field as traditional methods meet contemporary linguistics.

Über den Autor
Robert A. Cloutier, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, USA; Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm and William A. Kretzschmar, University of Georgia, Athens, USA.

Reihe: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 68

Produktinfo
This collection of essays focuses on current approaches to variation and change in historical English grammar and lexicon. Of the twelve papers in the collection, half are based on grammar and syntax, half on lexical developments. The volume highlights the contributions that strong empirical research can make to our knowledge of the development of English grammar, especially as realized in lexical development. In illustration of contemporary research trends, the articles in the collection make strong use of extralinguistic factors to discuss language change as well as argue for internal and structural development.

The authors are drawn from nine different countries, and each article is followed by a commentary and response that provide actual dialogue about the issues in the field, thus representing world-wide discussion of issues in the history of English. The essays recognize the different audiences for historical variation and change - formal linguists, sociolinguists, and lexicographers - and specifically address the interests and discourse in those areas.

The volume shows how historical studies of English are increasingly engaged with contemporary trends in linguistics, at the same time as demonstrating how empirical and other methods can bring classical philology fully into the sphere of contemporary linguistics without abandoning its traditional concerns.

Crystal, David (Autor)
A Little Book of Language

With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, an understanding of the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. In this charming volume, a narrative history written explicitly for a young audience, expert linguist David Crystal proves why the story of language deserves retelling. From the first words of an infant to the peculiar modern dialect of text messaging, "A Little Book of Language" ranges widely, revealing language's myriad intricacies and quirks. In animated fashion, Crystal sheds light on the development of unique linguistic styles, the origins of obscure accents, and the search for the first written word. He discusses the plight of endangered languages, as well as successful cases of linguistic revitalization. Much more than a history, Crystal's work looks forward to the future of language, exploring the effect of technology on our day-to-day reading, writing, and speech. Through enlightening tables, diagrams, and quizzes, as well as Crystal's avuncular and entertaining style, "A Little Book of Language" will reveal the story of language to be a captivating tale for all ages.

Crystal, David (Autor)
A little Book of Language
Little Histories

Kurzbeschreibung
With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, an understanding of the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. In this charming volume, a narrative history written explicitly for a young audience, expert linguist David Crystal proves why the story of language deserves retelling. From the first words of an infant to text messaging, "A Little Book of Language" ranges widely, revealing language's myriad intricacies and quirks. In animated fashion, Crystal sheds light on the development of unique linguistic styles, the origins of obscure accents, and the search for the first written word. He discusses the plight of endangered languages, as well as successful cases of linguistic revitalization. Much more than a history, Crystal's guide looks forward to the future of language, exploring the effect of technology on our day-to-day reading, writing, and speech. Through enlightening tables, diagrams, and quizzes, as well as Crystal's avuncular and entertaining style, "A Little Book of Language" reveals the story of language to be a captivating tale for all ages.

Über den Autor
David Crystal is one of the world's pre-eminent language specialists. Writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster, he is Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has written nearly 100 books, including The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, By Hook or By Crook: a Journey in Search of English, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8, The Stories of English, and Rediscover Grammar, as well as publishing widely on phonetics, Shakespeare's language and child language. In 1995 he was awarded the OBE for services to the English language.

Crystal, David (Author)
Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language

Product Description
What do the following have in common? "Let there be light" - "A fly in the ointment" - "A rod of iron" - "New wine in old bottles Lick the dust" - "How are the mighty fallen" - "Kick against the pricks" - "Wheels within wheels". They are all in the King James Bible. This astonishing book "has contributed far more to English in the way of idiomatic or quasi-proverbial expressions than any other literary source." So wrote David Crystal in 2004. In Begat he returns to the subject not only to consider how a work published in 1611 could have had such influence on the language, but how it can still do so when few regularly hear the Bible and fewer still hear it in the language of Stuart England. No other version of the Bible however popular (such as the Good News Bible) or imposed upon the church (like the New English Bible) has had anything like the same influence. David Crystal shows how its words and phrases have over the centuries found independent life in the work of poets, playwrights, novelists, politicians, and journalists, and how more recently they have been taken up with enthusiasm by advertisers, Hollywood, and hip-hop. Yet the King James Bible owes much to earlier English versions, notably those by John Wycliffe in in the fourteenth century and William Tyndale in the sixteenth. David Crystal reveals how much that is memorable in the King James Bible stems from its forebears. At the same time he shows how crucial were the revisions made by King James's team of translators and editors. "A person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English language ought to have the Bible at his finger's ends," Lord Macaulay advised Lady Holland in 1831. Begat shows how true that remains. It will be a revelation to all who read it.

Crystal, David
English as a Global Language

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Man kann sagen, dass Crystal das Standardwerk zum Thema geschrieben hat, und dass jeder Anglistik-Student oder sprachlich Interessierte seine Freude daran haben wird, es zu lesen.
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Crystal, David (Autor)
Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices
An Illustrated History of the English Language

Kurzbeschreibung
English is spoken or written today by a third of the world's population - an unprecedented achievement for a language. How has this situation come about? And what happens to a language when it is used by so many? In this illustrated history David Crystal charts the development of the language from the earliest runic inscriptions in Old English, through the emergence of a standard variety of English between 1400 and 1800, to the most modern forms of the language in 'concrete' and 'text' poetry. In telling the story he draws on examples from English in its various guises and uses - from our everyday English to English in the workplace and English used as a medium of playful and literary expression. The regional and international varieties of English are also considered. This book shows us where language is now, where it has been, and - perhaps most important of all - where it is heading, for the new varieties of the language appearing in world literature and on the Internet show that this is a story which is by no means over.

Über den Autor
David Crystal is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster on language and linguistics. He is the author of many books including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (CUP, 1995), The Stories of English (Penguin, 2005), By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English (HarperPress, 2007) and Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 (OUP, 2008).

Crystal, David (Autor)
Introduction to Language: A Complete Course
[DVD-ROM]

Kurzbeschreibung
'A brilliantly accessible introduction to core topics in English language and linguistics. My students loved it.' David Adger, Queen Mary, University of London, UK 'Entertaining, clear and informative. David Crystal's lectures demystify and enrich the English language for students of all levels.' Sylvia Shaw, Middlesex University, UK 'A well-delivered and well-structured bird's-eye introduction to all areas of the study of language. Crystal's discussion of issues like dialect and bilingualism will interest many and hopefully promote a rational and reasoned stance towards language.' Klaus Abels, University College London, UK David Crystal brings linguistics alive in these specially recorded lectures. Six 30-minute lectures, each divided into two parts for flexibility of use in lectures and virtual learning environments, cover all the key topics in an introductory English-language/linguistics course, under the headings: Language, Communication & Pragmatics The Structure of Language - semantics and grammar The Mode of Transmission - speech and writing Language in Use: Temporal Variation Language in Use - regional, social and personal variation Language & Discourse This is an essential resource for all beginning students of English language, linguistics and English as a second language.

Über den Autor
David Crystal has been a freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster since 1984. Based in Holyhead, Crystal is Honorary Professor at Bangor University, UK. He is author of numerous books, including Internet Linguistics (2011), Just a Phrase I'm Going Through: My Life in Language (2009) and The Future of Language DVD (2009), all Routledge.

The companion website includes substantial supporting material: bonus extra clips from the lectures a synopsis of lecture content a linguistic and cultural commentary with time codes so users can select points of interest a glossary of linguistic terms, with flashcards for self-testing suggestions for activities, follow-up work and further reading multiple-choice questions to test knowledge of the content of the lectures an index of linguistic terms with time codes to locate them in use on the DVD.

David Crystal's Introduction to Language


This glossary contains the key language and linguistic terms used in the DVD lectures. You can test yourself on these terms using the flashcards.
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Crystal, David (Autor)
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language

Über das Produkt
This third edition incorporates the major developments in language study since the mid 1990s. It includes major new sections on electronic communication and language death. All statistics and maps have been updated, and all sections revised. The book benefits from many new illustrations and a completely fresh text design.

Crystal, David (Autor)
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language

Crystal, David
The Stories of English
Warum sprechen die Engländer nicht Französisch?

Crystal, David
The Story of English in One Hundred Words

Kurzbeschreibung
In dieser einzigartigen neuen Geschichte der Universalsprache Englisch, erklärt der Linguist David Crystal anhand von 100 beispielhaften Wörtern, die Entwicklung, die Ereignisse und den Einfluss, unter welchem diese Sprache sich seit ihrer ersten schriftlichen Niederlegung im 5. Jahrhundert befand und noch heute befindet.

Über den Autor
David Crystal is the foremost expert on English, and honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. He has written many books and published articles in fields ranging from forensic linguistics and ELT to the liturgy and Shakespeare.

Gelfert, Hans-Dieter
Englisch mit Aha!
Die etwas andere Einführung in die englische Sprache

3. Auflage 2014. 222 S.: Broschiert
ISBN 978-3-406-66914-9

Hans-Dieter Gelfert bietet mit diesem Buch einen unterhaltsamen Einstieg in die englische Sprache. Er beginnt dort, wo sie für uns am leichtesten zu erlernen ist, bei den gemeinsamen Wurzeln des Deutschen und Englischen, und zeigt auf verblüffende Weise, daß diese Weltsprache niemandem fremd bleiben muß. Er erläutert leicht verständlich die komplizierten Bestandteile der englischen Grammatik und zeigt, wo so mancher Stolperstein lauert. Dieses Buch ist eine Quelle überraschender Einsichten in die englische Sprache, für den Anfänger ebenso wie für den Fortgeschrittenen geeignet.

Hodgson, Charles (Autor, Sprecher)
Global WORDing
The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English

Kurzbeschreibung
Global Wording traces the development of our language using easily recognizable milestones such as "Beowulf", "William the Conqueror", "Chaucer" and "Shakespeare". Rather than relying on scores of dates and boring facts, Hodgson instead punctuates his story with anecdotes about why these characters were so memorable, as well as interesting details on how we know what we know and the conditions of life over the years as they affected the growth of our language.

Leitner, Gerhard
English Today. Introducing the Varieties of English around the World

1780 gab es weniger als 15 Millionen Menschen, die Englisch sprachen - in England, Irland, Schottland, den USA und Kanada vor allem. Heute ist Englisch für rund 400 Millionen Menschen Muttersprache, über 500 Millionen sprechen es als Zweitsprache. Dieses kleine Buch zeichnet den Weg des Englischen zur Weltsprache nach: seine Entstehung und Entwicklung, seine regionale Differenzierung, seine Ausbreitung und die besonderen Varianten des Englischen in den verschiedenen Erdteilen.

280 S.
ISBN: 978-3-15-019849-0

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• 1 English today
• 2 Speaking about English
• 3 From the English Heritage to the Core
• 4 The Celtic Regions: Scotland and Ireland
• 5 Periods of the Expansion of English
• 6 The New World
• 7 The Southern Hemisphere
• 8 Asia
• 9 Africa
• 10 Contact Languages
• 11 Pluricentric English Today
• References
• List of Illustrations
• Glossary

Leitner, Gerhard (Autor)
Weltsprache Englisch
Vom angelsächsischen Dialekt zur globalen Lingua franca

Die Mehrheit der Bürger Europas wünscht sich Englisch als die Fremdsprache, die ihre Kinder zuerst lernen sollten. In Südostasien oder Afrika ist das kaum anders, wenn selbst Landessprachen zugunsten des Englischen aufgegeben werden. Englisch verspricht globale Teilhabe und Fortschritt. Die Politik folgt dem Geist der Zeit und demonstriert Modernität, wenn Englisch von Kindesbeinen an angeboten wird. Zugleich aber wird Englisch als Feind für Sprachen und Kulturen angesehen, wenn den dominanten Anglizismen und Amerikanismen nichts entgegenzusetzen ist. Gerhard Leitner erzählt umfassend, systematisch und kritisch die Geschichte des Englischen von den Anfängen bis zur globalen Lingua franca. Sein Rundblick über die ganze Welt führt durchaus zu überraschenden Ergebnissen: Die englische Sprache wird zunehmend plurizentrisch, das asiatische oder das afrikanische Englisch gewinnen an Bedeutung und stehen im Wettbewerb mit dem formalen Business-Englisch. Die Globalisierung befördert beides, das formale und das Englisch des Hip Hop. Leitners Prognosen sind unsentimental: Das Englische verändert die Welt und wird selbst tiefgreifend verändert.

Über den Autor
Gerhard Leitner ist Professor für Englische Linguistik an der Freien Universität Berlin.

McWhorter, John - OMBT
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
The Untold Story of English

Paperback
Published by Avery
Oct 27, 2009 | 256 Pages | 5 x 7-1/4 | ISBN 9781592404940

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar

Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.

Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English — and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it’s not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).

John McWhorter is the author of the bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, and four other books. He is associate professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor to The City Journal and The New Republic. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, Politically Incorrect, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Verlag: GOTHAM BOOKS
Seitenzahl: 230
Altersempfehlung: ab 18 Jahre
2009
Englisch
Abmessung: 183mm x 128mm x 17mm
Gewicht: 172g
ISBN-13: 9781592404940
ISBN-10: 1592404944

Review of McWhorter, John. (2008). Our magnificent bastard tongue: The untold history of English. New York: Gotham Books (Penguin group). Sargasso, 2007-2008, II, 138-142.

Reviewed by: Dr. Alicia Pousada, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

John McWhorter is one of the few linguists who can write well for a popular audience. Whether other linguists agree with his theories or not (he tends to be a maverick), they cannot deny his ability to present linguistic issues in an attractive, entertaining, and thought-provoking manner. McWhorter is astonishingly prolific. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is his twelfth book, and it arrived on the heels of a book on Hip-Hop and Black America. He also writes a column for The New York Sun¸ contributes frequently to The New Republic, and appears regularly on radio and TV shows. He is particularly wellknown for his extensive pop-culture references, vibrant use of current slang, clever analogies, and irreverent wit. He is also noted for his often conservative politics, a fact that has little bearing on the book under review but may color the reactions of some linguists to his work.
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McWhorter, John

English is not normal

John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics and American studies at Columbia University. His latest book is The Language Hoax (2014).
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More weirdness? OK. There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third-person singular. I’m writing in it. I talk, you talk, he/she talk-s - why just that? The present-tense verbs of a normal language have either no endings or a bunch of different ones (Spanish: hablo, hablas, habla). And try naming another language where you have to slip do into sentences to negate or question something. Do you find that difficult? Unless you happen to be from Wales, Ireland or the north of France, probably.

Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?
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The first thing that got us from there to here was the fact that, when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (and also Frisians) brought their language to England, the island was already inhabited by people who spoke very different tongues. Their languages were Celtic ones, today represented by Welsh, Irish and Breton across the Channel in France. The Celts were subjugated but survived, and since there were only about 250,000 Germanic invaders - roughly the population of a modest burg such as Jersey City - very quickly most of the people speaking Old English were Celts.

Crucially, their languages were quite unlike English. For one thing, the verb came first (came first the verb). But also, they had an odd construction with the verb do: they used it to form a question, to make a sentence negative, and even just as a kind of seasoning before any verb. Do you walk? I do not walk. I do walk. That looks familiar now because the Celts started doing it in their rendition of English. But before that, such sentences would have seemed bizarre to an English speaker - as they would today in just about any language other than our own and the surviving Celtic ones. Notice how even to dwell upon this queer usage of do is to realise something odd in oneself, like being made aware that there is always a tongue in your mouth.

At this date there is no documented language on earth beyond Celtic and English that uses do in just this way. Thus English’s weirdness began with its transformation in the mouths of people more at home with vastly different tongues. We’re still talking like them, and in ways we’d never think of. When saying "eeny, meeny, miny, moe", have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are - in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognisably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games. "Hickory, dickory, dock" - what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: "hovera, dovera, dick" were "eight, nine and ten" in that same Celtic counting list.

The second thing that happened was that yet more Germanic-speakers came across the sea meaning business. This wave began in the ninth century, and this time the invaders were speaking another Germanic offshoot, Old Norse. But they didn’t impose their language. Instead, they married local women and switched to English. However, they were adults and, as a rule, adults don’t pick up new languages easily, especially not in oral societies. There was no such thing as school, and no media. Learning a new language meant listening hard and trying your best. We can only imagine what kind of German most of us would speak if this was how we had to learn it, never seeing it written down, and with a great deal more on our plates (butchering animals, people and so on) than just working on our accents.

As long as the invaders got their meaning across, that was fine. But you can do that with a highly approximate rendition of a language - the legibility of the Frisian sentence you just read proves as much. So the Scandinavians did pretty much what we would expect: they spoke bad Old English. Their kids heard as much of that as they did real Old English. Life went on, and pretty soon their bad Old English was real English, and here we are today: the Scandies made English easier.
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Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good European language - but the Scandies didn’t bother with those, and so now we have none. Chalk up one of English’s weirdnesses. What’s more, the Vikings mastered only that one shred of a once-lovely conjugation system: hence the lonely third-person singular -s, hanging on like a dead bug on a windshield. Here and in other ways, they smoothed out the hard stuff.

They also followed the lead of the Celts, rendering the language in whatever way seemed most natural to them. It is amply documented that they left English with thousands of new words, including ones that seem very intimately ‘us’: sing the old song ‘Get Happy’ and the words in that title are from Norse. Sometimes they seemed to want to stake the language with ‘We’re here, too’ signs, matching our native words with the equivalent ones from Norse, leaving doublets such as dike (them) and ditch (us), scatter (them) and shatter (us), and ship (us) vs skipper (Norse for ship was skip, and so skipper is ‘shipper’).

But the words were just the beginning. They also left their mark on English grammar. Blissfully, it is becoming rare to be taught that it is wrong to say "Which town do you come from"?, ending with the preposition instead of laboriously squeezing it before the wh-word to make "From which town do you come?" In English, sentences with ‘dangling prepositions’ are perfectly natural and clear and harm no one. Yet there is a wet-fish issue with them, too: normal languages don’t dangle prepositions in this way. Spanish speakers: note that "El hombre quien yo llegué con" ("The man whom I came with") feels about as natural as wearing your pants inside out. Every now and then a language turns out to allow this: one indigenous one in Mexico, another one in Liberia. But that’s it. Overall, it’s an oddity. Yet, wouldn’t you know, it’s one that Old Norse also happened to permit (and which Danish retains).

We can display all these bizarre Norse influences in a single sentence. Say "That’s the man you walk in with", and it’s odd because 1) the has no specifically masculine form to match man, 2) there’s no ending on walk, and 3) you don’t say ‘in with whom you walk’. All that strangeness is because of what Scandinavian Vikings did to good old English back in the day.

Finally, as if all this wasn’t enough, English got hit by a firehose spray of words from yet more languages. After the Norse came the French. The Normans - descended from the same Vikings, as it happens - conquered England, ruled for several centuries and, before long, English had picked up 10,000 new words. Then, starting in the 16th century, educated Anglophones developed a sense of English as a vehicle of sophisticated writing, and so it became fashionable to cherry-pick words from Latin to lend the language a more elevated tone.

It was thanks to this influx from French and Latin (it’s often hard to tell which was the original source of a given word) that English acquired the likes of crucified, fundamental, definition and conclusion. These words feel sufficiently English to us today, but when they were new, many persons of letters in the 1500s (and beyond) considered them irritatingly pretentious and intrusive, as indeed they would have found the phrase ‘irritatingly pretentious and intrusive’. (Think of how French pedants today turn up their noses at the flood of English words into their language.) There were even writerly sorts who proposed native English replacements for those lofty Latinates, and it’s hard not to yearn for some of these: in place of "crucified", "fundamental", "definition" and "conclusion", how about "crossed", "groundwrought", "saywhat", and "endsay"?

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. "Help" is English, "aid" is French, "assist" is Latin. Or, "kingly" is English, "royal" is French, "regal" is Latin - note how one imagines posture improving with each level: "kingly" sounds almost mocking, "regal" is straight-backed like a throne, "royal" is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs "begin" and "commence", or "want" and "desire". Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: we kill a "cow" or a "pig" (English) to yield "beef" or "pork" (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking labourers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

Caveat lector, though: traditional accounts of English tend to oversell what these imported levels of formality in our vocabulary really mean. It is sometimes said that they alone make the vocabulary of English uniquely rich, which is what Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil claim in the classic The Story of English (1986): that the first load of Latin words actually lent Old English speakers the ability to express abstract thought. But no one has ever quantified richness or abstractness in that sense (who are the people of any level of development who evidence no abstract thought, or even no ability to express it?), and there is no documented language that has only one word for each concept. Languages, like human cognition, are too nuanced, even messy, to be so elementary. Even unwritten languages have formal registers. What’s more, one way to connote formality is with substitute expressions: English has "life" as an ordinary word and "existence" as the fancy one, but in the Native American language Zuni, the fancy way to say life is ‘a breathing into’.

Even in English, native roots do more than we always recognise. We will only ever know so much about the richness of even Old English’s vocabulary because the amount of writing that has survived is very limited. It’s easy to say that comprehend in French gave us a new formal way to say "understand" - but then, in Old English itself, there were words that, when rendered in Modern English, would look something like "forstand", "underget", and "undergrasp". They all appear to mean "understand", but surely they had different connotations, and it is likely that those distinctions involved different degrees of formality.

Nevertheless, the Latinate invasion did leave genuine peculiarities in our language. For instance, it was here that the idea that ‘big words’ are more sophisticated got started. In most languages of the world, there is less of a sense that longer words are ‘higher’ or more specific. In Swahili, Tumtazame mbwa atakavyofanya simply means ‘Let’s see what the dog will do.’ If formal concepts required even longer words, then speaking Swahili would require superhuman feats of breath control. The English notion that big words are fancier is due to the fact that French and especially Latin words tend to be longer than Old English ones - "end" versus "conclusion", "walk" versus "ambulate".

The multiple influxes of foreign vocabulary also partly explain the striking fact that English words can trace to so many different sources - often several within the same sentence. The very idea of etymology being a polyglot smorgasbord, each word a fascinating story of migration and exchange, seems everyday to us. But the roots of a great many languages are much duller. The typical word comes from, well, an earlier version of that same word and there it is. The study of etymology holds little interest for, say, Arabic speakers.

To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French and Latin. Greek is another element: in an alternate universe, we would call "photographs" "lightwriting". According to a fashion that reached its zenith in the 19th century, scientific things had to be given Greek names. Hence our undecipherable words for chemicals: why can’t we call "monosodium glutamate" "one-salt gluten acid"? It’s too late to ask. But this muttly vocabulary is one of the things that puts such a distance between English and its nearest linguistic neighbours.

And finally, because of this firehose spray, we English speakers also have to contend with two different ways of accenting words. Clip on a suffix to the word "wonder", and you get "wonderful". But - clip on an ending to the word "modern" and the ending pulls the accent ahead with it: "MO-dern", but "mo-DERN-ity", not "MO-dern-ity". That doesn’t happen with "WON-der" and "WON-der-ful", or "CHEER-y" and "CHEER-i-ly". But it does happen with "PER-sonal", "person-AL-ity".

What’s the difference? It’s that "-ful" and "-ly" are Germanic endings, while "-ity" came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer - "TEM-pest", "tem-PEST-uous" - while Germanic ones leave the accent alone. One never notices such a thing, but it’s one way this ‘simple’ language is actually not so.

Thus the story of English, from when it hit British shores 1,600 years ago to today, is that of a language becoming delightfully odd. Much more has happened to it in that time than to any of its relatives, or to most languages on Earth. Here is Old Norse from the 900s CE, the first lines of a tale in the Poetic Edda called The Lay of Thrym. The lines mean "Angry was Ving-Thor/he woke up", as in: "he was mad when he woke up". In Old Norse it was:

Vreiðr vas Ving-Þórr / es vaknaði.

The same two lines in Old Norse as spoken in modern Icelandic today are:

Reiður var þá Vingþórr / er hann vaknaði.

You don’t need to know Icelandic to see that the language hasn’t changed much. "Angry" was once "vreiðr"; today’s "reiður" is the same word with the initial "v" worn off and a slightly different way of spelling the end. In Old Norse you said "vas" for "was"; today you say "var" - small potatoes.

In Old English, however, "Ving-Thor was mad when he woke up" would have been "Wraþmod wæs Ving-Þórr/he áwæcnede". We can just about wrap our heads around this as ‘English’, but we’re clearly a lot further from Beowulf than today’s Reykjavikers are from Ving-Thor.

Thus English is indeed an odd language, and its spelling is only the beginning of it. In the widely read Globish (2010), McCrum celebrates English as uniquely ‘vigorous’, ‘too sturdy to be obliterated’ by the Norman Conquest. He also treats English as laudably ‘flexible’ and ‘adaptable’, impressed by its mongrel vocabulary. McCrum is merely following in a long tradition of sunny, muscular boasts, which resemble the Russians’ idea that their language is ‘great and mighty’, as the 19th-century novelist Ivan Turgenev called it, or the French idea that their language is uniquely ‘clear’ (Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français).

However, we might be reluctant to identify just which languages are not ‘mighty’, especially since obscure languages spoken by small numbers of people are typically majestically complex. The common idea that English dominates the world because it is ‘flexible’ implies that there have been languages that failed to catch on beyond their tribe because they were mysteriously rigid. I am not aware of any such languages.

What English does have on other tongues is that it is deeply peculiar in the structural sense. And it became peculiar because of the slings and arrows - as well as caprices - of outrageous history.

McWhorter, John - TLH
The Language Hoax
Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language

John H. McWhorter

• Argues that all humans process life the same way, regardless of their language
• Takes a perspective encompassing the world's languages rather than just a few at a time
• Provides a sociopolitical analysis of the issue and its history
• Emphasizes the dangers of the idea of language as a lens through which we view the world

Japanese has a term that covers both green and blue. Russian has separate terms for dark and light blue. Does this mean that Russians perceive these colors differently from Japanese people? Does language control and limit the way we think?

This short, opinionated book addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world. Linguist John McWhorter argues that while this idea is mesmerizing, it is plainly wrong. It is language that reflects culture and worldview, not the other way around. The fact that a language has only one word for eat, drink, and smoke doesn't mean its speakers don't process the difference between food and beverage, and those who use the same word for blue and green perceive those two colors just as vividly as others do.

McWhorter shows not only how the idea of language as a lens fails but also why we want so badly to believe it: we're eager to celebrate diversity by acknowledging the intelligence of peoples who may not think like we do. Though well-intentioned, our belief in this idea poses an obstacle to a better understanding of human nature and even trivializes the people we seek to celebrate. The reality — that all humans think alike — provides another, better way for us to acknowledge the intelligence of all peoples.

Introduction

• Chapter One: Studies Have Shown
• Chapter Two: Having it Both Ways?
• Chapter Three: An Interregnum: On Culture
• Chapter Four: Dissing the Chinese
• Chapter Five: What's the World View from English?
• Chapter Six: Respect for Humanity

John McWhorter is Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University and author of many books, including "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language", "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English", and "What Language Is, What It Isn't, and What It Could Be". He also writes on language, as well as race and cultural issues, as Contributing Editor at "The New Republic" and Columnist at "Time". His work has appeared in "The New York Times", "Time", and "The New Yorker", and he has appeared often on "National Public Radio", "CSPAN" and "MSNBC".

The Return of Lexicon Valley
July 15, 2014
Lexicon Valley, Slate's podcast for language lovers, has just returned after an extended hiatus. First up is an interview with Columbia University professor John McWhorter about his new book "The Language Hoax". Listen to the podcast here, and also check out Mark Peters' review of McWhorter's book here. And stay tuned for news about our own Ben Zimmer joining forces with the Lexicon Valley podcasters!
Article Topics: Language, Media, Online

Dog Eared - Books we love

A Powerful Debunking of Whorfian Exaggeration

April 14, 2014

By Mark Peters

"Whorfianism" — the idea that language shapes thought, and each language creates a distinct worldview — is an appealing idea. What language lover doesn't get excited when hearing about a foreign country's unique grammar or vocabulary, and how such features inevitably determine how its speakers see the world? Whorfianism is a beautiful way to acknowledge the uniqueness of cultures.

But there's one problem: "Whorfianism", at least dogmatic Whorfianism, is a huge load of bunk, at least according to John McWhorter's new book "The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language". This is a persuasive book that expertly dismantles "...the very idea that language is primarily a cultural tool rather than primarily a shambolically magnificent accretion of random habits." While pooh-poohing Whorfianism, McWhorter also makes a case for the intrinsic beauty and magnificence of languages.

McWhorter calls this book a manifesto, and it definitely is — but it's not unreasonable, unbalanced, or rant-like in any way. He dismantles the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis without dismissing it: in fact, McWhorter takes great pains to acknowledge and discuss Whorfian research that does show a connection (however small) between language and thought, and he's equally clear that those researchers are not the source of the myth he opposes: rather, it's journalists who are to blame.
...

McWhorter, John - WotM
Words on the Move
Why English Won't — and Can't — Sit Still (Like, Literally)

A bestselling linguist takes us on a lively tour of how the English language is evolving before our eyes - and why we should embrace this transformation and not fight it.

Language is always changing - but we tend not to like it. We understand that new words must be created for new things, but the way English is spoken today rubs many of us the wrong way. Whether it’s the use of "literally" to mean "figuratively" rather than "by the letter", or the way young people use "LOL" and "like", or business jargon like "What’s the ask?" - it often seems as if the language is deteriorating before our eyes.

But the truth is different and a lot less scary, as John McWhorter shows in this delightful and eye-opening exploration of how English has always been in motion and continues to evolve today. Drawing examples from everyday life and employing a generous helping of humor, he shows that these shifts are a natural process common to all languages, and that we should embrace and appreciate these changes, not condemn them.

Words on the Move opens our eyes to the surprising backstories to the words and expressions we use every day. Did you know that "silly" once meant "blessed"? Or that "ought" was the original past tense of "owe"? Or that the suffix "-ly" in adverbs is actually a remnant of the word "like"? And have you ever wondered why some people from New Orleans sound as if they come from Brooklyn?

McWhorter encourages us to marvel at the dynamism and resilience of the English language, and his book offers a lively journey through which we discover that words are ever on the move and our lives are all the richer for it.

Review: Words on the Move

Posted by Neal on November 28, 2016

As I’ve written before, John McWhorter is a master of analogies, and he still commands them in examples like this one. It comes from his latest book, "Words on the Move", of which I received a free review copy from Holt Publishing. The tongue analogy above isn’t even in reference to articulatory phonetics, as you might think in a book about language; it’s about the oddball past-time marker in English used to, the commonality being that they’re both things that are amazingly weird when you stop to think about them, but which we use every day and consider completely normal. Here are some of the other analogies McWhorter uses in WOTM:

• junk DNA
• scooping out litter boxes
• the mouth anatomy of fin whales
• fade-out endings in pop music
• fads in baby names
• pre-ripped blue jeans
• your child’s dating experiences
• aside monologues in sitcoms that are not intended to be faux-reality shows
• musical notes played
• toolsheds
• bees moving around in a hive
• scurvy and being eaten by a bear (in the same sentence)
• living squid in the ocean vs. dead squid in a kitchen
• the Victorian party game of creating a “tableau vivant”

...

Dog Eared - Books we love

John McWhorter is the Perfect Parade Marshal for Our On-the-go Language

September 26, 2016

By Mark Peters

It's mind-boggling that many people who profess to love language have bizarre, backwards ideas about it based on superstition and hokum. Educated folks who mock evolution-deniers have no problem believing equally unsupported ideas about language—such as "English is worse than ever!" and "Words shouldn’t change!"

Though one despairs—particularly in an election year—that anyone is capable of changing their mind about anything, sometimes hope arises. A new hope for a more scientific, educated, and downright uplifting approach to language has reared its beautiful head in the form of John McWhorter's terrific new book "Words on the Move: Why English Won't — and Can't — Sit Still (Like, Literally)". McWhorter makes a persuasive, charming, fact-based argument for the paradoxical constancy of language change. I don't know if this book will put any pet peeves to sleep, but it makes a strong case that the only words that should freak us out are the ones that don't change.
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Okrent, Arika - HI
O'Neill, Sean (Ill.)
Highly Irregular
Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme
And Other Oddities of the English Language

Answers questions people really have about English, like "Why are there so many ways to say '-gh'?" and "Why is there an 'r' in Mrs.?"

Explores the many quirks of English and how they are connected to the history of the language

Explains a wealth of language concepts in an accessible, entertaining way, illustrated by humorous cartoons

Maybe you've been speaking English all your life, or maybe you learned it later on. But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done, or you're an expert with a red pen who never omits a comma or misplaces a modifier, you must have noticed that there are some things about this language that are just weird.

Perhaps you're reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules (Why are there so many ways to say "-gh"?), or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression (Why do we say "How dare you" but not "How try you"?), or your kid quizzes you on homework (Why is it "eleven and twelve" instead of "oneteen and twoteen"?). Suddenly you ask yourself, "Wait, why do we do it this way?" You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It doesn't conform to logic. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. There doesn't seem to be any rule at all.

There might not be a logical explanation, but there will be an explanation, and this book is here to help.

In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more. Along the way she tells the story of the many influences — from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers — that made our language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, Highly Irregular is essential reading for anyone who has paused to wonder about our marvelous mess of a language.

Table of Contents

• What the Hell, English?
• The Colonel of Truth: What is the deal with the word colonel?
• Fairweather Vowels: Why is y a sometimes vowel?
• Hey Large Spender: Why do we order a large drink and not a big one?
• Crazy English: Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
• What the Hell is with What the Hell?
• Blame the Barbarians
• Thoroughly Tough, Right?: Why don't tough, through, and dough rhyme?
• Getting and Giving the General Gist: Why are there two ways to say the letter g?
• Egging them On: What is the egg doing in egg on?
• I Ated All the Cookies: Why do we have irregular verbs?
• It Goes by so Fastly: Why do we move slowly but not fastly? And step softly but not hardly?
• Elegantly Clad and Stylishly Shod: Why is it clean-shaven and not clean-shaved?
• Six of One, Half a Twoteen of the Other: Why is it eleven, twelve instead of oneteen, twoteen?
• Woe is We: Why is it woe is me, not I am woe?
• Blame the French
• A Sizeable, Substantial, Extensive Vocabulary: Why are there so many synonyms?
• Don't inSULT me with that INsult: Why are there noun-verb pairs that only differ by stress?
• Without Fail: Why is it without fail and not failure or failing?
• Ask the Poets Laureate: Why is it sum total and not total sum?
• Of Unrequited Lof: Why isn't of spelled with a v?
• Blame the Printing Press
• Uninvited Ghuests: Why are ghost, ghastly, and ghoul spelled with a gh?
• Gnat, Knot, Comb, Wrist: Why do we have silent consonants?
• Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda: Why is there a silent l?
• Peek, Peak, Piece, People: Why are there so many ways to write the 'ee' sound?
• Crew, Grew, Stew, New...Sew?: Why don't sew and new rhyme?
• Blame the snobs
• Get Receipts on those Extra Letters: Why is there a p in receipt, an l in salmon, and a b in doubt?
• Asthma, Phelgm, and Diarrhea: Why all the extra letters?
• The Data are in on the Octopi: What's the deal with Latin plurals?
• Too Much Discretion: Keeping discreet and discrete discrete, discreetly
• Pick a Color/Colour: Can't we get this standardized/standardised?
• Blame ourselves
• Couth, Kempt, and Ruthful: Why have some words lost their better halves?
• If it Ain't Broke, Don't Scramble It: Why is There no egg in eggplant?
• Proving the Rule: How can an exception prove a rule?
• How Dare You Say How Try You!: Why dare isn't like the other verbs
• Release the Meese: Why isn't the plural of moose meese?
• Why do Noses Run and Feet Smell?: A corny joke with a serious answer
• Negative Fixation: Why can you say "this won't take long" but not "this will take long"?
• Abbreviation Deflation: Why is there an r in Mrs.?
• How it Comes to Be: How come we say how come?
• Phrasal Verbs, Let's Go Over Them: But don't try to "go them over." (You can look them over though)
• Terrible and Terrific, Awful and Awesome: How does the same root get opposite meanings?
• Literally Messed Up: How did literally get to mean figuratively?
• That's Enough, Now, English
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography

Arika Okrent, Linguist and author of In the Land of Invented Languages, and Illustrated by Sean O'Neill, Illustrator and Writer

Arika Okrent is a linguist and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She worked in a brain research lab on her way to a Psycholinguistics PhD from the University of Chicago, and now writes about language for various publications including Mental Floss, The Week, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Science, Slate, and Aeon. Sean O'Neill is an illustrator and writer living in Chicago. He is the creator of the Rocket Robinson series of graphic novels for young readers. Arika and Sean are also known for their series of live-drawing whiteboard videos on language and other topics, produced by mentalfloss.com.

PONS
Englisch rund um die Insel
Quiz, Sprachenrätsel und Skurriles

Format: 15 x 21 cm, 128 Seiten, Broschur
ISBN: 978-3-12-561921-0

Englischlernen einmal anders So lernen Sie die Englender verstehen - ihre Sprache, ihre Kultur, ihre Eigenheiten.

• •In 20 großen Quizthemen die Englisch-Kenntnisse erweitern und Englisch kennen lernen
• •Sprachliche und kulturelle Fettnäppchen vermeiden
• •Mit vielen unterhaltsamen Anekdoten und Skurrilitäten
• •Lösungen mit Hintergrundinformationen
• •Wortverzeichnis zu den schwierigsten Wörtern

Testen Sie Ihr Wissen und erfahren Sie viel Neues über die Sprache, Land und Leute.

Für England-Liebhaber mit ersten Vorkenntnissen in der englischen Sprache (Niveau A2-B2).

Viereck, Wolfgang
Viereck, Karin
Ramisch, Heinrich
Atlas Englische Sprache

Der dtv-Atlas zur englischsprachigen Welt vermittelt einen Überblick Sprache Wortbildung, Syntax, aber auch über die Entwicklung vom Altenglischen ...

"Windows Vista" = "Windaugensicht"

Von Kristin Kopf

Oooh, oooh, ganz dringend lesen:

Wolfgang Viereck, Karin Viereck, Heinrich Ramisch (2002): dtv-Atlas Englische Sprache. München.

Da erfährt man zum Beispiel, dass "window" ein skandinavisches Lehnwort ist und ursprünglich "Windauge" hieß. Oder dass die "Pikten" von den Römern so genannt wurden, weil sie "picti" = "Bemalte" waren. Oder dass Professor "Slughorn" eine "Nacktschnecke" beinhaltet, und keine mit Häuschen, denn die heißt ja "snail" (*summ* “I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail …”). – Und auch wenn man Englisch studiert oder so etwas aus anderen Gründen für Allgemeinwissen hält, wird man bestimmt seine Freude dran haben.

Außerdem hat es ein Text-Bild-Verhältnis von 50:50! Juhu!