As both a mother tongue and as a second language, English is one of the most frequently used languages in the world. As a first language, English with 335 million native speakers ranks third behind Chinese with nearly 1.2 billion native speakers and Spanish with 414 million native speakers. There are however, more than 600 million people who speak English as a second language as compared with 190 million for Chinese and 94 million for Spanish.
The history of the English language begins with the initial emergence of the Indo-European language family north of the Black Sea about 8,000 years ago. In his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David Anthony writes:
“Scholars noticed more than a hundred years ago that the oldest well-documented Indo-European languages—Imperial Hittite, Mycenaean Greek, and the most ancient form of Sanskrit, or Old Indic—were spoken by militaristic societies that seemed to erupt into the ancient world driving chariots pulled by swift horses.”
Next, in our history of English, comes the emergence of the Germanic language family about 3,000 years ago in northern Europe near the Elbe River. Then comes the division of German into North Germanic (which evolved into Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic) and West Germanic (which evolved into German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English).
Following the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, the island was invaded by German-speaking Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. In their book The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat and James Wilson write:
“Uniquely, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes not only retained their dialects of Low German, what became Early English, they forced the native population to adopt them. This sequence of events happened nowhere else in the old western provinces of the Roman Empire.”
With this invasion, the Celtic languages were driven to the fringes of Britain—Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, Man, and northwest Scotland. Linguistically, it is generally felt that the Celts had little impact on the development of the English language. Celtic influence is seen primarily in geographic place names, such as Avon, Dover, Kent, York, and Thames, rather than in everyday vocabulary.
While only a few Celtic words have been incorporated into English, there may be other influences. Linguists, such as Steven Laker and Peter Schrijver, have shown that there are signs of Celtic influence on English sounds. This influence on English phonology (the sounds used by a language) is seen in the formation of dialects, particularly in the northern regions.
Celtic, however, may have influenced English grammar. Linguist John McWhorter, in his book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, writes:
“English is not, then, solely an offshoot of Proto-Germanic that inhaled a whole bunch of foreign words. It is an offshoot of Proto-Germanic that traded grammar with offshoots of Proto-Celtic. The result was a structurally hybrid tongue, whose speakers today use Celtic-derived constructions almost every time they open their mouths for longer than a couple of seconds.”
The next invasion came from another German-speaking group (or groups), commonly described as Vikings. Linguist John McWhorter writes:
“When the Vikings came, one of their first tasks was to communicate with the Anglo-Saxons. This was not a tough a proposition for them as the one they would have faced had they invaded Greece. It is assumed that speakers of Old English and speakers of Old Norse could probably wrangle a conversation.”
John McWhorter also writes:
“The Vikings settled and coped with English, and all indications are that Old Norse in England lasted not much longer than the first generation of invaders. History records no enclaves in England where Old Norse was spoken for generations after the invasions.”
English was, of course, also impacted by the Norman Invasion led by William the Conqueror in 1066. The Norman dialect of French became the language of the elite, the ruling class. In his book Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, Seth Lerer writes:
“The Normans brought new words for learning, commerce, administration, the church, technology, cooking, and so on. Such words are easily recognizable: they are often polysyllabic, with distinguishing sounds and spellings.”
It’s been nearly a thousand years since the Normans came to Britain, and English has continued to change. David Anthony writes:
“Most normal spoken languages over the course of a thousand years undergo change enough that speakers at either end of the millennium, attempting a conversation, would have difficulty understanding each other.”
Like all languages, English has changed a lot since 1066. Meanings of words have changed and pronunciations have changed. Part of this change has involved the borrowing of words from other languages. Native American languages, for example, have enriched English with words such as chocolate, moose, canoe, hurricane, and many others.