英语发展史（用英语介绍）

卢恩语(Futhark)→古英语(即盎格鲁-撒克逊语)(Old English、Anglo-Saxon)→英国英语(English)

1.英语的发展要追溯到公元410年，罗马人离开不列颠之后，日耳曼部族包括盎格鲁、萨克逊开始涌入。

2.罗马人走了，没有留下他们使用的拉丁语。反倒是实用的盎格鲁萨克逊语言进入到当地人的语言，带去了新的词汇。

3.公元597年，基督教传入英国。基督教的流行，使当地人更容易接受拉丁文的怪字，如“martyr（烈士）”, “bishop”和 “font”。

4.公元800年，丹麦人入侵英国。维京语言给英语带来了好战意味明显的词汇，英语中共有2000个词汇源于维京人。

5.1066年,征服者威廉入侵不列颠，带来了来自海峡对岸的法语。法语成为了上层阶级与官方事务用语。总的来讲，英文大概从诺曼语中吸收了一万多个单词。

6.1337 年，英法百年战争开始。在这116年的争斗中，英语吸收了法语中的战争词汇，如“armies”, “navies” 及 “soldiers“， 并逐步取代法语，成为当权者的语言。

7.100年之后诞生了莎士比亚。字典告诉我们，莎士比亚大概发明了2000多个新字，包括好用的词汇还有很多当时的流行词汇。

8.1611年出现了詹姆士王版圣经。新圣经使用了所有人都能理解的语言，使得圣经中的教训不再是“王宫粉墙上”的文字，而是手中的小册，并有传教士在每间教堂宣传。

9.17世纪，科学得到了迅速的发展。皇家学院的科学家们一开始用拉丁文沟通，后来发现其实用自己的母语英文会更简洁。新事物的发现产生了许多新的词汇。

10.在日不落帝国迅速扩张时期，英语从殖民地不同的语言中吸收了许多新的词汇与表达。据统计，在1815年到1914年期间，新变种的英文得以在世界各地发展。

11.随着英文向四面八方扩张，词典编纂者也随之出现，这些人想要解决拼字不统一的无政府状态。于是约翰逊博士花了九年编成了一本英文字典，促成了拼写的统一。

12.英语由古代从丹麦等斯堪的纳维亚半岛以及德国、荷兰及周边移民至不列颠群岛的盎格鲁、撒克逊以及朱特部落的白人所说的语言演变而来，并通过英国的殖民活动传播到了世界各地。

13.在19至20世纪，英国以及美国在文化、经济、军事、政治和科学在世界上的领先地位使得英语成为一种国际语言。如今，许多国际场合都使用英语做为沟通媒介。

扩展资料

古英语受低地日耳曼语影响很大，比如动词，基本词汇，发音，复合词结构，形态变化很复杂，但是与现代的标准德语还是有很大的区别。

现代英语并非起源或演变自罗曼语族亦或是法语，但是数万现代英语词汇，很大一部分来自法语，约5万英语词汇与法语接近甚至是完全相同，现代英语和多数现代欧洲语言都改用字母拼写。

现代英语所使用的拼写字母，也是完全借用了26个字母。所谓“英语字母”，就是古罗马人在书写时所使用的拼写字母。

英语开始以拉丁字母作为拼写系统大约是在公元六世纪盎格鲁撒克逊时代。

参考资料

英语-百度百科

A Brief History of the English Language (英语语言简史)

Old English, until 1066
Immigrants from Denmark and NW Germany arrived in Britain in the 5th and 6th Centuries A.D., speaking in related dialects belonging to the Germanic and Teutonic branches of the Indo-European language family. Today, English is most closely related to Flemish, Dutch, and German, and is somewhat related to Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish. Icelandic, unchanged for 1,000 years, is very close to Old English. Viking invasions, begun in the 8th Century, gave English a Norwegian and Danish influence which lasted until the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Old English Words

The Angles came from an angle-shaped land area in contemporary Germany. Their name "Angli" from the Latin and commonly-spoken, pre-5th Century German mutated into the Old English "Engle". Later, "Engle" changed to "Angel-cyn" meaning "Angle-race" by A.D. 1000, changing to "Engla-land". Some Old English words which have survived intact include: feet, geese, teeth, men, women, lice, and mice. The modern word "like" can be a noun, adjective, verb, and preposition. In Old English, though, the word was different for each type: gelica as a noun, geic as an adjective, lician as a verb, and gelice as a preposition.

Middle English, from 1066 until the 15th Century

The Norman Invasion and Conquest of Britain in 1066 and the resulting French Court of William the Conqueror gave the Norwegian-Dutch influenced English a Norman-Parisian-French effect. From 1066 until about 1400, Latin, French, and English were spoken. English almost disappeared entirely into obscurity during this period by the French and Latin dominated court and government. However, in 1362, the Parliament opened with English as the language of choice, and the language was saved from extinction. Present-day English is approximately 50% Germanic (English and Scandinavian) and 50% Romance (French and Latin).

Middle English Words

Many new words added to Middle English during this period came from Norman French, Parisian French, and Scandinavian. Norman French words imported into Middle English include: catch, wage, warden, reward, and warrant. Parisian French gave Middle English: chase, guarantee, regard, guardian, and gage. Scandinavian gave to Middle English the important word of law. English nobility had titles which were derived from both Middle English and French. French provided: prince, duke, peer, marquis, viscount, and baron. Middle English independently developed king, queen, lord, lady, and earl. Governmental administrative divisions from French include county, city, village, justice, palace, mansion, and residence. Middle English words include town, home, house, and hall.

Early Modern English, from the 15th Century to the 17th Century

During this period, English became more organized and began to resemble the modern version of English. Although the word order and sentence construction was still slightly different, Early Modern English was at least recognizable to the Early Modern English speaker. For example, the Old English "To us pleases sailing" became "We like sailing." Classical elements, from Greek and Latin, profoundly influenced work creation and origin. From Greek, Early Modern English received grammar, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Also, the "tele-" prefix meaning "far" later used to develop telephone and television was taken.

Modern English, from the 17th Century to Modern Times

Modern English developed through the efforts of literary and political writings, where literacy was uniformly found. Modern English was heavily influenced by classical usage, the emergence of the university-educated class, Shakespeare, the common language found in the East Midlands section of present-day England, and an organized effort to document and standardize English. Current inflections have remained almost unchanged for 400 years, but sounds of vowels and consonants have changed greatly. As a result, spelling has also changed considerably. For example, from Early English to Modern English, lyf became life, deel became deal, hoom became home, mone became moon, and hous became house.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Modern English

Modern English is composed of several languages, with grammar rules, spelling, and word usage both complimenting and competing for clarity. The disadvantages of Modern English include: an alphabet which is unable to adequately represent all needed sounds without using repeated or combined letters, a limit of 23 letters of the 26 in the alphabet which can effectively express twice the number of sounds actually needed, and a system of spelling which is not based upon pronunciation but foreign language word origin and countless changes throughout history. The advantages of Modern English include: single consonants which are clearly understood and usually represent the same sounds in the same positions, the lack of accent marks found in other languages which permits quicker writing, and the present spelling displays European language origins and connections which allows European language speakers to become immediately aware of thousands of words.

Modern English Words

British English, known as Standard English or Oxford English, underwent changes as the colonization of North American and the creation of the United States occurred. British English words changed into American English words, such as centre to center, metre to meter, theatre to theater, favour to favor, honour to honor, labour to labor, neighbour to neighbor, cheque to check, connexion to connection, gaol to jail, the storey of a house to story, and tyre for tire. Since 1900, words with consistent spelling but different meanings from British English to American English include: to let for to rent, dual carriageway for divided highway, lift for elevator, amber for yellow, to ring for to telephone, zebra crossing for pedestrian crossing, and pavement for sidewalk.

American English, from the 18th Century until Modern Times
Until the 18th Century, British and American English were remarkably similar with almost no variance. Immigration to America by other English peoples changed the language by 1700. Noah Webster, author of the first authoritative American English dictionary, created many changes. The "-re" endings became "-er" and the "-our" endings became "-or". Spelling by pronunciation and personal choice from Webster were influences.

Cough, Sought, Thorough, Thought, and Through

Why do these "ough" words have the same central spelling but are so different? This is a characteristic of English, which imported similarly spelled or defined words from different languages over the past 1,000 years.

Cough
From the Middle High German kuchen meaning to breathe heavily, to the French-Old English cohhian, to the Middle English coughen is derived the current word cough.
Sought

From the Greek hegeisthai meaning to lead, to the Latin sagire meaning to perceive keenly, to the Old High German suohhen meaning to seek, to the French-Old English secan, to the Middle English sekken, is derived the past tense sought of the present tense of the verb to seek.
Thorough

From the French-Old English thurh and thuruh to the Middle English thorow is derived the current word thorough.
Thought

From the Old English thencan, which is related to the French-Old English word hoht, which remained the same in Middle English, is derived the current word thought.
Through

From the Sanskrit word tarati, meaning he crossed over, came the Latin word, trans meaning across or beyond. Beginning with Old High German durh, to the French-Old English thurh, to the Middle English thurh, thruh, or through, is derived the current word through.(

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Northern Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of invasion. The first was by language speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old French and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strict linguistic sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary.