The history of 'English'

The history of language in Europe has been strongly influenced by the spread of the Roman Empire. The split of the families of languages is due to a successful Roman Campaign in the 2nd Century AD. This caused the  split in the languages, creating the two main families known today. The languages influenced by the Romans are known as the Romance Languages, these being Italian, French, Romanian, Portugese, and Spanish. The Germainc Languages are generally towards the North of Europe and are found inthose places that were less influenced by the Roman Empire. These include German, Flemish, Danish, Swedish and English.

This brings us to the English language. The English language developed as a result of three Germanic tribes who came and settled in Britian in the 5th Century BC. Before they arrived, the language spoken there was a Celtic language. The three tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes came across the North Sea from Northern Germany and Denmark, pushing the Celts up North and to the West. This is the reason that Celtic languages are still alive in Scotland and Ireland. The Angles homeland was known to them as 'Englaland' and their language as 'Englisc' Hence the modern day 'England' and 'English'
Available from:
http://www.englishclub.com/

Where do Languages come from?

So where did all these languages present in the world today come from? We don't know for certain how languages first came about, but there are several theories. One theory, favoured by Plato and Pythagoras is the Ding-dong theory. This theory maintains that speech originated by people making sounds that were in harmony with the world around them, for example, compare the sound of words such as moon, mountain and volcano with cricket, seed. In many languages, words associated with large objects contain 'o' or 'ou'. On the flip side of the coin, words associated with the vowels 'i' and 'e' were considered to be smaller, for example, 'little'
Other theories included the Mama theory which said that languages started with the easiest sounds associated with the most important objects, the ta-ta theory influenced by Darwin which said that language came about through body movements, and the sing-song theory which says that language came about through the sounds made during work and play and that the original noises were actually long and musical as opposed to short grunts.
These and other theories can be found at:
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langorigins.html

The Geography of the English Language

Hi my name is Sophie and this is my TY blog. In this blog I want to trace the English Language back to its roots and see what influences are behind the language we speak today. I hope to explore the different families of lanugages in Europe, how they originated and branched out over the years into the languages we use today, and particularly how other European languages influenced the English language we use today.

I also want to see how the language evolved over the years, what caused this and what old english words are still in use today.
Picture source: http://www.englishclub.com/