The History of English - Part 2
The change
from Old English to Middle English took place over a long time, a slow change
which slowly saw the multiple different endings of Old English words replaced by
more grammatical words of Middle English due to the influence, most probably, of
the Scandinavians, who came to Britain between the 8th and 10th
centuries.
The Norman Conquest
The Norman
Conquest (resulting from Battle of Hastings in 1066) gave the English language
its strongest change in direction and was the early beginnings of Middle
English. William of Normandy
brought the Norman language to the Royal courts of England. This mixture saw the
dawn of a two tiered society, with the Royal courts and aristocrats speaking an
Anglo- Norman language (heavily influenced by French), and the everyday people
speaking the English language.
The Great Vowel Shift
Between 1450
and 1750 there is a great event in the history of the English language which
beckoned the change from Middle English to Early Modern English the Great
Vowel Shift. This saw the movement of vowels being pronounced more towards the
front of the mouth, as well as the end letter eon many words being
voiceless (for example, the word name changed from a short a and a
voiced ending e pronounced as a in Middle English, to how we say it
today with a long a and a voiceless e).
The
pronunciation changes that took place during the Great Vowel Shift evolved in
part due to the greater social mobility which happened after the Great Plague,
which wiped out a large portion of the aristocracy as well as the lower classes.
This merging of lower class English and higher class Anglo-Norman combined as a
new Early Modern English, which is, although difficult, intelligible to English
speakers today. Another influence during the Renaissance times was the revival
of classical scholarship, which saw an increase in the numbers of Greek and
Latin words incorporated into English.
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English
