History of the English language

History Of English

Language Bias and the Development of the English Language

Implications for Past and Future

Language is a remarkably complicated but simple matter. Each language system -- French, Japanese, African languages, etc. -- has its own set of sounds or hand gestures that people who speak or use their hands to communicate other languages would find difficult to produce. In the United States, children learn English via the parts of speech. They learn that verbs are action words, nouns are people, places, things, or ideas, and adjectives are descriptors. Students taking English classes in the United States may feel that only English speakers must struggle through these lessons, they are wrong. In fact, language universals appear in each language. This means that while every language has different words, sounds, and meanings, all share similar parts of speech, a concept that allows a great deal of insight into the human mind (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (17). In fact, while children in English language classrooms are taught the standard features of their language, they do not need formal education in order to understand the language. Instead, children begin to speak simply by hearing their parents and others in their environment speak. The language that they, learn, therefore, is solely dependant on the language that they hear around them (Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams 4). Interestingly, no matter whether a child learns English or a rare Native American tongue, the connection of sound and meaning, or sign and meaning, would be arbitrary. That is, any series of sound could have, theoretically, been assigned to any meaning, so the sounds or signs that make up the word are not inherently connected to the meaning. The English language is further criticized for its arbitrary nature because of its use of spelling. While the goal of spelling is generally to mimic the sounds represented, English often uses different spellings to represent the same sound ("A History of the English Language" 12). The fact that language is arbitrary, however, also reinforces the theory of descriptive grammar, or that no language or dialect is better than another as each has rules that allow it to operate logically (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams 14). Despite this fact, English's evolution has long placed importance on the correct or proper way of speaking, associating this with class, status, and other socioeconomic factors. By studying the emphasis on "correct" usage as English evolved as compared to it emphasis today, one can understand the somewhat controversial importance of "correct" spoken English in the history of the language.

Although its linguistic importance can be gleaned from the preceding paragraph, an understanding of the history of the English language is also a cultural affair ("A History of the English Language" 1). English has its beginnings in both classical Rome and the Germanic invasions of Britain. While the Roman Empire had the privilege of introducing the first language, Latin, to the island, the invading Germanic tribes, as well as the Vikings with their Norse language, brought Old English, the language of Beowulf (Soon Magazine, "A History of the English Language" 2). Already, a clash among civilizations, as political scientist Samuel Huntington would say, was evident, and that clash encompassed two cultures with very different characteristics -- the civilized, classical Romans, with their language of government and theater, and the war-like Germans and Vikings, with their language of conflict and violence. And so, the English language had its roots in social judgment. It was the Norman invasion of 1066, however, that made English a language of the lower classes ("A History of the English Language" 2).

In a story that is elegantly told via pictures on the Bayeaux Tapestry, the French William the Conqueror defeated English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (Soon Magazine). A common adage suggests that history is written by the victors. While this is true figuratively, in that the victors tend to portray the losers as weaklings or monsters and the winners as gods, it is also true literally. The Old French language became the official language of business and court in the now Norman controlled England (Soon Magazine). Parents who wanted their children to amount to anything would have them schooled in this language, while English was reserved for the commoners.

In this case, one can understand the first pronounced case of language bias in the English language. Although many of today's descriptive grammar linguists would hold that neither language was superior to the other, the social climate of the culture certainly held that the use of French was more correct than the use of English, which must have been seen as a dialect like today's Appalachian dialect. The result of this language bias was an altered English, Middle English, which emerged around 1200, when the French and English kingdoms were again sovereign entities (Soon Magazine). Thus, language bias caused the English language to change, which is a positive property of language. Indeed, languages that no longer change are the stuff of history, dead languages ("A History of the English Language" 2-3).