The adventure of English

As the most popular language, do you know the origin of English? And how did English become the dominion? What did it effected during the developing of the tide? And what changes did its words and vocabularies suffer?

One. the origin of English

As the most important language influencing the world, English have been continuously changing and developing itself, and the most obvious variety expresses in the vocabulary.

(One) vocabulary comes from foreign languages

.English is a mixture of different foreign languages, and it can be attributed to the invasion from the foreign nations.

(1). vocabulary from Latin

About 7 century BC, Celtic Keith in Europe settled in the Britain island ,and some names of the British places ,mountains or rivers have been relevant to their  Celt（克尔特语），like: London，Kent，Thames.

From 100 BC to 400 AC, the Latin-speaking Roman invaded this island. As the majority of population, Celtic-speaking inhabitants survived their language. However, some Latin words have an access to old English.

In 6th century AD, Roman churchman Augustine came to Britain island and spread the Christianity, then he became the first primate in Canterbury .At this time , Latin burst into English followed  by the religious culture.

Example:

关于道路的修筑的有    拉丁strata，         英street

关于房屋的有          拉丁calx,            英chalk,白垩；

拉丁tegula，         英tile，瓦；

拉丁castanea        英chest-nut,栗子；

有关于蔬菜名称的      拉丁pisum,           英peas;

还有厨房一词：        拉丁coquina,         英kitche，

以及关于厨房用具的词：拉丁discus,          英dish；

拉丁cuppa,           英cup;

拉丁molina,          英mill，碾碎器

(camp, cheese, cook, dragon, fork, giant, gem, inch, kettle, linen, mile, mill, mint (coin), noon, oil, pillow, pin, pound, punt (boat), soap, street, table, wall, and wine.These words also come from Latin.)

(2). English from French

France is one of the powerful counties in Europe, which had ever created its brilliant civilization ,and it greatly influenced on English. The French words (being) taked in English not only have a great quantities but also lies in many different fields, therefore it becomes the primary resouce of English. In the middle ages ,there are about 10000 French words switching into English, and 70% of them have been used until now.

一般的日常用语beast,country,cup,fruit,lamp,letter,oil,rose,table,war,service,prison,castle,market

还可以遇到一些宗教用语

abbot,clerk,hermit,pilgrim,prior,miracle,religion,sermon

一些文化方面的词语   

justice,peace,rich,poor

一些关于文明生活及服装的词

fashion,dress,habit,button,fur,robe,collar,chemise.

After Norman conquered the England, old  French prevailed in the upper(noble) class of England at this duration. However, the foreign language inevitablely crashed into the local one ,as a result,French ,which we consider an invader,did not assimilate English. On the contrary, Norman gradually gave up their French. Instead, they began to use English, meanwhile ,making a deal of French words melt into English and leave a great deal of records in English vocabulary.“

(如英国农民传统养牛，称牛为cattle, 法国人坐享其成，吃牛肉，称之为beef；

英国人称猪为pig，而法国人把猪肉叫pork，故现在英语中关于“猪”，“牛”的两种名称并存。)

Due to the above reasons of history,the Englsih words from French can be find everywhere.

Such as:copy、cologne spirit（科隆香水）、cent、modern、disco、model、mushroom and so on.Someone have estimated that more than half of original-English coming from French.

(3). English words from other languages

English absorts in extensive foreign(exotic) words in order to enrich itself,which is the main factor of English becoming the world-wide language ,and it can be demonstraded in the sentences bellow.

emp :“The skipper (from Middle Dutch)took a cargo (Spanish)of tea, molasses, carry, oranges, and cinnamon from the toboggan and placed it on the matters in the bamboo kiosk.” This sentence includes a great deal of words coming from more than 10 kinds other languages.

(Two) .  The English vocabulary changes

 With the renewal in times and social development, many English words are also adapting to the these changes. Such as:

the university,         wourld-world, sune-sun,Mona-moon, heofon-heaven, steorra-star;

 the human body          heafod-Head, fot-foot, eage-eye, nosu-nose;

the relatives           moder-Mother, sunu-son, dohtor-daughter;

 the house, like         hus-house,Flor-floor, duru-door, hrof-roof;

the basic action        libban-The live, etan-eat, drincan-drink, cuman-come, the slepan-sleep,

some adjective, such as the eald – -old, lang-long, brad-broad, geong-young etc.

these words has a common feature,whose spelling are in accordance with(depend on) their pronouncations . Although English is just more than 1000 years , to the modern people ,ancient English has already become "day book", even the works of Shakespeare in that year, modern British will also consider them written with foreign language , unless with help of specialized reference book in order to understand. Perhaps,  with the social development , the English vocabulary will continually, increase and renovate.  Don’t be astonished at that our morden English will be considerd as an ancient English in the futuer, and this is probably to come ture.

Historic English text samples
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Old English

Beowulf lines 1 to 11, approximately AD 900

Hw鎡! We Gar-Dena in geardagum, odcyninga, ym gefrunon, hu 餫 纩elingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceana eatum, monegum m鎔m, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Sy痧an 鎟est wear?feasceaft funden, he 鎠 frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weor餸yndum h, o瘙鎡 him 鎔hwylc ra ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. 鎡 w鎠 god cyning! Which can be translated as:

Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:

for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he! (translation by Francis Gummere)

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Middle English

From The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open eye- (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages Glossary: soote: sweet swich licour: such liquid Zephirus: the west wind (Zephyrus)

eek: also

holt: wood the Ram: Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac

yronne: run priketh hem Nature: Nature pricks them hir corages: their hearts

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Early Modern English

From Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667 Of man's disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst ispire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventures song, That with no middle Flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, whyle it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose of rhyme. [edit]

 Modern English
From the United States Declaration of Independence, 1776, by Thomas Jefferson

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Two   analysis of the present conditions in vocabulary

1, the foundation technique vocabulary

The development of industry, science, business and nations and international relations  give rise to the establishment of technical terms , these vocabularies  are at first used by the professional or experts, afterwards, gradually emerge in general  language .

Like, the technical terms of railroad  contains rail, tunnel, tender, bogie;

Relevant to the communication of foreign trade, like eclosure(enclosure), cable(telegram), quotation(offer), negotiation(negotiation, negotiate), T/T(telegraphic transfer), M/T(mail transfer), D/D(D.D)...etc.;

   Business and trade , such as the FOB, CIF, Draft, Drawee(be subjected to a person), Commercial Draft(commercial draft), Clean Bill(light ticket), Documentary Bill(documentary bill), Acceptance(acceptance), Endorsement(endorsement) etc..Our country business and foreign trade the relation is continuously expanding, particularly is after join WTO organization this will be obvious, therefore, this technical term will be use more and more and broadly in nowadays the society.

2, the changes of the meaning

Look at this example.

The word ”love” only means “intimate” or “comity” in Shakespeare’s ages, it is always used in scholars express their admirations, but now it has meaning as “love”, ”be fond of”, ”lover” and even “hi”. An other example is the word “fall”, 300 years ago, it means “autumn”, it’s just what we use now, but now “fall” means “landing”, its’ plural form means “waterfalls”. The acceptation of the words also obviously transferred. The original meaning of the word “Earth” is “glebe”, after Columbus’ heliocentric theory established, “globosity” added to its meanings. Another word is used very commonly: cool, it means “coolness”, “unflappability” etc. but now its meanings transferred to describe people larruping, pretty, fine etc.

3,  great capacity and simplification tendency

The new word increased along with the fly of the science and technology. Such as: air conditioner, electronic, laser, computer etc. According to the Stat, “A Dictionary of the English Language” embodied about 40000 vocabularies, and in 30’ 20 centuries shows that the English vocabularies totally 374,720, but now it has already breach to one million. There are about 80% of the current English are loanword.

Although with so huge amount of glossary, English is becoming simpler and simpler. The length of the text in Elizabeth’s ages is average 45 words, Victoria ages is average 20 words, and now is just about ten or more. This is fit into the high-efficiency of the modern lives. Further more, there are many words are constituted by abbreviated, mixed or compounded. And the network technical development also makes such as the “R/r” replace “are”, the “U/u” replace “you”, the “M/m” replace “am”, the “C/c” replace “see” etc. the fast keyboard communicate way became reality. It just like we use “886” replace “goodbye” in Chinese.

Three  Word-making and Word-marking

When we are asked to define the concept word, what come to our mind first may be its written features. An English speaker may think of the letters making up the word. For any human language, its oral system is primary whereas its written form is secondary. Primarily, knowing a word means knowing both its sound and its meaning.

To convey meaning, sounds are combined into words. However, words are not the smallest unit of meaning. They are composed of smaller units of meaning, called morphemes. Some morphemes are added together to make a word. For example, retell is a word made up of two morphemes re and tell. Other morphemes are used to mark the grammatical process by which a word is used, such as tense, plurality, voice, etc. For example, -ing is such a morpheme in the present participle eating. The study of these meaning-bearing units and the rules governing them is called morphology.

1 Morphemes

   Morphology deals with word structure. Many words are themselves morphemes, such as big and book. They cannot be broken into smaller units that in themselves carry meaning. We call them free morphemes.

Many other words are created by joining together two morphemes, e.g. blackboard, in which the two morphemes black and board can be recognized as meaningful words by themselves. So they are also free morphemes.

Another type of morpheme is the bound morpheme, which occurs only when attached to another morpheme, such as -ly in happily and un- in unhappy.

2 Compounding

   Compounding is a process that forms new words not by means of affixes but from two or more independent words. The words that are the parts of the compound can be free morphemes, words derived by affixation, or even words formed by compounding themselves. Below are some examples in English of these three types.

girlfriend     air-conditioner      passerby

blackboard    cutting-machine     aircraft carrier

soap opera    troublemaker       greenhouse effect

From the list above we see that in English, compound words are not represented consistently in writing. Sometimes they are written together, sometimes they are written with a hyphen, and sometimes they are written separately.

Compounds are different from phrases in that they symbolize an integrated concept. Phonologically, they have primary stress on the first word only, while individual words in phrases have independent primary stress. Some examples are listed below.

   compounds                      phrases

  dárkroom                       dárk róom

  mákeup                         máke úp

There are different semantic relationships within the morphemes comprising a compound. For example, sunrise can be analyzed as noun-verb, safety belt as modifier-noun, and makeup as verb-complement. For Chinese compounds, the internal relationships are more colorful, as is illustrated by Table 4.1 below.

 

type   subtype   Chinese compounds   English meaning  

noun-verb      地震   earth-quake

modifier-noun   meaning-limiting  摇篮   cradle  

   describing  国营   State-run  

modifier-verb     仰望   look up at

verb-complement   action-object   打靶   target practice

   cause-effect   推翻   overthrow  

coordinative   echoing  拼搏   struggle bravely  

   oppositional   买卖   business

   contrasting    江山   land 

   parallel 耳目   spy