Universidad Autnoma del

Estado de Morelos

Instituto de Ciencias de la Educacin

Civilizacin y Cultura Inglesa

Report A Cultural History of the English Language

Chapter 2
The origins of the English language

Edith Gonzlez Puntos

2nd Report A Cultural History of the English Language

The origins of the English language

Edith Gonzlez Puntos

English hasnt been always as we know nowadays, it has had a lot of changes
through history, either because of migrations or settlements or conquests, and it
has been influenced by other tongues, making a mix of these tongues.

At the very beginning the main tongue in Europe was Celtic and it was used even
in the modern French, Italy and Spain, and then the Celtic tongue became
introduced to Britain and Ireland by the Celtic speakers who raid these territories,
however, despite England and Ireland used Celtic language, they had different kind
of Celtic, Ireland Celtic is known as Gaelic while Britain Celtic as British Celtic.

Celtic is known as the first language that had been spoken in Britain, and is
probably that the term of British had been used before for to recognize Celtic
tribes.

The mix of languages had been happening since a lot of time before English, and
we can see that even in the time of Rome, there was a mix of tongues, for example
Germanic towns that were in close contact to Rome during the conquests and
thanks to the trade but this was not the only way on that Germanic was expanded,
it was too because they recruited Roman people to their army, expanding their
tongue in this way, however in Britain Celtic tongue was not displaced by Latin
completely.

There was so many migrations and the Saxons stablished in the litus Saxonicum
(the Saxon shore) during the period of the Roman Empire. After that period they
cover power and started to dominate son territories from England, calling
themselves angles from here derives the term of Anglo-Saxon, by making the
relation with the Saxons and the Angles, who brought the oldest way of what we
know as English.
What we know about the Early English, is mainly because of the written of the age,
but it has a makeable relation with Latin that we can still see in this days.

Descendant from the Saxons stablished in two groups, one group stablished in
England on in the eastern coast where they founded York, and other group around
Scotland and Ireland, founding Dublin.

During second century, Germanics created a system alphabet called runes which
we can see in some objects such as jewerly and rocks.

The diffusion of English in Gales has continued until our days and from the
beginning of fifteenth century, English has been associated to politic and economic
control. In 1563, the translation of the bible to English had the purpose of delete
the Welsh language.

English has changed, and even though grammar, production, pronunciation and
many other elements has changed too, some linguists says that English stills being
the same as it was before.

Bibliography
Knowles, G. (1997). A Cultural History of the. London: Arnold.