Филологические науки/7. Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация

The student - A.M. Boiko, scientific leader - Vladislav Shiriaev

Polessky state university, Belarus

The English Language: from the Middle Ages to the Present

Many people in our country study foreign languages. School pupils are required to learn one foreign language. This is most commonly English, German, French or Spanish. Each language has a specific set of sounds, a peculiar set of words, its own set of grammatical patterns different from those of other languages [1, p.221].

Today English is the language of the world. It is the language of progressive science and technology, trade and cultural relations, commerce and business. Hundreds and hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers are printed in English and read all over the world. 75 % of the world's mail and 60% of the world telephone calls are in English. Half of the world's scientific literature is written in English.

In our country English is very popular. The number of second- language speakers may soon exceed the number of native speakers. Besides, millions of people study English as a foreign language. In our country English is very popular. It is studied at schools (sometimes even at nursery schools), colleges and universities [2, p.82].

It is only in the course of the last hundred years that English has become a world language. In Shakespeare's time it was a ”provincial“ language of secondary importance with only 6 million native speakers. Nowadays English has become the world's most important language in politics, science, trade and cultural relations[1, p.211].

English is one of the most important and widely used languages. English is spoken as a native language by more than 300 million people, most of them living in North America, the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, and South Africa.

In about twenty-five countries English has been legally used as an official language: in about ten (such as Nigeria) it is the sole official language, and in some fifteen others (such as India) it shares that status with one or more other languages. Most of these countries are former British territories [1, p.210].

English is associated with technological and economic development of the great manufacturing countries and it is the principal language of international aid. It is the language of automation and computer technology. It is not only the universal language of international aviation, shipping and sport, it is to a considerable degree the universal language of literacy and public communication [2, p.82].

From the British Isles English spread all over the world, but English has not always been the language of the people of those islands. When the Romans colonized England in the first century of our era, the country was inhabited by Celtic tribes, and until the fifth century only Celtic languages were spoken by the people of Britain. About the middle of the fifth century the British Isles began to be invaded by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who spoke dialect of the language which was the ancestor of present-day English. We call that language Old English.

During the fifteen hundred years that have passed since the Anglo-Saxon invasions English has changed considerably. First it was influenced by the language of the Danish (Viking) invaders in the, 8th-10th centuries [1, p.212].

English belongs to the Teutonic or Germanic branch of the Indo- European family of languages. Three periods in its history are generally recognized: Old English, extending from the time of the invasion of Britain by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, until the Norman Conquest in 1066; Middle English, from about 1150 until about 1450; and Modern English, from 1450 to the present. The Modern English period is often subdivided into Early Modern English (1450-1700) and Late Modern English [3, p.32]

Old English can be characterized as a language of full inflections, which resembled modern German in the way in which the nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and articles are conjugated. Middle English is already the language of the levelled inflections. It is during the Middle English period that the inflectional endings were reduced to a single unstressed vowel pronounced nearly like the final sound of Cuba. Among the changes which took place in the language during the 15th century was the loss in pronunciation of the final unstressed ”e “. The structure of the language remained as it is today.

The 16th and early 17th centuries saw a considerable flowering of the English literature, with writers such as William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe. Cranmer's prayer book and the Authorised ('King James') Version of the Bible, which have had a profound effect on literature down to modern times, also date from that period. The work of lexicographers, of whom the most famous was Samuel Johnson (1709-84), also led to greater standardisation in matters such as spelling.

Modern English has no inflectional endings. Its vocabulary is heterogenous and extremely large, which is the result of borrowings from other languages, especially from French. A great number of words were introduced from Latin and Greek. Nowadays new words continue to be made up from Latin and Greek roots for new inventions and scientific discoveries.

The Revival of Learning, during the Renaissance, gave a new impetus to borrowing from the Latin. Finally, England's growing position as a world power and the rapid development of America resulted in the introduction into English of words from languages in every part of the globe. The result is a total vocabulary that is both heterogeneous and extremely large [1, p.214]

The literature

1. Хведченя, Л. В. Английский язык для студентов заочной формы обучения: учеб. пособие / Л. В. Хведченя, О. И. Васючкова, Т.В.Елисеева; под ред. Л. В. Хведченя. — Мн.: Выш. шк., 1993. — 314 с.

2. Синельникова, М. Разговорные темы к экзаменам по английскому языку: рабочая тетрадь / М. Синельникова. — 5-е изд. — СПб.: ”Корона принт“, 2000. — 256 с.

3. Левашова, В.А. Современная Британия: пособие по страноведению / В.А. Левашова. — На англ. яз. — 2-е изд. испр.— М. : Высшая школа, 2007. — 240 с.