The emergence of English language

Оспанова Меруерт Абдисалыковна
Нұр-Сұлтан қаласы
Байқоныр ауданы
Жамбыл Жабаев атындағы
 №4 мектеп-гимназиясының
ағылшын тілі мұғалімі 

   Why do people all over the world learn foreign languages? Perhaps because the world is getting smaller, in a way: nations are more closely linked with each other than ever before, companies operate world-wide, scientists of different nationalities co-operate, and tourists travel practically everywhere. The ability to communicate with people from other countries is getting more and more important. And learning foreign languages broadens your horizons, too! Before learners of a foreign language are able to communicate, they have to acquire many skills. They must learn to produce unfamiliar sounds. They must build up a vocabulary. They must learn grammar rules and how to use them. And, last but not least, they must develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and learn how to react in a variety of situations.

All people like to travel. Some travel around their own country, others travel abroad. Some like to travel into the future, others prefer to travel into the past. While I was working out my research paper and reading many books on English history, I had an exciting trip into a remote past. It was a fantastical journey our Imaginary Time Machine and a Magic Wand. The Time Machine took me into the depth of the centuries, into the very early history of Britain. I waved the Magic Wand and the words began to talk, they disclosed to me their mysteries, I discovered secrets hidden in familiar things. In other words, you will be a witness of making of English.

Step 1. History of the English language.

English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages. This broad family includes most of the European languages spoken today. The Indo-European family includes several major branches: Latin and the modern Romance languages (French etc.); the Germanic languages (English, German, Swedish etc.); the Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit etc.); the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech etc.); the Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian; the Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish Gaelic etc.); Greek. The influence of the original Indo-European language can be seen today, even though no written record of it exists. The word for father, for example, is vater in German, pater in Latin, and pitr in Sanskrit. These words are all cognates, similar words in different languages that share the same root. Of these branches of the Indo-European family, two are, as far as the study of the development of English is concerned, of paramount importance, the Germanic and the Romance (called that because the Romance languages derive from Latin, the language of ancient Rome). English is a member of the Germanic group of languages. It is believed that this group began as a common language in the Elbe river region about 3,000 years ago. By the second century BC, this Common Germanic language had split into three distinct sub-groups:

• East Germanic was spoken by peoples who migrated back to southeastern Europe. No East Germanic language is spoken today, and the only written East Germanic language that survives is Gothic.
• North Germanic evolved into the modern Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic (but not Finnish, which is related to Hungarian and Estonian and is not an Indo-European language).
• West Germanic is the ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English.

Step2. Classification and related languages.

The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic family, a member of the Indo-European languages. Modern English is the direct descendant of Middle English, itself a direct descendant of Old English, a descendant of Proto-Germanic. Typical of most Germanic languages, English is characterised by the use of modal verbs, the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, and common sound shifts from Proto-Indo-European known as Grimm’s Law. The closest living relatives of English are the Scots language (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Ireland) and Frisian (spoken on the southern fringes of the North Sea in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany). After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages that are more distantly related: the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Dutch, Afrikaans, Low German, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the (partial) exception of Scots, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, owing in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some, such as Dutch, do show strong affinities with English, especially to earlier stages of the language. Isolation has allowed English and Scots (as well as Icelandic and Faroese) to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time. In addition to isolation, lexical differences between English and other Germanic languages exist due to heavy borrowing in English of words from Latin and French. For example, compare «exit» (Latin), vs. Dutch uitgang, literally «out-going» (though outgang survives dialectally in restricted usage) and «change» (French) vs. German Änderung (literally «alteration, othering»); «movement» (French) vs. German Bewegung («be-way-ing», i.e. «proceeding along the way»); etc. Preference of 10

one synonym over another also causes differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic, as in English care vs. German Sorge. Both words descend from Proto-Germanic *karō and *surgō respectively, but *karō has become the dominant word in English for «care» while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *surgō root prevailed. *Surgō still survives in English, however, as sorrow.

1.Countries in order of total speakers.

2.Countries where English is a major language.

3. English as a global language.
4. Dialects and regional varieties.
5. Constructed varieties of English.

Step 4. English phonology.

• In RP, this is closer to [e]
• In younger speakers of RP, this is closer to [a]
• Many American English dialects lack this sound; in such dialects, words with this sound elsewhere are pronounced with /ɑː/ or /ɔː/. See Lot–cloth split.
• ^ Some dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See cot–caught merger.
• The letter <U> can represent either /uː/ or the iotated vowel /juː/. In BRP, if this iotated vowel /juː/ occurs after /t/, /d/, /s/ or /z/, it often triggers palatalisation of the preceding consonant, turning it to [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ], [ɕ] and [ʑ] respectively, as in tune, during, sugar, and azure. In American English, palatalisation does not generally happen unless the /juː/ is followed by r, with the result that /(t, d, s, z)juːr/ turn to [tʃər], [dʒər], [ʃər] and [ʒər] respectively, as in nature, verdure, sure, and treasure.
• The back-vowel symbol ʌ is conventional for this English central vowel. It is actually generally closer to ɐ. In the northern half of England, this vowel is not used and ʊ is used in its place.
• The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel [ɝ], the RP version a long central vowel [ɜː].
• a b Speakers of some dialects do not distinguish between these unstressed vowels, /ə/ and /ɨ/. Called schwa.
• This sound is often transcribed with /ə/ or with /ɪ/. Closer to [ɪ̈] than to

4.3.Consonants

4.1.Vowels It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Length is not phonemic in most varieties of North American English.

4.2.Notes for vowels

This is the English consonantal system using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Step5. Grammar and Vocabulary .

English grammar has minimal inflection compared with most other Indo-European languages. For example, Modern English, unlike Modern German or Dutch and the Romance languages, lacks grammatical gender and adjectival agreement. Case marking has almost disappeared from the language and mainly survives in pronouns. The patterning of strong (e.g. speak/spoke/spoken) versus weak verbs (e.g. love/loved or kick/kicked) inherited from its Germanic origins has declined in importance in modern English, and the remnants of inflection (such as plural marking) have become more regular. At the same time, the language has become more analytic, and has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.