The English is a Western Germanic Langue whose origins come from the dialects Anglo-clippings which were brought on the island of Brittany by the Germanic tribes come to settle there, and strongly influenced then, especially in the lexical plan, by the languages of the Scandinavian and Norman invaders.

Old English ( Old English )

See also: Old English

English descends from the spoken language by the Germanic tribes angles (from where the language draws its name), saxonnes and Jutes being installed in Great Britain at the 5th century of the Christian era, pushing back towards the ends of the north and the west of the island the Celtic Langues present on the territory. These Germanic dialects, which knew the First consonant shift, are then indicated under the name of Vieil English , initially written in Rune S then with the Latin alphabet, brought by the scribes Irish to the 8th century.

The second great linguistic invasion was the fact of the Vikings, who carried out raids on the east coast of England from 787 and started to settle there in the middle of the 9th century. The area submitted to the Danes is known under the name of Danelaw. Their influence is notable in the Lexique which has then borrowed of many terms from the Vieux norrois (or “old Icelandic”), of which very current modern English words: fellow , take , give , skin , etc grammar is even affected, with the replacement of the old plural pronouns of Saxon by they , them and to their and the appearance of - S of the 3rd person of the singular.

These loans often doublonnent with words of radical Saxon (Germanic). The Saxon word is employed by the people, whereas the French term is often related on the constant register or the speech of the noble ones. For example, OX , calf , pig or swine and Germanic sheep , terms, represent in the producer - peasants - what the consumer - primarily the noble Norman ones - indicates by beef (cf “ox”), veal , (cf “calf”), pork (cf “pig”) and mutton (cf “sheep”). Thus, these last four words indicate especially the meat in opposition to the cattle on foot; but there is also let' S return to our muttons “return with our sheep” and fig. muttonhead , “Panurge sheep”. On the other hand the soup of ox tail is called oxtail soup because in the beginning this soup was a plebeian dish.

This thesis of the social differentiation of the French and Saxon doubled blooms must however be moderate if one believes Robert Burchfield of it: according to him the words of French origin such as beef and mutton coexisted well with their Saxon equivalents OX and sheep , but could just as easily indicate the live animal. It is only as from the 18th century, that is to say well after the conquest Norman, that the uses of these words of French origin and saxonne diverged.

In addition, the language simplifies its variation S. It is the Middle English , whose orthography is strongly influenced by that of the Norman scribes, which invents for example the Digramme S of the language ( CH , HS , gh , HT ) and introduces the letter W (in the past a digraph vv or uu ), thus making leave the use of the old letters as þ ( thorn , replaced by HT ), 2D ( edh , also replaced by HT ), ȝ ( yogh , near to a 3 , replaced by gh or there mainly) or ƿ ( wynn , near to a p , replaced by W ). the Tales of Canterbury of Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) are written as Middle English.

Modern English ( Modern English )

See also: English modern

The Great vocalic change, which saw in-depth modification of the English vowels, of the 16th century marks the turning of another state of the language, modern English. Two under-periods there are distinguished: the English modern incipient (before the 17th century) (period of Shakespeare) and modern English (late) (after 1650/1700), when, following the British conquests, the language again lexicalement grew rich in a notable way thanks to the loans made with the languages of the colonies.