The Mother Tongue: The First Thousand Years

A detailed Summary of The Mother Tongue: The First Thousand Years


The Mother Tongue: The First Thousand Years

About 1500 years a few people in a remote corner of what we now call England, an awkward Germanic tongue was spoken which we now call English. But how did this insignificant language of barbarians grow to become the dominating language of the western world? This journey was a delicate and risky survival and adaptation of our language. When English was first spoken is was a tongue that nearly no modern English speaker could comprehend. The English language has gone through three major renditions, from a Frisian-Germanic language to Old English, Old English to Middle English and Middle English Modern English. Although little is known about Old English given that few scripts of it still survive, much can be gathered from the history we do know.

After the fall of the Roman Empire England was inhabited by the vulnerable jutes, needless to say they were invaded by multiple tribes, primarily the Angles and the Saxons. Our word for England comes from the tri


When King Henry V was appointed to power in 1399 Norman rulers began to think of themselves as true Englishmen thus riving the English language. Its new transformation led it closer to being the language it is today. Although nearly 30,000 Anglo-Saxon words were lost during this time, 4,500 of the most fundamental words survived. Although these words make up merely 1 percent of the dictionary, of them are all of the 100 most used words in the English language. With this new transformation to Middle English came many problems. For example there were many variations of the English language. If you traveled less than 100 miles from any one place in England to any other the dialects would be so vastly different that you would not even be understood. This was the result of there being no standard in the English language due to the lack of English leadership. Chaucer's language however, the tongue of London, was the most common and was the variation to evolve into modern English.

bal name angles.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Tongue Thousand, Normans Scandinavians, Angles Saxons, Middle English, King Henry, English English, Anglo Saxon, Empire England, Modern English, Baugh Cable, english language, modern english, middle english, english middle english, english middle, english english, language english, english spoken, language transformation, anglo-saxon words, english language transformation,

Approximate Word count = 678
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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