How did English evolve and how did English evolve?

Introducing you to a reading of The History of the English Language

Publisher: Commercial Press, 1st edition, August 1991.

Introduction: This book is suitable for use as a textbook for the first year of English majors or graduate students in the course "History of English". The book is divided into two parts: the first part consists of eight chapters, describing the ** and evolution of English, and the second part mainly includes early English readers, with a total of 17 selected essays, respectively explaining the characteristics of early modern English in Old English and Middle English.

This course is a semester course with an emphasis on early English. The course that runs in with this course is called "The Structure of English" and is also a semester course that focuses on modern and contemporary English. Such a division of labor is necessary because knowledge about early English is often overlooked, so a specialized course provides this knowledge.

This knowledge is highly needed by any student who studies English and English Literature in depth. The author of this book has had four experiences in the course "History of English" at Peking University. According to the students, they found it quite rewarding, because after taking this course, most of them were able to read Old English prose and the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare with the help of dictionaries and annotations.

In addition, for students who specialize in English pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, this course also gives them a preliminary lesson in how to analyze linguistic phenomena from the perspective of historical development.

The English alphabet is derived from the Latin alphabet, which is derived from the Greek alphabet, which in turn is derived from the Phoenician alphabet. It is also the most widely spoken language in the world, with about 490,000 words in English.

With about 300,000 technical terms, it is the most spoken language and the official language of the European Union, many international organizations and Commonwealth countries, and has the third largest number of native speakers in the world, after Chinese and Spanish.

English was developed from the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons who migrated to the British Isles from Denmark and other Scandinavian peninsulas, as well as from Germany, the Netherlands and surrounding areas, as well as the white people of the Jute tribe, and spread to the rest of the world through British colonization. Due to the fact that they have been in contact with many national languages throughout their history.

Its vocabulary changed from monistic to multivariate, its grammar changed from "more inflection" to "less inflection", and its pronunciation changed regularly. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the leadership of Britain and the United States in the world in culture, economy, military, politics and science made English an international language. Nowadays, English is used as a medium of communication in many international lead awareness situations.

<> English is a branch of West Germanic languages that was first spoken by medieval England, and due to its vast colonies, English has become the most widely spoken language in the world. The Anglo tribes were one of the Germanic tribes that later migrated to the island of Great Britain and became known as England. Both names come from Anglia on the Baltic Peninsula.

The language is closely related to Frietic and Lower Saxon, and its vocabulary is influenced by other Germanic languages, especially Nordic (North Germanic), written mainly in Latin and French.

English has been developed for more than 1,400 years. The earliest form of English is a group of Ingvar dialects brought to England by Anglo-Saxon immigrants in the fifth century, collectively known as Old English. Medieval English began at the end of the 11th century, when the Normans conquered England; In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed book in London, expanding the influence of the English language.

Since the 17th Hunger Socks, under the influence of Britain and the United States, modern English has spread all over the world. Through the various print and electronic** languages in these countries, English has become one of the world's leading languages, also playing a leading role in many regional and professional settings, such as science, navigation, and law.

English is the most popular language in terms of distribution area, but the number of native English speakers ranks third in the world, behind Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely studied second language and one of the official languages of nearly 60 sovereign states. More people learn English as a second language than native English speakers.

It is the native language of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, and is widely spoken in the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. It is one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other world and regional international organizations.

1. Changes in speech. Specific jerks are manifested by changes in the phonemes of certain standard sounds. In addition, there are fewer and fewer people who strictly follow the "standard pronunciation of English".

2. Grammatical changes. Grammatically, English structures tend to be streamlined and simplified (e.g., the omission of articles and prepositions is becoming more pronounced; The infinitive of the verb used as a predicate can omit its symbol to, etc.).

3. Semantic changes. The expansion of the meaning of words, the reduction of the meaning of words, the transfer of the meaning of words, the ascension of the meaning of words, etc.

4. Changes in vocabulary. It is mainly reflected in the sharp increase in quantity and the use of new words.

5. Regional variants. Due to historical, geographical, and social development reasons, some regional English that is different from standard English has begun to appear.