English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages（印欧语系）. This broad family includes most of the European languages spoken today. English is in the Germanic group（日耳曼语系） of this family. This group began as a common language about 3,000 years ago. The development of the English language can be divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern English.
Old English
The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes began populating the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries. They spoke a mutually intelligible (可理解的) language – now called Old English. They drove the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales and Ireland, leaving a few Celtic words behind. The Celtic languages survive today in the Gaelic language of Scotland and Ireland, and in Welsh of Wales.
Old English was strongly influenced by Old Norse (古斯堪的纳维亚语) spoken by the Vikings and was closely related to the German and Dutch languages. The introduction of Christianity added the first wave of Latin and Greek words to the language. The Old English period ended with the Norman Conquest, when the language was influenced by the French-speaking Normans.
Middle English
William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066.
In the early part of this period, French,spoken by the Normans, replaced English as the official language in England,while English was only used by the lower class. Numerous French words came into the English vocabulary. One interesting phenomenon was that the animals began to have different names from their meat because they were raised by servants who spoke English and so kept the English names. The meat gained a French name when it was served to the French-speaking masters. For example, “pig” became “pork”,“sheep” became “mutton” and “cattle” became “beef”.
In 1204, King John lost the province of Normandy to the King of the France. Norman nobles of England began to estrange from their French cousins and to adopt a modified English as their native tongue. After the Black Death (1347-1351), the laboring and merchant classes grew in economic and social importance, and English increased in importance compared to French. English evolved gradually into what is now referred to as Middle English.
NOTE: Black Death 黑死病，即14世纪蔓延于欧亚两洲的鼠疫
Modern English
From the late 15th century onward, the English language changed further into what is now described as Modern English. The printing press (印刷机，现也指新闻界，出版社) was introduced to England in 1476 by William Caxton, who brought standardization to English. The dialect of London became the standard. Spelling and grammar became fixed. The first English dictionary was published in 1604. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary – A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, was influential in establishing a standard form of spelling.
English continued to assimilate foreign words, especially from Latin and Greek, throughout the Renaissance. Despite some differences in vocabulary, the material from the early 17th century,such as the works of William Shakespeare, is considered to be in Modern English.
The Industrial Revolution and the rise of technology necessitated the introduction of new words in modern English for things and ideas that had not previously existed. Words like “oxygen（氧气）”, “protein（蛋白质）”, “nuclear（原子核的）” and “vaccine（疫苗）” were created using Latin and Greek roots. English roots were used for such terms as “horsepower”, “airplane”and “typewriter”. This proliferation（激增） of neologisms（新词） continues today, perhaps most visible in the field of electronics and computers. “Byte（字节）”, “cyber-（网络的，计算机的）“, “hard drive（硬盘驱动器）” and “microchip（芯片）” are good examples.
What is more, the rise of the British Empire and the growth of global trade led to the assimilation of words from many other languages. Hindi（印地语） and the other languages of the Indian subcontinent（印度次大陆） provided many words, such as“pundit（专家）”, “shampoo”, “pajamas” and “juggernaut（不可抗拒的强大力量）”. Virtually every language on Earth has made a contribution to the development of English, whether slight, as in the case of the Finnish word “sauna（桑拿）” and the Japanese word “tycoon（大亨，巨头）”, or vast, as with French and Latin.
Standard English
Standard English is based on the speech of the upper class of southeastern England, adopted as a broadcasting standard in the British Media. It is used as much in printed materials as is normally taught at schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also called “the Queen’s English” or “BBC English”, and has become the language preferred by the educated. It has developed and has been promoted as a model for the correct British English. Standard English also refers to the norm (规范，标准) carried overseas for non-native speakers learning English.
Today, Standard English is codified to the extent that the grammar and vocabulary of English are much the same everywhere in the world where English is used. The variation among local standards is really quite minor, so that the Singaporean, South Africa and Irish varieties differ only slightly so far as grammar and vocabulary are concerned.
At present, it is estimated that a third of the world’s population use English. It has become a universal lingua franca（母语不同的人之间使用的通用语）. English has become the native language in Britain, the US, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and so on, and now in such countries as India,Nigeria, the Philippines, etc., English is used as the second language for certain officials as well as for social, commercial and educational activities. What’s more, English serves as one of the working languages of the UN, and the primary medium for modern science and technology.
