English...you speak it, hear it, read it or write it everyday (think about that...not a day goes by where you do not use English in some way, shape or form!).
But where did English come from? How did it begin? Who started it?
These are all important questions that scholars and professors - to this day - still debate about to some degree. There is, however, some general agreement that English has undergone several periods of development in history; in other words, the way we use English today is very different from the way that people used to use it a long time ago.
The development of English is normally divided into three periods. They are in fact considered separate languages from one another because they are so different:
- Old English was spoken from about 500 AD to about 1000AD
- Middle English was spoken from about 1000 AD to about 1500 AD
- Modern English was from about 1500 onwards (and even this has undergone many changes)
Below are some examples of Old and Middle English:
The Lords Prayer in Old English
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum
Si þin nama gehalgod
to becume þin rice
gewurþe ðin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soþlice
The Lords Prayer in Old English...have a listen!
The Story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle English...have a listen!
Click on the button below to get the story of Sir Gawain told to you in Modern English!
Pretty wild stuff! No wonder English is one of the most difficult languages to learn to read and write! But the fact is that we can go back even further in history to find out the etymology of many of the words that we use today in English today!