How the English language has changed since 1066

Besides being a language of worldwide communication, English is a global language in another way: nearly 75% of its words were originally borrowed from another tongue. A glance through the etymology notes in an English dictionary can feel like a trip around the world, revealing that even some of the most common words we use every day were borrowed from another language, though today we do not even think of them as foreign.

English belongs to the Germanic branch of the extensive Indo-European language family. Old English, the language of the first Germanic settlers in what is now England, was much more similar to German in vocabulary and grammar, with features like case and gender that Modern German still has today. Despite being called "English", Old English was a very different language from Modern English.

In the early days of English, two foreign invasions greatly influenced the language. First, in the 9th century, Vikings invaded Britain and ruled over the English-speakers there for 150 years. They brought their Old Norse language with them, leading English to adopt many Norse words. For example, our pronouns they, them, and their are of Norse origin.

Not long after, Britain was invaded once more, this time by the Norman French in 1066. The Norman Conquest was hugely successful, with the English rulers replaced by a French-speaking aristocracy who exclusively used French at court and in government proceedings. The French noblemen were a minority, but any Englishman who wanted to get ahead or be taken seriously by the upper classes had to know French.

The result was a tremendous influx of French vocabulary into everyday English that has persisted to this day. More than half of today's English words can be traced back to Norman French, particularly terms having to do with government and the law (noble, parliament, justice, court, marriage), the military (battle, navy, march, enemy, war, peace), religion (clergy, miracle, pray, saint), and food (sauce, soup, fry, mutton).

The influence of Norman French also led to changes in the sound of English and to simplification of the grammar, making it much less similar to German. This post-Norman period of English is what we call Middle English.

Written Middle English looks somewhat familiar to us, and we may be able to understand some of it without instruction, but this is partially due to spelling conventions changing more slowly than spoken sounds. Middle English saw the advent of the Great Vowel Shift, which is the name given to gradual changes in the pronunciation of English vowels that took place over hundreds of years. People were not consciously aware of this shift happening at the time, so they did not change the way words were written to reflect it, which is part of the reason that English spelling is so difficult.

Middle English was spoken during the Renaissance, when classical learning was rediscovered in Europe after the Dark Ages. This resulted in many borrowed words from the classical languages Greek and Latin, many of which remain as scientific and technical vocabulary, as well as the "three dollar words" that pepper the speech and writing of educated English-speakers today.

The conclusion of the Great Vowel Shift marks what we consider the beginning of Modern English. Our modern language, too, has continued its tendency to borrow words. Colonists in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia all brought new words into English, and in the information age, the ability to communicate with people worldwide has brought even more borrowings. English seems unlikely to lose its status as one of the most eager adopters of foreign words anytime soon.

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