Anglický jazyk a jeho vývoj

About 380 million people use English as their first language and approximately the same number of people use it as their second language.
English is an official language in almost 60 states, the most commonly spoken language in the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, or Canada.
English is the third most spoken native language in the world (after Mandarin and Spanish).
English prevails in science, medicine and technology, IT, business, air and sea travel, music, or film industry.

The Celts (6th cent. BC) can be considered as the original inhabitants.
Varieties of Celtic language can be found in Welsh, Scottish, and Irish Gaelic.
Later, the Celts were driven out by the Romans (55 BC) who introduced Latin.

In the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes started to invade England.
They brought inflected Germanic language; it was different from Modern English; had many endings and free word order.

Many everyday expressions have remained from that time; most words have similar equivalents in German: water, father, house, work, have.

The Scandinavians influenced English in the 8th century and introduced words like sky, skin, they, their, egg, skull, trust, leg, window.

In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England and defeated the Saxon King Harold at the battle of Hastings.
The Normans introduced French and it began to be spoken by the upper-class.
Ordinary people kept on speaking Old English.
That explains the existence of two different expressions for one thing: pig – pork, cow – beef, sheep – mutton.

Expressions for animals come from English because it was the language of common people. They kept cattle but they couldn’t afford them.
Expressions for types of meat come from French, because it was the language of the upper-class. They could afford the meat.

French was the language of the government, law, and literature.
Latin was the language of the church.
English was the language of common people.
English was changing into a language with a strict word order (subject – verb – object), and thousands of new (mainly French) words enriched the English vocabulary.

The best-known writer from this period is Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales.

Caxton contributed a lot to the spreading of the English language – he translated a lot of works into English and almost all of the books he printed were in English.
In 1348, John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English.
In 1450, the discovery of the printing press occurred.

Early Modern English (15th – 17th century), Modern English (18th century – present)

It is the time of Shakespeare who invented a large number of new words, such as cold-blooded, fashionable or uncomfortable.
In 1755, Samuel Johnson produced A Dictionary of the English Language – an English-English dictionary that contained explanations of almost 43,000 words.

English belongs to the Indo-European language family, which is divided into smaller groups like the Germanic, the Slavic, and the Celtic.
English is Germanic.

SE – Standard English or the Queen’s English – speakers are expected to use the correct spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
There are also dialects – varieties of language that differ in pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary from each other.
Accents describe only pronunciation, so an Englishman may speak SE but with a regional accent.

The Standard English accent is called RP – Received Pronunciation. Surveys suggest that only 2-3% of the UK population use RP.
For the Scottish accent, it is characteristic with its rolling “r”.
An Irishman is easy to detect by an American-sounding accent and pronunciation of “th” as “t”.

Slang – it contains special vocabulary and is used by special groups of people (thieves).

The Cockney Rhyming Slang is a coded rhyming language invented by Cockneys in the 19th century so they could speak in front of the Police without being understood. It uses phrases that rhyme with a certain word that you want to say.