The formation of English language Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. Ludwig Wittgenstein

The curriculum of every linguistic institute in our country includes the history of the language studied. This is justified both theoretically and practically.

As a social phenomenon, language is inseparable from society, since the people constituting the given society speak the given language. Every major event in the history of a certain people is reflected in its language. Some of these events affect the development of the language to such an extent that they may serve as some kind of landmarks in its history. Without the knowledge of such historical events it would be impossible to understand many facts in the language.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominated.

Proto-English

English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire, most of the Germanic-inhabited area remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military, and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri, Batavi, Menapiiand Frisii served in Britain under Roman command.

These dialects had most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of grammatical inflection. Vocabulary came largely from the core Germanic stock, although due to the Germanic peoples' extensive contacts with the Roman world, the settlers' languages already included a number of loanwords from Latin. Vinum Wine

Old English

The dialects spoken by the Germanic settlers developed into a language that would come to be called Anglo-Saxon, or now more commonly Old English.

Old English was first written using a runic script called the futhorc, but this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 9th century. The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf, composed by an unknown poet. Hwæt! Wē Gār-Denain geārdagum,þēodcyningaþrym gefrūnon,hū ðā æþelingasellen fremedon.Oft Scyld Scēfingsceaþena þrēatum,monegum mǣgþum,meodosetla oftēah,egsode eorlas.Syððan ǣrest wearðfēasceaft funden,hē þæs frōfre gebād,wēox under wolcnum,weorðmyndum þāh,oðþæt him ǣghwylcþāra ymbsittendraofer hronrādehȳran scolde,gomban gyldan.Þæt wæs gōd cyning! Which, as translated by Francis Barton Gummere, reads: Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he!

Scandinavian influence

The Scandinavians, or Norsemen, spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent.

Norse borrowings include many very common words, such as anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same,  skill, sky, take, window, and even the pronoun they. Norse influence is also believed to have reinforced the adoption of the plural copular verb form are rather than alternative

Middle English

Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the end of the 15th century.

The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, both in vocabulary and pronunciation, and in grammar. Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were levelled to -e. The older plural noun marker -en (retained in a few cases such as children and oxen) largely gave way to -s, and grammatical gender was discarded.

Early Modern English

The language was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardizing effect of printing, which also tended to regularize capitalization. As a result, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as "accent" and "dialect".  In 1604, the first English dictionary was published, the Table Alphabeticall.

Modern English

The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile, grammar texts by Lowth, Murray, Priestly, and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further.

The British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth's land surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries. British English and North American English, the two major varieties of the language, are together spoken by 400 million people. The total number of English speakers worldwide may exceed one billion.

Old English (c. 900 AD) Middle English (c. 1400 AD) Early Modern English (c. 1600 AD) Modern English Modern spelling Examples ɑː ɔː oː oʊ  əʊ (UK) oa, oe oak, boat, whole uː oo, -o moon, food, do əu or ɔu aʊ ou mouse, out, loud ɑ, æ, æɑ a æ man, sat, aː ɛː eɪ ae name, bake e, eo e ɛ help, tell eː iː ea, ee speak, meat