: Read the following text carefully and
then answer the question.
What are the origins of the English Language?
The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too
neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old
English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern
English. The earliest period begins with the migration of
certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in
the fifth century A.D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues
until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By
that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking
invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of
the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066
had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon,
and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies
the grammar of Old English had begun to break down.
The period of Middle English extends roughly from the
twelfth century through the fifteenth. The influence of
French (and Latin, often by way of French) upon the
lexicon continued throughout this period, the loss of
some inflections and the reduction of others (often to
a final unstressed vowel spelled -e) accelerated, and
many changes took place within the phonological and
grammatical systems of the language.
The period of Modern English extends from the sixteenth
century to our own day. The early part of this period saw
the completion of a revolution in the phonology of English
that had begun in late Middle English and that effectively
redistributed the occurrence of the vowel phonemes to
something approximating their present pattern.
Other important early developments include the stabilizing
effect on spelling of the printing press and the beginning
of the direct influence of Latin and, to a lesser extent,
Greek on the lexicon. Later, as English came into contact
with other cultures around the world and distinctive
dialects of English developed in the many areas which
Britain had colonized, numerous other languages made
small but interesting contributions to our word-stock.
The historical aspect of English really encompasses
more than the three stages of development just under
consideration. English has what might be called a
prehistory as well. As we have seen, our language did
not simply spring into existence; it was brought from
the Continent by Germanic tribes who had no form of
writing and hence left no records. Philologists know that
they must have spoken a dialect of a language that can
be called West Germanic and that other dialects of this
unknown language must have included the ancestors of
such languages as German, Dutch, Low German, and
Frisian. They know this because of certain systematic
similarities which these languages share with each other
but do not share with, say, Danish. However, they have
had somehow to reconstruct what that language was like
in its lexicon, phonology, grammar, and semantics as best
they can through sophisticated techniques of comparison
developed chiefly during the last century.
Similarly, because ancient and modern languages
like Old Norse and Gothic or Icelandic and Norwegian
have points in common with Old English and Old High
German or Dutch and English that they do not share with
French or Russian, it is clear that there was an earlier
unrecorded language that can be called simply Germanic
and that must be reconstructed in the same way.
Still earlier, Germanic was just a dialect (the ancestors of
Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were three other such dialects)
of a language conventionally designated Indo-European,
and thus English is just one relatively young member of
an ancient family of languages whose descendants cover
a fair portion of the globe.
Available on: <http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/ history.htm> (Edited).