The History of the English Language by Sammy Stein

As all the articles, this is a formal, educative, and informative article that talks about the history of English. It has no specific audience, but to mention someone it can be for children, schools, adults, etc.

In this article Sammy Stein states that English is not a pure language as most of the people think. Many words come from Latin, French and some other languages. It has had many changes thanks to all the invasions England received by different cultures.

The most important change in this language is thanks to the Vikings when they went to England and those words are the ones that we use every day. After them, Romans were the second ones to invade. They brought new words from Latin origins. Thanks to that, Latin came to be the dominant language in educated people, including schools. Those who were not well educated, they still used their own dialect that they learned day by day. After that Spanish rulers came, and words from them started joining the English language. Those words became English words.

Even though English language has many words from other languages, it is still unique because those words with the time changed in their spelling, pronunciation, meanings, etc.

This beautiful language is the second most common language of the world, science mandarin Chinese is the most common. Even though in all parts of the world, you will find sign in English science is a universal language. Thanks to this English has become to be the most important language in the world of business because it helps you communicate with people of the entire world.

English history is continuing growing and words are used daily thanks to the advanced of technology. There is never a time in which dictionaries will stop growing because each day there are boning new word that in time there are considered daily used word and are put in them.

If you want to see physically the advances and changes of all the words you can compare a dictionary of 20 years ago and one actual.

Thanks to my experience of life, I agree with the author in some of the thinks mention. It is amazing how English language is mixed with different languages such as Spanish. Me as a person who learned English, I get confuse with some words in Spanish and English, since some of them are very similar, but there are other is which they do not have any similarity between them as “casa – house”. I think English has been changing in time because not only of the antecedents, also because of how people as teenagers start changing the meaning of words. 

The History of the English Language by Laura Howard

This is a formal and educated article is about the history of English language. It can be for children who want to know about how English was developing throughout the years, and also to any person who is interested on that.  The purpose is to show how English was influenced by many cultures and how it stated to grow.

In this article by Laura Howard said that English language is the most famous language in the entire world. It is famous not only because it is the native language of many parts of the world, also because there are approximately 418 million people that learn English.

English language started around the year 449 AD. It is part of the Indo European language of the Anglo Frisian group. This group consist of all the Germanic languages, and are grouped this way because of relationship between them. There are several categories in which the history of English language is divided to understand how it came to be and continue developing. The categories are:

Old English period: The Old English was first spoken by Angles, Saxon and Jutes which were the ones that invaded Britain in the 5th Century AD. The most influential were the Anglo Saxons, since the word England came from them. The disadvantage of this period is that English did not have a lot of Vocabulary. For that reason many word of English come from the Celtic language, because the Saxon borrowed those word from that language. After that, Vikings invaded Britain and introduced word from their own.

Middle English period: To continue with this period, Normans were the ones that made an enormous change in the language. They started mixing English with formal French. But in the 14^th Century, English was the dominant language, of course with many influenced words of French language. The language of this period was used for many poems in those times. This period came to an end in the year 1204, when English came another time to be the dominant language.

Early modern English: This period is at the time of the Renaissance, in which Greeks and Latin words went to English language. Also it is the time in which idioms came to know thanks to famous writers as Shakespeare. There was a great change in the language pronunciation. Thanks to the new inventions, such as printing press, there was more equality in English.

English today: Industrialization and technology are the most important factor in the new English. Thanks to that there are more new, sophisticated, and formal words than before. They came to word more sophisticated and formal that there were before.

There are many influence bye different cultures in the process of the origin of this beautiful language. It has something of many languages, but that does not mean it is not an original language. Thanks to all those influential cultures, we can have this language as it is.

I totally agree with the author point of view in which she told that old English is not understanding for now day’s English speakers, since it is very different in words, pronunciation, grammar, etc. I think English will continue developing as technology continues growing.

The History of the English Language by Lucy Rucker

This is an educated article that is about the history of English language. It can be for children who want to know about how English was developing throughout the years, and also to any person who is interested on that.  The purpose is to show how English was divided into several stages because of the influenced of many cultures and how it stated to grow.

In this article written by Lucy Rucker we can understand the origin and the changes of the English language as a complex language. If we look in the fifth century we find the origin of the language brought by the Germanic tribes to Britain, but this was only the beginning because after a while it also introduced what we now know as Latin, brought by the Vikings. This language can be divided in three stages:

Old English: this type is still spoken, but in another way, it is more difficult to understand, but over the years has been modified in some aspects.

Middle English: over time how to speak and write was changing, while some words failed to have a meaning, other were corrected and many others were put on a completely different meaning and this gave way to what is the current language

Modern English: this is English we know today and that was created after all a process

But it is important to know that although they have made progress and has developed this language still remains complicated, as mentioned at the beginning. The reason for this is that the way English is spoken depends on the region, city, etc. where you are. After all, you can’t imagine how it will be English in a future. As a language, English, is constantly changing and increasingly in the future we will have new words, new meanings among many other things.

My opinion based on my experiences is that the English at the time that I live is something very important to know, is essential to ensure at some point a good future career. It is so true that English learners, as me get frustrated when talking to someone in English and do not understand them because of the way they talk.

A very ironic part of the text is when it's mentioned that there may even be people who completely dominate the English but living in different regions or countries, maybe they can't understand words, expression or something.

I agree that, depending on the place, will have new words, different expressions and even somewhere that means something in another can be quite the opposite. This also happens with the Spanish language, for example, in Monterrey we use words that in many states of the republic do not even have meaning.

Maybe we could not observe the specific change that had the English, or the steps that were mentioned, but it is obvious that with the passage of time, new cultures, technology, customs, language had to also modifying or upgrading.

In conclusion the English language is constantly evolving and is not legible, it just changes from generation to generation, some more pronounced than others but in the end it changes. Its origin is long and everyone takes the kind of English agree to the place where they are.

What should we learn, English as a lingua franca or “formal” English?

I think that both learning English as a lingua franca or formal English are quite important. First of all learning it asa second language can facilitate your life in many ways, or not only facilitating it for you, but also can help you have a better future in working area, or when traveling to other places in the world. But that doesn't mean that we should not learn it as a formal way. Maybe people can thing formality is not so important, but if you do not learn it correctly, you can have difficulties when communicating with others since the other person would not understand what you are saying if you are talking improperly.