More on English for Non-native speakers


My apologies if there are formatting issues.  At least on my system, the current Blogspot system
makes it utterly impossible to preview and edit entries.  So I have to go ahead and publish and
hope for the best.  I tried to reload the "Preview" a half dozen times, and it refused to show me
the preview.

In this entry, I'm going to talk about issues involving the history of English.
I'm hoping, circumstances allowing, that this will be the first entry of a series of posts on
this topic, although the series itself may require as few as two blog posts.

While learning any additional language as an adult has challenges in comparison to learning a
language as a child, some have argued that English is the most difficult to learn:  although some
submit Russian and Asian tonal languages for the honor of "most difficult to learn in adulthood."

There are reasons for this, in that English is not "a" language.

In this post, we are going to talk about the, so to speak, geneology of English.
We start in the years preceding 55 B.C.  At that time, what today is known as Great Britain was
occupied by citizens who spoke a combination of Celtic and Brythonic languages.

About 55 B.C., this area experienced the first of what over several centuries would be the first
of many invasions.  This was the Roman conquest.  As a result of this invasion, Latin would
become the primary language used in such places as schools and the homes of noblemen.  However,
there was also cross-fertilization so that Latin didn't fully supplant the earlier Celtic
languages but absorbed some of their properties of both grammar and vocabulary.

The next conquest came in the 5th century A.D.  At this time, three Germanic tribes who spoke
similar languages invaded the area.  These were the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes:  tribes who spoke
similar but not identical languages.  This brought about the rise of the language we now refer to
as "Old English."  This conquest again resulted in some grafting of the original Celtic language,
along with overlays of Latin, into the Germanic languages of the invading tribes.  However, for
the most part, this conquest forced the original Celtic languages out of modern day Britain
although they survived in associated areas such as what are modern day Wales and Scotland.

Old English is unreadable and incomprehensible when spoken to speakers of modern day English.
Old English bears much more relationship to old High German or to old Norse than it does to
modern day English.

However, about half the words in current day English language have their roots in Old English.

The next influence on the language was not a conquest or invasion, but the influx of the
Christian religion.  This occurred in the 6th century.  The result of this was the reassertion of
the influence of Latin.  Latin now became the language used in schools.  However, most of the
population did not school their children.  Few people in this historical epoch could read and
write [something true throughout most of Europe.]  Again, there was a layering of some vocabulary
as well as some elements of grammar onto the language now spoken throughout the area:  this time
overlayered on a language that had already come about as the result of influences of at least
four different languages.

During the 11th century A.D. we find additional influences by way of conquests of the time.  One
was the Norman conquest under William the Conqueror, which brought about a French influence on
the language.  The other involved Norse invasion.  My research on this topic has not confirmed
that, but I seem to recall from my undergraduate days that this was not one, but a series, of
invasions.  This circumstance brought in the influence of the North Germanic language of Old
Norse.

At this time, the language evolved from what we now regard as Old English to what we now regard
as several separate dialects of what we now regard as Middle English.  Most Middle English
dialects are unintelligible to speakers of Modern English.  One of the keystone English language
circumstances arose at this time:  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  This is the dialect which
developed into Modern English eventually.  While it is quite difficult and the odds are some loss
of meaning, it is possible for modern English speakers to read that work in the original Middle
English.  Indeed, I had an Honors Program seminar as an undergraduate in which we did precisely
that little thing.

At this juncture, there was a linguistic separation for a few centuries.  Working or "lower"
class folk spoke some dialect of 'English,' while the upper classes and some business class
citizens spoke French.

Again, there was an intermingling or grafting, and the English language grafted on many French
words during this time in the evolution of modern English.

Up until this stage in the development of the language, there was little standardization of any
of the elements of the language except for a certain degree of standardization in grammar not
throughout the various influences, but during the epochs between them.  Pronunciation, vocabulary.
and spelling all varied greatly during these centuries:  even across the region at the same
specific historical interval.

Starting around 1500, and bolstered by the invention of the printing press, standardization began
to occur.  At this time, materials that assisted in the learning of reading and writing the
language became more accessible to all but the poorest classes of citizenry.

The language became standardized based on the dialect used in London, which is where most of the
publishing houses were located.

This evolution epoch resulted in the development of what we now regard as early Modern English,
which for the most part has remained fairly stable in Great Britain from then until now.

However, for a post at another time, there did continue to be evolution in such instances as
settlement of other English-speaking locations such as what became the United States, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand -- as well as some other locations.

So, the so-called "bottom line" of this post, is that part of the difficulty for non-native,
adult learners of English is that they are not learning "a" language.  They are learning a
language with layers on layers of influence that results in as many exceptions as there are
rules.  This is difficult EVEN on native speakers who have any kind of cognitive dissonance.
But for adult learners as a second [or third, or fourth] language this geneology of English makes
it a very difficult language to learn.  And perhaps their best response is to recognize HOW
difficult, and the reasons, that this language is to learn.

Such a perspective minimizes frustration.



References:   [Inadvertently admitted at first]



http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language