Chapter 1: The English Language
The focus of this book is the English language. The word 'English' has a number of widely different meanings. For instance, it describes the people from a particular part of Great Britain. It also refers to a particular language, the English language, and is used very broadly in this sense. English is Germanic in origin but roughly half of its words derive from contacts with French and Latin. English has expanded from having a few speakers in one area to having many speakers in many geographic areas. Chapter 1 introduces where the term English comes from, the different sources of its vocabulary, how English differes from other languages, and what some of the internal and external changes have been.
Useful Links
A BBC time line
Weird Words and Doublespeak
Michael Quinion offers up a list of strange words at his website.
Thought Experiments
Brithenig is a look at what the language of the British Isles might have looked like if Latin had replaced the native Celtic languages, but had in turn been influenced by them.
Other helpful Websites
Raymond Hickey at the University of Duisberg-Essen has a HELwebsite.
This website has OE, ME, Corpora and more.
And a site with texts in various I-E languages.
And a ppt for this chapter.
Background for title image provided courtesy of Tom Murphy VII and used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. All other images are believed to be public domain.
Neither Elly van Gelderen, Tim Gades, nor ASU is responsible in any way for the information provided by the external links on this page, and make no claims as to its applicability or accuracy.