BACHELOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION MAJOR IN ENGLISH

LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY N. EL-101

Republic of the Philippines

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Bayambang Campus
College of Teacher Education

Written Report in
EL 101- Language, Culture, and Society

Submitted to:
Ms. Jessica Ailen N. Pascua
Instructor

Submitted by:
Cardaño, Emmanuel Albert D.
Gruspe, Danielle Kiesha M.
Mones, Mike Russel H.
Santos, Lordette Anne P.
Versoza, Lyka Grace M.
(BSE-EL I-1)

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Lesson 4: Language and History

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between history and language is deeply intertwined, as language serves both
as a vehicle for recording historical events and as a dynamic element shaped by those events.
Historical occurrences such as migrations, conquests, and cultural exchanges profoundly influence
linguistic evolution, introducing new words and altering grammar and syntax. Conversely, languages
preserve and convey cultural heritage, oral traditions, and historical narratives, providing historians
with essential primary sources. Thus, the study of language offers critical insights into historical
processes, while historical contexts illuminate the development and transformation of languages,
reflecting the intricate interplay between human societies and their modes of communication.

MODULE LEARNING OUTCOMES

 Recall the definition of linguistics.

 Know the different noteworthy linguists in each timeline.
 Discuss the different contributions of various linguists in history
 Understand the historical development of language.

 Differentiate Language Evolution and the Evolution of language.

 Understand the different stages of evolution.

 Analyze the historical events and cultural shifts that influenced the development of the
English language during each of the specified periods;
 Evaluate the impact of major literary works from each period on the evolution of the English
language and its usage.
 Create a timeline illustrating the key milestones and transformations in the historical
development of English from the Middle English period to the present day.
 Describe what is the Language Family Tree
 Enumerate the branches of Proto-Indo-European Languages
 Recognize the connection between Proto-Germanic languages to the English Language
 Understand Grimm’s Law’s role in developing Proto-Germanic from Proto-Indo-European
through the study of consonant shifts;
 Evaluate the Great Vowel Shift’s impact on English long vowel pronunciation from Middle
English to Early Modern English; and
 Use visual aids like diagrams to understand the Great Vowel Shift’s changes in English
vowel pronunciation.

LEARNING CONTENTS

Timeline of Noteworthy Linguists

 Aristotle (382-322 BC)

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Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who made important contributions by systemizing

deductive logic and wrote on physical subjects. His philosophy had a long-lasting influence
on the development of all Western philosophical theories.
1. Language demythology
Language is an object of rational inquiry and a means of communicating thoughts
2. Rational Inquiry
‘Truth and falsity are properties of either thoughts or sentences
3. Aristotle Model of Communication
Considered the first model of communication focused on speaker and speech. It has
5 primary elements: Speaker, Speech, Occasion, Audience, and Effect.
 Robert Lowth (1710-1787)
Robert Lowth (27 November 1710 – 3 November 1787) was a Bishop of the Church of
England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks
of English grammar.
He was an English clergyman and grammarian -He was a Philologist 'more inclined to
melancholy than to mirth who believed that Hebrew was spoken in Paradise
1. His "A Short Introduction to English Grammar’ became a standard textbook, and his
name has become synonymous with prescriptive grammar.
2. He liberally illustrated his grammar rules with errors to be found in the English Bible
and Standard authors.
3. Lowth also distinguished between shall and will as the future auxiliary
4. He also championed English language study in school arguing that it facilitated the
acquisition of the classics as well as the concept of universal grammar
 William Jones (1746-1794)
William Jones was an English philologist and student of ancient India. He is particularly
known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European
languages. Having trained and practiced law, Jones combined his love of India with his
scholarship, producing significant publications on Hindu and Islamic law.
1. He is best known for his famous proposition that many languages sprang from a
common source.
2. He discovered the relatedness of the Indo-European and the founding of comparative
linguistics.
3. He founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta and he continued improving and
expanding his knowledge of Oriental languages, including Sanskrit
4. His essays cover subjects ranging from Islamic law, literature, music, botany and
geography, and he translated several historical and literary texts from several
languages.
 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist
whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in
the twentieth century. He is widely considered the "father" of twentieth-century linguistics,

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and his work laid the foundation for the approach known as structuralism in the broader field
of the social sciences.
1. He broke with the young grammarians by pointing the distinction between historical
linguistics and the state of language at any point in time. He was determined to
delimit and define the boundaries of language study.
2. The concept of a language system that had the most profound influence on
subsequent scholarship.
3. The distinction between langue and parole. Parole refers to the speech of an
individual person. Langue is the system that underlies all speech activity. Many refer
to Saussure’s theories as the starting point for structural linguistics.
 Daniel Jones (1881-1967)
A preeminent British phonetician of the 20th century who was born in London on 12
September 1881 Daniel Jones was a London-born British phonetician who studied under
Paul Passy, professor of phonetics at the École des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne
(University of Paris). He was head of the department of phonetics at University College
London.
1. Jones's early books included extremely influential surveys of English phonetics and
work on English intonation.
2. He also produced notable lexicographical work in the form of pronunciation
dictionaries.
3. He became the first Western linguist to use and promulgate the term- "phoneme"
4. Jones helped develop new alphabets for African languages, and suggested systems of
romanisation for Indian languages and Japanese. He also busied himself with support
for revised spelling for English through the Simplified Spelling Society.
 Noam Chomsky (1928- Present)
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public
intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism.
Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in
analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.
American-born linguist
• "A predisposition to learn language."
• "Human beings are pre-wired to learn language and in fact, are born with the basic rules
for language intact."
• Agreed that LANGUAGE ACQUISITION was mostly a learned process.
1. Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG)- in which he emphasizes the mental
capacity of generating sentences with the use of unconscious knowledge of language.
2. Universal Grammar (UG)- The theory of the innate biological component of the
language faculty. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on
what the grammar of a possible human language could be.
3. The human brain is ready made to quickly acquire language at specific stages in the
developmental process.
4. His unique philosophy of language has given linguistics a respectable place in the
wider sphere of epistemology.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE
(Evolutionary or Darwinian)
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According to Darwin

• Evolution - species coming and going through time, and while they exist, they change.

• Species Multiply - diversification; two separate species

• Common Descent - organisms descended from one, or several common ancestors

• Gradualism - incremental small changes within populations; not possible for new species to
be created suddenly

• Natural Selection - evolutionary change through variation between individuals. Some

variants provide the individual with extra survival probability

• Darwinism is a biological evolution theory developed by the English naturalist Charles

Darwin (1809-1882)

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist best known for his contributions
to evolution science. His theory that all species of life descended from common ancestors over time
is now widely accepted and regarded as a foundational concept in science. One of his books is the
"Origin of Species”

• Darwinian linguistics, also known as evolutionary linguistics, is a sociobiological approach to

the study of language. Linguistics is regarded as a subfield of evolutionary biology and evolutionary
psychology by evolutionary linguists.

Stages in Language Evolution

1. General increase in intelligence + complex mental abilities.

2. Smart progenitor

3. A sexually-selected attainment of the specific capacity for complex vocal control Courtship,
territoriality, emotions

4. Addition of meaning to the "songs", driven by, and fueled by an increase in intelligence Imitation
+ modification of natural sounds (sounds in nature, animals, human grunts, etc.) words -> syntax

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH

(Anglo-Saxon to Global English)

PRE-ROMAN/PRE-HISTORIC (55 B.C. – 410 A.D.)

 The island we know as England was occupied by a race of people called the Celts. One of the
tribes was called the Brythons or Britons (where we get the term Britain).
 They all spoke a variety of Celtic languages.

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 The Celts were Pagans, and their religion was known as "animism" a Latin word for "spirit."
Celts saw spirits everywhere
 Druids were their priests; their role was to go between the gods and the people.

Important Events during Roman Occupation

Julius Caesar began invasion/occupation in 55 B.C.
• 55 BC, the Roman invasion of Britain, of the U.K. So, you've heard of the Roman
Empire with Julius Caesar and all the other Caesars. The Romans invade Britain,
beginning 400 years of control over much of the island.
Occupation completed by Claudius in 1st cent. A.D.
• The Roman Empire spread in different directions, and Britain is one of the directions
they spread in.
Hadrian's Wall was built about 122 A.D.
• The Romans came to Britain, and stayed for a while, and built some nice buildings.
Then, they built a wall that goes across between Scotland and England, called
Hadrian's Wall.
Roman’s "leave" in 410 A.D. because Visigoths attack Rome
• The Romans left Britain around 400 A.D., leaving the Celtic Britons, the locals, who were
vulnerable.

Important Cultural and Historical Results of the Roman

Military—strong forces legion
• Pushed Celts into Wales and Ireland
• Prevented Vikings from raiding for several hundred years:
• Warren Hollister writes, "Rome's greatest gift to Britain was peace" (15).
Infrastructure
• Government (fell apart when they left)
• Walls, villas, public baths (some remains still exist)
Language and Writing
• Latin was official language
• Practice of recording history led to earliest English "literature" being documentary
Religion
• Christianity begins to take hold in England, especially after St. Augustine converts
King Aethelbert

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD (410-787 A.D.)

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th
Early 5 century

With the collapse of the empire, Romans withdraw from Britain. Britons are attacked by the Picts
and by Scots from Ireland. This allowed Germanic tribes to come in and settle. In fact, it happened
over a fairly long period of time, so it wasn't exactly an invasion.

Mid-5th century

Angles, Saxons, and other German settlers arrive in Britain to assist the Britons and claim
territory.

5th – 6th Century

Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) speaking West Germanic dialects settle most
of Britain. Celts retreat to distant areas of Britain: Ireland, Scotland, Wales.

Language Development
 The Anglo Saxons have a little time for the native Celtic language, preferring to use their
own tongue and its runic script.

 The language of Angles a West Germanic dialect was called Englisc from which the word
English derives, their new country they named Engle land or Englalond.

 An Anglo-Saxon runic inscription dated between 450 and 480 AD is the oldest known
sample of the English language.

Anglo Saxon Words (Origin)

 Cow (Old English Cū)

 Calf (Old English Cealf)
 Swine (Old English Swīn)
 Sheep (Old English Scēap)
 Hen (Old English Hen, Henn)
The Old English or Anglo-Saxon Period (500-1000)
Many of the key elements of the English language were defined by the invasion of the Celtic people
in Britain by speakers of West Germanic languages (mainly Angles, Saxons, and Jutes). (The Celtic
impact on English is mostly preserved in place names, such as London, Dover, Avon, and York.)
Over time, the languages of the numerous invaders combined, giving rise to what is now known as
"Old English."

Late 6th Century

In the 6th century, Saint Augustine came and started converting people to Christianity.
Æthelberht, the King of Kent, is baptized. He is the first English king to convert to Christianity. And
that meant bringing languages with him, like the Bible that was written in these different languages,
other books, books of learning. Latin came in and Greek as well came in, and Hebrew all came with
the Christianity, which spread around the whole country.

7th Century
Christian missionaries had the second Latin influence on Anglo Saxon English. The most readily
apparent influence that Latin had on Old English concerns the use of the L alphabet. Prior to the

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Christianization of England, what little writing there was, was written with runic letters. Not
surprisingly, Latin held the most pervasive influence on Old English in the area of vocabulary.

Nordic Fusion

The Vikings occupied much of Eastern England for a hundred years until being forced back into the
country's northeast by King Alfred the Great. They governed in what was then recognized as
Danelaw in the Northeast until the late 900s. Throughout the whole era, King Alfred employed the
English language to instill in the English a sense of national identity.

VIKING INVASION (793-900 A.D.)

Late 8th century
Scandinavians begin to settle in Britain and Ireland; Danes settle in parts of Ireland.

Early 9th century

Egbert of Wessex incorporates Cornwall into his kingdom and is recognized as overlord of the seven
kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons (the Heptarchy): England begins to emerge.

Mid-9th century
Danes raid England, occupy Northumbria, and establish a kingdom at York. Danish begins to
influence English.

Late 9th century

King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leads the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings,
translates Latin works into English, and establishes the writing of prose in English. He uses the
English language to foster a sense of national identity. England is divided into a kingdom ruled by
the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians.

10th century
By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect of Wessex became the official language of
England. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an angular
alphabet called Runic, a Germanic system of writing made using only straight lines. The
Latin alphabet was later brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries, and this has
remained the writing system of English, although the Englisc 33 rune futhark continues to be
used for esoteric and ritual purposes to this day.

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10th century
Many Scandinavian (or Old Norse) loanwords enter the language, including common words like
sister, desire, skin, and death.

1000
Approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf,
composed by an anonymous poet.

Early 11th century

The Danish king (Canute) rules over England and encourages the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture
and literature.

Late 11th century

Edward the Confessor, King of England who was raised in Normandy, names William, Duke of
Normandy, as his heir.

NORSE WORDS
Many English and Norse word combinations coexist in modern English, resulting in two terms with
similar or slightly distinct meanings, and it is known that English, Norwegians, Danes, and
Icelanders could speak with one another until the mid-11th century. Over 2000 new terminology are
added to the English language by these pirates and immigrants. Anger, discomfort, cake, death, egg,
freckle, humid, reindeer, silver, skirt, and smile are all Norse words.

NORMAN CONQUEST (1006)

Old English/Germanic Word Latin/French Word

Motherhood Maternity
Child Infant
Friendship Amity
Fight Battle
Freedom Liberty

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THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1100-1500)

 Middle English was a form of the English language spoken after the Norman Conquest until
the late 15th century. Following the Old English period, the English language saw numerous
changes and advancements.
 The Middle English period saw the breakdown of the inflectional system of Old English and
the expansion of vocabulary with many borrowings from French and Latin.
 The vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and spelling of Middle English changed
dramatically. Writing traditions shifted greatly over the Middle English period.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS:
1150- Approximate date of the earliest surviving texts in Middle English.

1171- Henry II declares himself overlord of Ireland, introducing Norman French and English to the
country. About this time the University of Oxford is founded.

1204- King John loses control of the Duchy of Normandy and other French lands; England is now
the only home of the Norman French/English.

1209- The University of Cambridge was formed by scholars from Oxford.

1215- King John signs the Magna Carta ("Great Charter"), a critical document in the long historical
process leading to the rule of constitutional law in the English-speaking world.

1258- King Henry III is forced to accept the Provisions of Oxford, which establish a Privy Council to
oversee the administration of the government. These documents, though annulled a few years later,
are generally regarded as England's first written constitution.

Late 13th century- Under Edward I, royal authority is consolidated in England and Wales. English
becomes the dominant language of all classes.

1362- The Statute of Pleading makes English the official language in England. Parliament opened
with its first speech delivered in English.

1399- At his coronation, King Henry IV becomes the first English monarch to deliver a speech in
English.

MID TO LATE 14th CENTURY (Chaucer and the Beginning of English Literature)
 The Hundred Years War between England and France leads to the loss of almost all of
England's French possessions. The Black Death kills roughly one-third of England's
population.
 Geoffrey Chaucer composes The Canterbury Tales in Middle English.
 Chaucer’s English is recognizable as the ancestor of Modern English, especially if we
modernize the spelling.
 Chaucer's work helped to put the dialect that was developing in the area around London on
the map, and establish it as the standard form for English, which became the basis of early
modern English later in the 15th century.
 English becomes the official language of the law courts and replaces Latin as the medium of
instruction at most schools.

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 Change was happening so quickly that different forms of the same words are used quite
inconsistently in different manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales.
 site, sighte, syth, sigh and cite - This shows that spelling had not yet been
standardized

BEGINNING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

 In 1384, John Wycliffe an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, bible translator,
reformer, Catholic priest, and University of Oxford seminary lecturer produced his English
translation of the Bible.
 The literary impact of the great English churchman and reformer, John Wycliffe, may be seen
in his magnificent rendition of the sacred Scriptures into the mother tongue. The King James
Version of the Bible has been the recognized form for so long the one around which all
literary association revolves that there is a danger of forgetting the significance and value of
Wycliffe's earlier work.
 His is the earliest English translation of the Book, and it has a great literary value, which
makes it significant in the literary evolution of the language.

 John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible got banned because it challenged Latin as the
language of God (it was seen as a revolution against the church). It led to some conflicts with
the church, resulting in the translation being banned.

Overall, the language had changed so much that in Chaucer's time, Old English would have
been very difficult to understand.

LATE 15th CENTURY

 The end of Middle English.
 The great William Caxton set up the first printing press in England at the end of the 15th
century and with its use the language began to take the first steps toward standardization.
 William Caxton brings to Westminster (from the Rhineland) the first printing press and
publishes Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Literacy rates increase significantly, and
printers begin to standardize English spelling. Many Greek and Latin texts were translated
into English.
 Caxton chose the East Midlands (London, Oxford, Cambridge) dialect to print works in.
This soon became the most prestigious form of English.
 The monk Galfridus Grammaticus (also known as Geoffrey the Grammarian) publishes
Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae, the first English-to-Latin wordbook.

THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD (1500 TO THE PRESENT)

 EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD (1500-1800)

 Distinctions are commonly drawn between the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and Late
Modern English (1800 to the present).
 The early modern English period coincides with the ascendancy of Henry the VIII to the
throne in 1509 the end of the early modern English period is marked by the completion of the
great vowel shift and the beginning of the scientific age.

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 At around 1700 most influential with regard to early modern English were the works of
William Shakespeare, Shakespeare is credited with creating a huge number of English
words and phrases, and his plays are extremely influential to this day.
 From Shakespeare, we get words like assassination, cold-blooded, manager, uncomfortable,
and many more. Whether you know it or not, you're probably quoting Shakespeare on a daily
basis. For this reason, early modern English is often alternatively referred to as
Shakespearean English.

 During the period of Modern English, British exploration, colonization, and overseas trade
hastened the acquisition of loanwords from countless other languages and fostered the
development of new varieties of English (World English), each with its own nuances of
vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Since the middle of the 20th century, the expansion
of North American business and media around the world has led to the emergence of Global
English as a lingua franca.

THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

 A major factor separating Middle English from Modern English: The Great Vowel Shift.
 The important event that helped to shape Modern English was the Great Vowel Shift, which
was in the 15th century. Now this was essentially a change in English pronunciation.
 Vowels such as A, E, I, O, and U can be said in different ways. Sometimes people say A as
ay and sometimes say A as ah. Well, it didn't used to be like that. There was a major shift in
the way that vowels and many other sounds in English were pronounced.
 A word like knave, K-N-A-V-E, would've been pronounced something like ke-nah-veh, ke-
nah-veh. Now we have a silent K, so we don't say ke-nah, we say n, know, knowledge,
knave, knives. We say just n. And we also have long vowels like ay instead of ah, and we
have a silent E, which makes no sound, but changes the short A to a long A.
 After the Great Vowel Shift, the pronunciation would have been much closer to today's,
therefore, while we are more or less able to read Chaucer today, Chaucer's own pronunciation
would be almost possible to understand for the modern ear.

STANDARDIZATION
 The process called standardization started to happen basically around 1500 there were five
major dialects in English: Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands, Southern, and Kentish,
so five different ways of speaking English in England meaning a huge variety in the way
words are spelled.

There was a HUGE variety in spelling:

 church: 30 different spellings
 people: 22 different spellings
 receive: 45 different spellings
 she: 60 different spellings
 though: 500 different spellings

 It was difficult when you printed books to find forms that could be understood throughout the
country over time.

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 The spelling's that were printed tended to become fixed and as they became fixed, they
spread and so they became the standard. That's what this process of standardization is about
finding a fixed certain way of spelling words.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
 The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. The Golden Age of English
literature was sort of high points in terms of creativity and this was in the 16 to the 18th
th

century.
 It was the time of William Shakespeare who almost single-handedly changed the English
language forever; he had a huge vocabulary. He invented over 1700 of our common words by
changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before
used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.
 The words Shakespeare coined, hyperlinked to the play and scene from which it comes.
 When the word appears in multiple plays, the link will take you to the play in which it first
appears. From him we get words like assassination, cold-blooded, manager, uncomfortable,
alligator, critic, downstairs, gossip, jaded, lonely, rant, worthless, and many more.

PROGRESS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE DURING 1700s

 The Daily Courant, the first regular daily English newspaper, was published in London in
1702.
 Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist and theologian, proposes the establishment of an
English Academy to govern English use and "ascertain" the language in 1712.
 Nathaniel Bailey published his Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language, a groundbreaking work in English lexicography, in 1721.
 Samuel Johnson's two-volume Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755.

 LATE MODERN ENGLISH (1800-PRESENT)

 Pronunciation, spelling, and grammar remain close to unchanged. What marks the transition
to Late Modern English is changes in vocabulary.

Two factors are important here:

 Industrial Revolution
 British Empire

 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
 In this era, influential English grammarians (Joseph Priestly, Robert Lowth, James
Buchanan, John Ash, Thomas Sheridan, George Campbell, William Ward, and Lindley
Murray) created rule books based on prescribed grammar ideas, which became popular.
 As new inventions, science, and industries grow, language must adapt to accommodate new
concepts.
 The USA also pushed the dominance of English as it became an industrial nation in its own
right. New technologies, sciences, ideas, new words.

 Science: oxygen, nuclear, vaccine, bacteria.

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 Technology: locomotive, engine, electricity, telephone from Larin or created from Latin or
roots.

 BRITISH EMPIRE
 After 1700, many new words entered the English language. This happened because English
spread globally as Britain's colonies grew. As the British Empire expanded, its language
mixed with others.
 By 1921, after World War 1, the Empire covered about 25% of Earth's surface. During this
time, English added various foreign words to its vocabulary. From the 16th Century, the
number of English speakers increased from 5-7 million to 50 times more, with 80% living
outside Britain. People believed spreading English language and culture was beneficial for
"undeveloped" countries.
 This also resulted in the creation of pidgin languages, reduced languages used to
communicate between peoples with no language in common, for instance the African slaves
and English-speaking sailors and traders. For example, Late Modern English contains many
words borrowed from Hindi and other Indian languages, such as ‘pajamas’, ‘bungalow’ and
‘shampoo’.

NEW WORLD
 The United States, after gaining independence from Britain in 1783, had a widespread impact
on the world mainly during the Late Modern period. English people started colonizing North
America as early as 1600, with Jamestown, Virginia established in 1607. While French,
Spanish, and Dutch also colonized parts of the New World, English immigrants, like the
Pilgrim Fathers (and others who sooned followed them), wanted to stay and build a life,
preserving their culture, religion, and language. This contributed to the survival and growth
of the English language in North America.

 Many Native American words entered the English language through the process of
colonization in America. Early settlers, who were mostly conservative Puritans, used local
language mainly for terms related to native animals and food. The original indigenous terms
were difficult to write in English and often changed beyond recognition in various situations.
For example, the word "squash" comes from "quonterquash" or "asquutasquash,"
depending on the region, and "raccoon" from "raugraughcun" or "rahaugcum."

 Although immigration to America was not limited to English speakers, over 30 million
people from different parts of the world came during the second half of the 19th century.
From 1901 and 1905, when immigration was at its peak, newcomers often faced dislike or
mockery. To fit in better, they tried to blend in and speak as uniformly as possible. This,
along with advancements in transportation and communication, led to fewer and less distinct
dialects in the United States compared to Britain's smaller territory. However, regional
variations still exist within certain states.

BRITAIN’S OTHER COLONIES

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 Britain established its first prison colony in Sydney, Australia, in 1788, less than twenty
years after James Cook's original landfall.
 Immigrants mainly came from London and Ireland, resulting in a unique, egalitarian dialect
with some Aboriginal terms.
 European settlement in New Zealand began in the 1790s, with a formal colony established in
1840.
 British colonization in South Africa started in 1820, attracting half a million English-
speaking immigrants.
 English trade in West Africa dates back to the 15th century, leading to the development of
English-based pidgins and creoles.
 British commerce in East Africa began in the 16th century, with organized involvement
starting in the 1850s.
 The British East India Company opened its first trade outpost in India in 1612, leading to the
influence of English on local languages.
 American English impact can still be seen in the Philippines, as it was an American colony
for the first part of the 20th century.

20TH CENTURY
 In the late 19th century, the United States became the world's fastest-growing economy,
surpassing the United Kingdom. This led to America carrying forward the economic
momentum of the British Industrial Revolution into the twentieth century. The influence of
the United States in economic, military, media, and society aspects has helped English
become the most significant global language.

 In the late 20th century, various marginalized groups advocated for political correctness and
inclusivity, leading to a reevaluation of mainstream terminology. This included questioning
and proposing alternatives for terms perceived as sexist, racist, or derogatory. Some
derogatory labels, such as gay, queer, trans, queen, dyke, bitch, nigger, etc., have been
rebranded and reclaimed (also known as reappropriation) by the same marginalized
segments of society.

 The development of electronic and computer technology in the latter part of the 20th century,
largely driven by the United States, contributed to the creation of numerous new English
terms (e.g., byte, cyberspace, software, hacker, laptop, hard-drive, database, online, hi-
tech, microchip, etc.). Science fiction literature also added to the mainstream lexicon
including terms like robotics, hyperspace, warp-speed, cyberpunk, droids, nanotech,
nanobots, and so on.

 Later, the Internet gave rise to (the word Internet, like audio, video, and quantum, is derived
from Latin) generated its own set of neologisms (e.g. online, noob, flamer, spam, phishing,
lapping, whitelist, download, blog, vlog, blogosphere, emoticons, podcast, hashtag, Wi-Fi,
bitcoin, selfie, and so on). Furthermore, a slew of abbreviations, contractions, and
shorthand’s for usage in email, social networking, and mobile messaging has emerged,
particularly among the young, including the reasonably well-known lol, ttfn, btw, omg, wtf,
please, thanks, ur, l8ter, and so on. The argument over whether texting is harming or
improving the English language continues.

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1900s
 In a very short period of time since 1900, a substantial number of vocabulary terms have been
added to English. The majority of these terms are linked to science and technology, and they
are derived from Greek and Latin origins. A century marked by international conflicts,
technical advancements, and globalization.

English in the 21st Century

 The language evolves and changes and flourishes at a rapid pace, including new jargons,
slangs, technologies, toys, meals, and gadgets. In the contemporary digital age, English is
experiencing a new linguistic high in terms of word acquisition, as it did previously during
Shakespeare's time, the Industrial Revolution, and the height of the British Empire.
According to one recent estimate, it is growing by more than 8,500 words a year (other
estimates are significantly higher), compared to an estimated annual rise of roughly 1,000
words at the turn of the twentieth century, and has nearly doubled in size in the previous
century.
 The language continues to grow, expanding to incorporate new jargons, slangs, technologies,
toys, foods, and gadgets. It is in this century that we get doodlebugs, gas masks, gobstoppers,
miniskirts and rockers; we enjoy dim sum, cappuccino, chicken tikka masala and pizzerias;
we talk weirdos; and we are addicted to websites, cybercafes and compact discs.
 The 21st century has seen a focus on inclusivity and diversity, leading to the adoption of
more gender-neutral language and the reevaluation of certain terms to promote equality and
respect. The widespread use of social media platforms, texting, and online communication
has also led to the popularization of new slang and abbreviations.
 The world is always developing in a more advanced direction. In this 21st century,
developments in the world do not only occur in one or two countries but for all countries in
the world. The presence of globalization causes the connection of one country to another.
Relations between countries become easier and allow a lot of cooperation between several
countries. In working together, of course, there is a need for a tool to facilitate the cooperation
process to occur, one of which is the common language. Of course, the languages of different
countries are different, therefore it is necessary to have a language that can be understood by people
from different countries in the world. And this language is English. The ability to speak English is
one of the most important things to have in the 21st century.

The English Language Family

A family is a social group of people who stay together under the same roof in a society. It comprises
two or more adults like parents and grandparents and young children who are bound in a relationship
by birth or blood. They are collectively known as family members. In English language there is also
a family called a language family it is a group of languages related through descent from a common
ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family.

Certain languages are related to each other. Just as a person’s family consists of people who share
common ancestry, related languages also come from shared lineages. A language family is a group
of different languages that all descend from a particular common language. The one language that
generated those other languages in its family is known as a protolanguage.

Some languages do not come from a protolanguage. These are known as language isolates,
and include languages, such as Basque, spoken by some in southwestern Europe, and Pirahã, spoken

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by the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon. However, most languages spoken throughout the
world belong to a language family.
For example, languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and French, all
belong to the language family known as “romance languages.” The romance languages evolved from
Latin, the language used in ancient Rome. The Latin word Romanicus, meaning “Roman,” was later
shortened to “Romance,” which is where the language family name came from. Latin itself,
however, evolved from the Indo-European language, an ancient protolanguage, which is the origin of
most of the languages spoken in modern Europe and parts of Asia.
Other branches of the Indo-European language family have evolved into completely
different groups. One example is the Germanic languages. Linguists generally describe Germanic
languages in three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic.

While the languages in the West Germanic and North Germanic groups are still spoken, those of the
East Germanic group are now extinct.

Another important language family is the Sino-Tibetan family. It is the world’s second
largest language family, with more than one billion speakers of its hundreds of different languages. It
includes both the Sinetic languages (known as the Chinese dialects) and the Tibeto-Burman
languages (such as Tibetan and Burmese). Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in
this family. Like many Sino-Tibetan languages, Mandarin Chinese is tonal. In tonal languages
(which also include Thai and Hmong), the vocal pitch the speaker uses when saying a word helps
determine its meaning.

Although the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language families two of the largest in the
world, linguists have categorized more than one hundred language families around the globe. As
linguists continue to study language and its origins, our understanding of language families will
continue to evolve.

INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE FAMILY

Branches of the Indo-European Language Family

There are 10 main branches of the Indo-European language family, including Anatolian,
Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Greek, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic and Tocharian. Each
one covers different areas in the world. However, some of these branches are already extinct. Today,
the largest among the Indo-European language family branch is Indo-Iranian. Some of the language
branches are also composed of a few sub-branches, which are detailed below.
1. Anatolian

The Anatolian branch was dominant in Turkey’s Asian portion. It was also dominant is some
parts of northern Syria. Among the languages belonging to this branch, the most famous was Hittite.
At the Hattusas site, which was the capital of the Hittite Kingdom, several Hittite finds were
discovered in 1906 CE. In the remains of a royal archive, various fragments and 10,000 cuneiform
tablets from mid to late second millennium BCE were found. Examples of the language families that
were found were Lydian, Lycian, Palaic and Luvian. These are the oldest surviving examples of the
Indo-European language from 1800 BCE. However, all the languages of the Anatolian branch are
already extinct.

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2. Indo-Iranian

There are two sub-branches of the Indo-Iranian branch – Iranian and Indic. The languages
belonging to this branch are commonly used in Iran, Pakistan and India, and areas close to these
countries. Some of the languages have traveled to some parts along the Black Sea up to Western
China.

Sanskrit, which is still used today as a ceremonial language, belongs to the Indic sub-branch.
Its meaning is ”refined” or ”perfected.” The oldest variety of these languages is called Vedic
Sanskrit, which was used in the Vedas. These are Ancient India’s collection of religious texts and
hymns. The speakers of Indic came from Central Asia in 1500 BCE and entered the Indian
subcontinent. A record of the language migration is found in hymn 1.131 of the Rig-Veda.

One language that is part of the Iranian sub-branch is Avestan. The oldest preserved language
of this sub-branch is Old Avestan, also called Gathic Avestan, which is considered as Sanskrit’s
sister. Old Avestan was used in the religious texts of early Zoroastrian. Old Persian is another part of
the Iranian sub-branch. From the late 6th century BCE, it was the language used in the Achaemenid
dynasty’s royal inscriptions.

Today, many of the languages in the Indic sub-branch are spoken in Pakistan and India, like
Bengali, Punjabi and Hindi-Urdu. In Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, Kurdish, Pashto and
Farsi or modern Persian are commonly spoken.
3. Greek

Greek is a collection of different dialects. It has over 3,000 years of written history. It is
dominant in the Aegean Sea and surrounding areas, the Peloponnese peninsula and the Balkans’
southern end.

One of the earliest evidence was Mycenaean, which was used by the Mycenaean civilization
and was inscribed on ceramic vessels and clay tablets found in Crete. The language used syllabic
script due to the absence of an alphabetic written system.

The very first alphabetic inscription of the Greek language appeared around the early part
of the 8th century BCE, which was around the time the Odyssey and the Iliad, written by Homer,
were produced in the present from. Greek was composed of several dialects, but Athens was
culturally supreme at that time. Thus, Attic, which was a dialect of Athens, became the standard
during 480-323 BCE. The Attic dialect was used by several authors including Plato, Euripides,
Aristotle and Aristophanes.
4. Italic

Dominant in the Italian peninsula was Italic, although the Italic people were not from Italy.
They initially came from another location and crossed the Alps to enter Italy. Latin, which is a part
of this branch of Indo-European language family, used to be spoken by pastoral tribes that inhabited
the middle of the Italian peninsula.

Rome boosted the growth of Latin. Several Roman authors such as Marcus Aurelius, Pliny,
Seneca, Cicero, and Ovid used Classical Latin in their works. Former languages belonging to this
branch, which are all extinct, are Oscan, South Picene, Umbrian, Sabellic and Faliscan. The
surviving languages belonging to this branch are the Romance languages: Italian, French,
Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian and Spanish.

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5. Celtic

The Celtic branch has Insular Celtic and Continental Celtic as sub-branches. Several Celtic-
speaking tribes spread across areas that comprise what we know today as Western Czech Republic,
Austria and Southern Germany in 600 BCE. They also traveled to other places such as the British
Isles, Spain, Belgium and France before proceeding to the Balkans, Northern Italy and further. By
the early part of the 1st century BCE they were dominating a large part of Europe. Julius Caesar
conquered Ancient France (Gaul) in 50 BCE followed by the conquest of Britain by Emperor
Claudius. Continental Celtic eventually died, leaving Insular Celtic to dominate. Gaulish was a main
language of Continental Celtic.

The British Isles became a development ground for Insular Celtic, which flourished in
Ireland, as the country was geographically isolated. The remaining Celtic languages still in use today
that came from Insular Celtic are Breton, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic.
6. Germanic

The Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family has three sub-branches – West
Germanic (Old High German, Old Saxon and Old English) and North Germanic (Old Norse, the
grandfather of all the modern Scandinavian language). The third one is East Germanic, which is now
extinct.

The Germanic-speaking people inhabited the areas along Southern Scandinavia up to the
North Baltic Sea coast. They came into with the Balto-Slavic tribes living in the east and the Finnic
speakers residing in the north. The interaction increased the Germanic language lexicon, as it
borrowed from the two other tribes.

Most Vikings spoke several variants of Old Norse and various Nordic pre-Christian
Germanic folklore and mythology were written in an Old Norse dialect called Old Icelandic.

The modern survivors from the West Germanic sub-branch are Yiddish, Frisian, Dutch and
English. On the North Germanic sub-branch, the modern languages include Swedish, Norwegian,
Icelandic, Faroese and Danish.
7. Armenian

Where the Armenian-speaking people originated has not been established yet. Many
linguistic historians think that they, together with the Phrygians came from the Balkans and entered
Anatolia around the latter part of the 2nd millennium BCE. The Armenian settled near Lake Van
(present day Turkey) that was part of Urartu.

It was invaded by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE, and the Armenians had control of
the area before the coming of the Medes. During the reign of the Achaemenid Empire, the area
became the governing region of Persia. The Persian language in turn has a very strong impact on the
Armenian language, which caused many scholars to think that Armenian was part of the Iranian
group.

8. Tocharian

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The Tocharian-speaking people resided in Western China’s Taklamakan Desert but their
history is unknown. Popular Buddhist works that were translations of Tocharian texts were the only
evidence of their existence. The translated works were from the 6th to 8th centuries CE although
none of them described the Tocharians. Two different languages, called Tocharian A and Tocharian
B were discovered. Remnants of Tocharian A were found in places where evidence of Tocharian B
texts were also found, suggesting that Tocharian A became extinct and only kept alive for poetic or
religious purposes while Tocharian B was still used as an administrative language.

The weaving patterns and style of the clothes of well-preserved mummies found in the
Taklamakan Desert were similar to the cloths woven by Central Europe’s Hallstatt culture. Genetic
and physical analyses showed resemblances of the mummies with people living in Western Eurasia.

This branch of Indo-European language family no longer exists.

9. Balto-Slavic

The Balto-Slavic branch has Baltic and Slavic for its sub-branches. In the late Bronze Age,
the Balts occupied areas surrounding Western Poland up to the Ural Mountains and later had
settlements in some areas near the Baltic Sea. The Balts located in the northern part of their territory
had contact with the Finnic tribes. The language of the Finnic tribes was not included in the Indo-
European language family but they borrowed a number of words from the Baltic language. However,
the Balts’ territory was considerably reduced by the migrations of Slavic and Gothic tribes.

On the other hand, the Slavs were residing close to the Western Polish borders to the
Dnieper River leading to Belarus. They increased their territory in the 6th century CE through the
Balkans and Greece. Some of them moved further east close to the Iranian territory resulting in the
Slavs borrowing many words into their own lexicon. When they went westward and encountered the
Germanic tribes, they again borrowed heavily from them.

But today, only Lithuanian and Latvian survived among the Baltic languages. Russian,
Slovak, Serbian, Polish, Croatian, Czech, and Bulgarian are the modern survivors of the Slavic
languages.

10. Albanian

Among the branches of the Indo-European language family that has a written form is
Albanian. The exact origin is still subject to speculation. One group thinks that Albanian came from
Illyrian but since information about it is scare, things cannot be confirmed or denied. Another group
believes Albanian is from Thracian, which is already extinct.

Modern Albanian is the official language in Albania and in other parts of the former
Yugoslavia and in small parts of the Republic of Morocco, Greece and Southern Italy.

The Indo-European languages are a family of languages with the greatest number of speakers,
spoken in most of Europe, America and in much of western and southern Asia. Just as languages

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such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian are all descended from Latin, Indo-European
languages are believed to derive from a single hypothetical language known as Proto-Indo-European,
which is no longer spoken (Violatti, 2014).

The Proto-Indo-European language have been spoken more than 5,000 years ago in the steppe
regions north of the Black Sea known as Ukraine (Britannica Encyclopedia, n.d.) and neighboring
regions in the Caucasus and Southern Russia, then spread to most of the rest of Europe and later
down into India (Asia). Carried by migrating tribes to Europe and Asia, these developed over time
into separate languages. The earliest possible end of Proto-Indo-European linguistic unity is believed
to be around 3400 BCE (Violatti, 2014).

Since the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language did not develop a writing system, we have
no physical evidence of it. The science of linguistics has been trying to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-
European language using several methods and, although an accurate reconstruction of it seems
impossible, we have today a general picture of what Proto-Indo-European speakers had in common,
both linguistically and culturally. In addition to the use of comparative methods, there are studies
based on the comparison of myths, laws, and social institutions.

The main branches are Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (including Indo-Aryan and Iranian), Greek
(Hellenic), Italic, Germanic, Armenian, Celtic, Albanian, the extinct Tocharian languages, Balto-
Slavic (Britannica Encyclopedia, n.d., Violatti, 2014).

Indo-European Historical Linguistics

In ancient times it was noticed that some languages presented striking similarities: Greek and Latin
are a well-known example. Centuries later, during and after the Renaissance, the close similarities
between more languages were also noted, and it was understood that certain groups of languages
were related, such as Icelandic and English, and also the Romance languages. Despite all these
observations, the science of linguistics did not develop much further until the end of 18th century
CE. During the British colonial expansion into India, a British orientalist and jurist named Sir
William Jones became familiar with the Sanskrit language. Jones was also knowledgeable in Greek
and Latin and was surprised by the similarities between these three languages.

Jones hypothesized an ancestral language that long ago gave rise to languages in these groups. This
hypothetical, but strongly evidenced language, is called Proto-Indo-European. The idea that Greek,
Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian were derived from a common source was revolutionary at that time. This
was a turning point in the history of linguistics. Rather than the “daughter” of Greek, Latin was for
the first time understood as the “sister” of Greek. By becoming familiar with Sanskrit, a language
geographically far removed from Greek and Latin, and realizing that chance was an insufficient
explanation for the similarities between these languages, Sir William Jones presented a new insight
which triggered the development of modern linguistics (Violatti, 2014).

Reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European Language

In the 1850s, scholars began to reconstruct sounds and words of the presumed ancestral language
from which all Indo-European languages are descended. This reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European
is necessarily partial. The actual language was a normal language with tens of thousands of

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vocabulary items and a full grammar, but all that can be reconstructed of it is a few thousand words
and some basic grammatical properties (Kremmer, n.d.).

Since that time, enormous amounts of work have been done on the structure and vocabulary. The
ancient Indo-European languages preserved in writing, namely Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, are
inflected languages. The inflected languages can be used to reconstruct ancient inflections, and it is
commonly accepted that Proto-Indo-European had a number of classes of nouns and a case system
slightly more elaborate than that of Latin and Greek.

As PIE is not directly attested, all PIE sounds and words are reconstructed, using the comparative
method. The comparative method in historical linguistics is concerned with the reconstruction of an
earlier language or earlier state of a language on the basis of a comparison of related words and
expressions in different languages or dialects derived from it. The comparative method was
developed during the 19th century for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and was
subsequently applied to the study of other language families. The standard convention is to mark
reconstructed (and therefore more or less hypothetical) forms with an asterisk, e.g. *wodr 'water',
*k^wo:n 'dog', *trejes 'three (masculine)', etc. Many of the words in the modern Indo-European
languages are derived from such "protowords" via regular sound change.

One example of such regular sound change is Grimm's Law, discovered about 1820 by Jakob
Grimm, of fairy-tale fame. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic
stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other Indo-European languages. As
formulated nowadays, Grimm's Law describes the development of inherited Proto-Indo-European
(PIE) stops in Proto-Germanic (PGmc, the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-
European family). It consists of three parts:

Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives:

PIE *p, *t, *k > PGmc *f, *th, *x

Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless:

PIE *b, *d, *g > PGmc *p, *t, *k

Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lose their aspiration and change into plain
voiced stops:

PIE *bh, *d h, *gh> PGmc *b, *d, *g

For example:

Proto-Indo-European > Proto- Modern English

Germanic

*petro- > *fethra- 'thin'

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*tnwi- > *thunni- 'eat'

*ed- > *et- 'sit'

*wodr- > *watr- 'water'

*medhu > *medu- 'mead'

*bher > *ber- 'carry, bear'

PROTO-GERMANIC LANGUAGE
Germanic languages are spoken by close to 470 million people in many parts of the world, but
mainly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All modern Germanic languages derive from a
common ancestor traditionally referred to as Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic, also referred to as
Primitive Germanic, Common Germanic, or UrGermanic (Chamonikolasová, 2014), believed to
have broken off from Proto-Indo-European languages some time before 500 B.C (MustGo, n.d.).

The Proto-Germanic is a branch of IE to which English belongs. In older literature, it is called

Teutonic. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that speaker of Common Germanic lived
in northern Europe in the first half of the first millennium BC, primarily in southern Scandinavia,
and along the coasts of the North and Baltic seas in an area stretching from the Netherlands in the
west to the Vistula River in the east, in what is now Poland (Fortson, n.d.).

This Germanic proto language, which was reconstructed by the comparative method, is not attested
by any surviving texts. The material on which it is based is found in the attested dialects that
developed from it. The only written records available are the runic Vimose inscriptions from around
200 AD found in Denmark, which represent an early stage of Proto-Norse or Late Proto-Germanic.
(Comrie 1987) Proto-Germanic is assumed to have developed between about 500 BC and the
beginning of the Common Era. (Ringe 2006, p. 67). It came after the First Germanic Sound Shift,
which was probably contemporary with the Nordic Bronze Age. The period between the end of
Proto-Indo-European (i.e. probably after 3 500 BC) and the beginning of Proto-Germanic (500 BC)
is referred to as Pre-Proto-Germanic period. However, Pre-Proto-Germanic is sometimes included
under the wider meaning of Proto-Germanic, and the notion of the Germanic parent language is used
to refer to both stages. (Chamonikolasová, 2014)

A yet earlier stage, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European (PIE), includes means to account for and
also to explain the reconstruction. That is to say, the beginnings of PGmc are assumed to overlap
with the late stages of PIE, and data from later developments in Germanic dialects compared with
evidence from PIE provides the basis for a grammar of PGmc comparable to those for languages
spoken today, if not so detailed.

Branches of Proto-Germanic languages

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Like every language spoken over a considerable geographic area, Proto-Germanic presumably
consisted of a number of geographic varieties or dialects that over time developed in different ways
into the different early and modern Germanic languages. Scholars often divide the Germanic
languages into three groups: (Britannica)

LIST OF ALL GERMANIC LANGUAGES

East Germanic languages

The East Germanic language branch consists of the extinct Germanic languages. Crimean Gothic
survived the longest and was used for communication in parts of Crimea up until the late 18th
century.

West Germanic languages

The West Germanic language branch is the largest of the three and also includes the three most
widely spoken Germanic languages, which are English, German and Dutch. West Germanic
languages are spoken by nearly 500 million people natively.

North Germanic languages

The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. These North Germanic
languages are often called the “Nordic” or “Scandinavian” languages because they are spoken as a
native language throughout Scandinavia by around 20 million people.
Sound Change

Proto-Germanic had many key distinguishing features that help to explain differences between
modern Germanic languages and the Indo-European languages that they are cognate with such as the
change of consonants characterized by Grimm's Law, by morphological innovations such as the
introduction of the dental preterite and the n- declension of adjectives, by syntactic innovations such
as the large number of modal auxiliaries, and by numerous additions to its lexicon.
All Germanic languages have undergone some common sound changes:

· First Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm’s Law)

You probably know of Jacob Grimm as the author of fairy tales. But he was also one of the great
linguists of the 19th century. He found evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages
in the phenomenon known as the First Germanic Sound Shift (also known as Grimm’s law ), which
set the Germanic branch apart from the other branches of the Indo-European family. The Germanic
language was created by the completion of the first Germanic sound shift (also known as the
"consonant shift" or "Grimm's law"), this was a development that slowly changed the Indo-European
words used by the Northern Europeans into new words, which would eventually separate the Indo-
European (Pre-Germanic) language used in Northern Europe from other Indo-European languages,
thus creating the Proto-Germanic language, another typical characteristic of Germanic languages is

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the fixed stress on the root syllable. This shift occurred before the 7th century when records started
to be kept. The Germanic sound shift "Germanized" the Indo-European words into new words, just
like many languages do today with loanwords, for instance the Latin word "castellum" has been
borrowed and adapted by many modern languages, in English it eventually became "castle" because
that word was easier to pronounce for the English, in Dutch it became "kasteel", this is just an
example of how words are being adapted to the pronunciation of the new language they are adopted
in.
The following list gives an indication of some of the changes that occurred during the transfer from
Indo-European words to their Proto-Germanic adaptations, to make things easier for the common
reader difficult linguistical symbols were removed in the following examples because they only
make things more complicated, instead the letter that corresponds the closest with the sound it
represents was used:

The Germanic sound shift:

Indo-European Indo-European Germanic Germanic Modern English

example: sound: sound: example: translation:

peku P - F fehu cattle

teuta T - Th (Þ) þeudo people

kornu K - H hurna horn

kwid Kw - Hw hwat what

hebol B - P apala / aplu apple

pod D - T fotuz foot

geus G - K kuz choose

gwena Gw - Kw kweno woman

bheidh Bh - B bitiz bite

dheub Dh - D (Ð) deupaz deep

ghosti Gh - G gastiz guest

gwhnt GwH - Gw gunþjo battle

According to Grimm’s law, the shift occurred when /p, t, k/ in the classical Indo-European
languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) became/ f, t, h/ in Germanic languages..

· Second Germanic consonant shift (High German consonant shift)

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The Second consonant shift took place probably beginning between the 3rd-5th centuries AD and
was almost complete before the earliest written records in the High German language were made in
the 9th century. It occurred in High German (spoken in mountainous areas) which gave rise to
today’s Standard German.
While most Germanic languages have only had the first shift, the modern German ("German"
and not "Germanic") language has undergone a second shift.
The second sound shift divided the western Germanic language in two groups; Low German (also
known as Nether German, Niederdeutsch, or Plattdeutsch) and High German (Hochdeutsch), the
words "low" and "high" point to the geographical altitude differences between the two language
groups.
Two other words for High German and Low German used to be Deutsch (southern "high" German)
and Dietsch (northern "low" German and Dutch), the modern English word "Dutch" is also derived
from the word Dietsch but nowadays the word is no longer used because the Dutch nazi's abused it in
world war 2, the words "Deutsch" and "Dietsch" are both derived from Proto-Germanic "Þeudo"
(folk, tribe).
During the second sound shift, the language of the western Germanic tribes inhabiting
southern Germany was influenced by the neighboring Celts and Romans, this influences caused the
western Germanic language to divide in two groups; the Low German language in the north that
remained almost the same, and the High German language in the south that had adopted many Latin
words and was spoken with a somewhat Celtic dialect, this two groups are separated by the so called
"Benrather line" that runs from Aachen to Frankfurt a/d. Oder and divides Germany in two parts.
The language that originated from this new southern dialect was Old High German, which eventually
became modern German and is now mainly spoken in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and
Liechtenstein. The Low German languages are Dutch, English, Frisian, and the dialects spoken in
northern Germany, these languages have developed from the dialects that were spoken in the coastal
areas of western Germania. A good example of the differences between Low German and High
German can be seen when we compare Dutch (a Low German language) to German (a High German
language). Here are the changes from Low German to High German and some Dutch and German
examples.

Change: Dutch German: English:

:

P > PF appel apfel apple

T > (T)S zetten setzen to set/place

K > CH (or CK) maken machen to make

· At the beginning of a word or syllable, after a consonant, or in germination.

· After a vowel:

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Change: Dutch: German: English:

P > F (or FF) open offen open

T > SS (ß) water wasser water

K > CH ik ich I

Here are other examples: classical Indo-European /k, t, p/ became /h, th, f/ in English and /h, d, f/ in
German. For example, Latin frater > English brother and German Bruder.
classical Indo-European /g, d, b/ became /k, t, p/ in English and /kh, ts, f/ in German. For example,
Latin decem > English ten and German zehn.
TENTS

Changes in the English Language

GRIMM’S LAW

Grimm’s Law also known as the first Germanic Sound Shift is a set of sound laws
describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic
some time in the 1st millennium BC.

Grimm’s Law is a set of rules dictating how a handful of Germanic letters differ from their
Indo-European cognates. Roshan and Tom Mcarthur summarize the rules within this law as follows:
“Grimm’s Law holds that unvoiced IE stops became Germanic unvoiced continuants, that voiced IE
stops became Germanic unvoiced stops, and that unvoiced IE continuants became Germanic voiced
stops,” (Mcarthur and Mcarthur 2005).

It was discovered by the Danish scholar Rasmus Rask (1818) and formulated by Jacob
Grimm (1819). You probably know of Jacob Grimm as one of the authors of fairy tales. But he was
also one of the great linguists of the 19th century. He found evidence for the unity of all the modern
Germanic languages in the phenomenon known as the First Germanic Sound Shift (also known as
Grimm’s law), which set the Germanic branch apart from the other branches of the Indo-European
family.

The Germanic language was created by the completion of the first Germanic sound shift (also
known as the "consonant shift" or "Grimm's law"), this was a development that slowly changed the
Indo-European words used by the Northern Europeans into new words, which would eventually
separate the Indo-European (Pre-Germanic) language used in Northern Europe from other Indo-
European languages, thus creating the Proto-Germanic language, another typical characteristic of
Germanic languages is the fixed stress on the root syllable.

This shift occurred before the 7th century when records started to be kept. The Germanic
sound shift "Germanized" the Indo-European words into new words, just like many languages do
today with loanwords, for instance the Latin word "castellum" has been borrowed and adapted by
many modern languages, in English it eventually became "castle" because that word was easier to
pronounce for the English, in Dutch it became "kasteel", this is just an example of how words are
being adapted to the pronunciation of the new language they are adopted in.

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Grimm’s law is useful in the systematic study and categorization of consonant shifts that
occurred between Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Germanic and eventually in English.
Grimm’s law operates in three parts forming consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift.

The phases are usually described as follows:

• Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiced aspirated stops mutate into voiced stops or
fricatives (asallophones).
• Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiced stops mutate into voiceless stops.
• Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiceless stops mutate into voiceless fricatives.

1. IE aspirated stops > voiced stops in Germanic

bh > b Sanskrit: bhrātr English: brother
dh > d Sanskrit: mádhu English: mead
gh > g Sanskrit: khén English: goose

2. IE voiced stops > voiceless stops in Germanic

b>p Latin: baculum English: peg
d>t Latin: dent- English: teeth
g>k Latin: gel- English: cool

3. IE voiceless plosives > voiceless fricatives in Germanic

p>f Latin: pater English: father
t> th (ө) Latin: tenuis English: thin
k> h Latin: cord- English: heart

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The following list gives an indication of some of the changes that occurred during the transfer from
Indo-European words to their Proto-Germanic adaptations, to make things easier for the common
reader difficult linguistical symbols were removed in the following examples because they only
make things more complicated, instead the letter that corresponds the closest with the sound it
represents was used:

The Germanic sound shift:

Indo-European Indo-European Germanic Germanic Modern English
example: sound: sound: example: translation:
peku P - F fehu cattle
teuta T - Th (Þ) þeudo people
kornu K - H hurna horn
kwid Kw - Hw hwat what
hebol B - P apala / aplu apple
pod D - T fotuz foot
geus G - K kuz choose
gwena Gw - Kw kweno woman
bheidh Bh - B bitiz bite
dheub Dh - D (Ð) deupaz deep
ghosti Gh - G gastiz guest
gwhnt GwH - Gw gunþjo battle

According to Grimm’s law, the shift occurred when /p, t, k/ in the classical Indo-European
languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) became/ f, t, h/ in Germanic languages..

GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

Did you know that the word “food” used to be pronounced like /fəʊd/ (fode)? Over time, the
English language has evolved into the English we are familiar with today. Not only has this included
changes in vocabulary and spelling but also changes in the pronunciation of words. In particular, the
long vowel sounds in English went through a shift known as the Great Vowel Shift.

The Great Vowel Shift - a term coined by linguist Otto Jespersen in his book A Modern
English Grammar on Historical Principles (1909) - refers to changes in the pronunciation of vowel
sounds in the English language. In particular, the long vowel sounds "shifted" upwards. This meant
that the sounds produced in a certain place in the mouth were then pronounced higher up in the
mouth.

History of the Great Vowel Shift

It is important to understand the history of the Great Vowel Shift and why it took place, as this may
help you to understand why we spell and pronounce words in a certain way today.

The Great Vowel Shift marked the transition from Middle English (the type of English spoken by
Chaucer) to Early Modern English (the type of English spoken by Shakespeare). Middle English was

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used from around the 1100s to the 1450s. Most consonants in Middle English sound the same as the
consonants we use today. However, the vowels were one feature that differed, which affected the
pronunciation of words. For example:

 “Meet” was pronounced like “mate.”

 “House” was pronounced like “hoos.”
 “Wife” was pronounced like “weef.”

Types of Vowels in English

When the Great Vowel Shift took place, the long vowels were mostly affected. Before taking a look
at some examples, let’s first look at the different types of vowel sounds used in English. Vowels can
be divided into two categories; monophthongs and diphthongs.

Monophthongs

Monophthongs refer to single vowel sounds within a syllable. These are also known as “pure
vowels.” There are 12 monophthongs in English:

Diphthongs

Diphthongs refer to two vowel sounds in a syllable. There are eight diphthongs in English:

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Vowel sounds can either be pronounced as short vowels or long vowels. As the names suggest, short
vowels are shorter sounds, and long vowels are longer sounds. During the Great Vowel Shift, the
short vowels were not affected.

Long Vowels
The long vowel sounds in English are:

/eɪ/ - i.e., the “a” is “cake.”

/iː/ - i.e., the “ee” in “meet.”
/aɪ/ - i.e., the “I” in “side.”
/əʊ/ - i.e., the “o” in “phone.”
/uː/ - i.e., the “oo” in “soon.”
/ɑː/ - i.e., the “a” in “car.”
/ɔː/ - i.e., the “oor” in “poor.”
/ɪə/ - i.e., the “ere” in “here.”
/ɜː/ - i.e., the “ir” in “bird.”
/ʊə/ - i.e., the “ure” in “mature”
/eǝ/ - i.e., the “air” in “hair.”

During the Great Vowel Shift, the pronunciation of long vowels changed.

Great Vowel Shift Diagram

Below is a diagram of the Great Vowel Shift to help you visualize the changes. This may look
confusing, but don’t worry! It is firstly important to know that each vowel sound is made in a
particular part of the mouth, and the shape of the mouth can change depending on which vowel
sound is made. When the Great Vowel Shift happened, these vowel sounds changed position in the
mouth and were pronounced higher up.

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The Great Vowel Shift Examples

Here’s a handy chart containing example words that highlight the great vowel shift:

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LEARNING ACTIVITIES

I. True of False. Write TRUE if the answer is correct and FALSE if the answer is incorrect.

1. Aristotle model is considered as the first model of communication and was proposed before
300 B.C.
2. One of Charles Darwin’s books is the “Origin of Species”
3. Scientific linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language.
4. William Jones was discovered the relatedness of the Indo-European and the founding of
comparative linguistics.
5. One of the stages of Language Evolution is the general decrease of intelligence.

II. Identification: Identify what is being asked in each number

1. What marks the transition to Late Modern English is changes in ________.

2. This plague killed roughly one-third of England's population.
3. Early modern English is often alternatively referred to as____________.
4. He set up the first printing press in England at the end of the 15th century.
5. He produced his own English translation of the Bible in 1384.
6. What are the two factors that are important in the development of English in Late Modern
English?
7. He is credited with creating a huge number of English words and phrases, and his plays are
extremely influential to this day.
8. A major factor separating Middle English from Modern English.
9. It is the first regular daily English newspaper that was published in London in 1702.
10. It is a form of the English language spoken after the Norman conquest until the late 15th
century.

III. Multiple Choice: Choose the letter of the correct answer. Write your answers in your
answer sheets.

1. It is a language that generated those other languages in its family.

a. Language Family
b. Proto Isolates
c. Protolanguage
d. Language Isolates
2. What kind of language is Pirahã of the Brazilian Amazon?
a. Language Family
b. Proto Isolates
c. Protolanguage
d. Language Isolates
3. How many main branches of the Indo European language family?
a. 10
b. 11
c. 9
d. 8

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4. What kind of Indo-European Language is Hittite?

a. Anatolian
b. Indo-Iranian
c. Armenian
d. Greek
5. A collection of different dialects. It has over 3,000 years of written history. It is dominant in
the Aegean Sea and surrounding areas, the Peloponnese peninsula and the Balkans’ southern
end.

a. Anatolian
b. Indo-Iranian
c. Armenian
d. Greek
6. A branch of the Indo-European language family that has a written form. The exact origin is still
subject to speculation.
a. Armenian
b. Balto-Slavic
c. Albanian
d. Tocharian
7. The languages belonging to this branch are commonly used in Iran, Pakistan and India, and
areas close to these countries.
a. Armenian
b. Indo-Iranian
c. Albanian
d. Tocharian
8. The weaving patterns and style of the clothes of well-preserved mummies found in the
Taklamakan Desert were similar to the cloths woven by Central Europe’s Hallstatt culture.
Genetic and physical analyses showed resemblances of the mummies with people living in
Western Eurasia.
a. Armenian
b. Indo-Iranian
c. Albanian
d. Tocharian
9. What Germanic language did English came from?
a. West Germanic Language
b. North Germanic Language
c. East Germanic Langue
10. Refers to a sound shift/ change that divided the western Germanic branch into another two
groups.
a. First Germanic Sound Shift
b. Second Germanic Consonant Shift

11. He is a Danish linguist that proposed the Great Vowel Shift.

a. Otto Jesporsen
b. Otto Jesperson
c. Otoo Jespersen
d. Otto Jespersen

12. It refers to changes in the pronunciation of vowel sounds in the English language.

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a. Grimm’s Law
b. First Germanic Sound Shift
c. Great Vowel Shift
d. Second Germanic Sound Shift

13. During the Great Vowel Shift, the short vowels were not affected.
a. True
b. False
c. Both A and B
d. None of the above

14. It is also known as the first Germanic Sound Shift is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-
Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic some time in the
1st millennium BC.
a. Grimm’s Law
b. First Germanic Sound Shift
c. Great Vowel Shift
d. Second Germanic Sound Shift

15. During the Great Vowel Shift, the pronunciation of long vowels changed.
a. True
b. False
c. Both A and B
d. None of the above

SUMMARY
 Historical linguistics is the scientific study of how languages change over time, with the goal
of understanding language relationships and reconstructing earlier stages of language
development.
 The Aristotle communication model is the golden rule for excelling in public speaking,
seminars, and lectures where the sender makes his point clear by designing an impressive
content, passing on the message to the second part, and they simply respond accordingly.
 Darwin defined evolution as "descent with modification," the idea that species change over
time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor. The mechanism that Darwin
proposed for evolution is natural selection.
 The conquest of the Celtic people in Britain by speakers of West Germanic dialects
eventually defined many of the basic aspects of the English language, which is also known as
the Anglo-Saxon Period.
 The Celtic impact on English is mostly preserved in place names: London, Dover, Avon, and
York. The languages of the numerous invaders mingled throughout time, giving rise to what
is now known as "Old English."
 Early Old English (7th to 10th Century) — This period has some of the oldest documented
evidence of the English language, highlighting important authors and poets such as Cynewulf
and Aldhelm, who were leading characters in the area of Anglo-Saxon literature.
 Late Old English (10th to 11th century) - the final phase of the Old English language, brought
about by the Norman conquest of England. This period culminated in the English language's
subsequent progression towards Early Middle English.

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 The Middle English Period witnessed the disintegration of the Old English inflectional
system and the increase of vocabulary, which included many borrowings from French and
Latin.
 Early Middle English, during this era that the English language, and more especially, English
grammar, began to evolve, with a focus on syntax. The definition of syntax is "the
arrangement of words and phrases to make well-formed sentences in a language," and we
discover that while the British government and its rich inhabitants anglicized the language,
the language was not anglicized.
 In the 14th century, the dominant language was English with Norman and French influences.
 Late Middle English a separate dialect (known as the East-Midlands) began to evolve around
the London region around the 14th century.
 During the period of Modern English, British exploration, colonization, and overseas trade
accelerated the acquisition of loanwords from a plethora of other languages and aided in the
development of new varieties of English (World English), each with its own nuances of
vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
 The languages of different countries are different, therefore it is necessary to have a language
that can be understood by people from different countries in the world. And this language is
English. The ability to speak English is one of the most important things to have in the 21st
century.
 A language family is a group of different languages that all descend from a particular
common language. The one language that generated those other languages in its family is
known as a protolanguage.
 Some languages do not come from a protolanguage. These are known as language isolates,
and include languages, such as Basque, spoken by some in southwestern Europe, and Pirahã,
spoken by the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon. However, most languages spoken
throughout the world belong to a language family.
 There are 10 main branches of the Indo European language family, including Anatolian,
Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Greek, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic and
Tocharian.
1. Anatolian- Examples of the language families that were found were Hittite, Lydian,
Lycian, Palaic and Luvian. These are the oldest surviving examples of the Indo
European language from 1800 BCE. However, all the languages of the Anatolian
branch are already extinct.
2. Indo-Iranian- The languages belonging to this branch are commonly used in Iran,
Pakistan and India, and areas close to these countries. Some of the languages have
traveled to some parts along the Black Sea up to Western China.
3. Armenian- The Persian language in turn has a very strong impact on the Armenian
language, which caused many scholars to think that Armenian was part of the Iranian
group.
4. Balto-Slavic- Only Lithuanian and Latvian survived among the Baltic languages.
Russian, Slovak, Serbian, Polish, Croatian, Czech and Bulgarian are the modern
survivors of the Slavic languages.
5. Celtic- Several Celtic-speaking tribes spread across areas that comprise what we
know today as Western Czech Republic, Austria and Southern Germany in 600 BCE.
6. Greek- Greek is a collection of different dialects. It has over 3,000 years of written
history. It is dominant in the Aegean Sea and surrounding areas, the Peloponnese
peninsula and the Balkans’ southern end.
7. Germanic- The Germanic-speaking people inhabited the areas along Southern
Scandinavia up to the North Baltic Sea coast. They came into with the Balto-Slavic

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tribes living in the east and the Finnic speakers residing in the north. The interaction
increased the Germanic language lexicon, as it borrowed from the two other tribes.
8. Italic- Latin, which is a part of this branch of Indo European language family, used to
be spoken by pastoral tribes that inhabited the middle of the Italian peninsula.
9. Tocharian- The Tocharian-speaking people resided in Western China’s Taklamakan
Desert but their history is unknown.
10. Albanian- Among the branches of the Indo European language family that has a
written form is Albanian.
 The family tree shows that English is spread to all the countries of all the continents. It is not
only due to the British colonialism and the American imperialism, but also its flexibility and
adaptability. So English has got the status global language.
 Indo-European languages are believed to derive from a single hypothetical language known
as Proto-Indo-European, which is no longer spoken (Violatti, 2014).The Proto-Indo-
European language have been spoken more than 5,000 years ago in Ukraine and neighboring
regions in the Caucasus and Southern Russia. It has no physical evidence since the speakers
of the Proto-Indo-European language did not develop a writing system. Sir William Jones
hypothesized Proto-Indo-European.
 As PIE sounds and words are reconstructed, using the comparative method. The comparative
method in historical linguistics is concerned with the reconstruction of an earlier language.
Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages are derived from such
"protowords" via regular sound change. One example of such regular sound change is
Grimm's Law.
 All modern Germanic languages derive from a common ancestor traditionally referred to as
Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic is also referred to as Primitive Germanic, Common
Germanic, or UrGermanic. Evidence suggests that speaker of Common Germanic lived in
northern Europe primarily in southern Scandinavia, and along the coasts of the North and
Baltic seas
 Germanic proto language is not attested by any surviving texts. The material on which it is
based is found in the attested dialects that developed from it. The only written records
available are the runic Vimose inscriptions.
 Scholars often divide the Germanic languages into three groups: East Germanic, West
Germanic, and North Germanic.
 All Germanic languages have undergone some common sound changes: First Germanic
Sound Shift (Grimm's Law) and Second Germanic consonant shift.
 The First Germanic Sound Shift set the Germanic branch apart from the other branches of the
Indo-European family. The Germanic language was created by the completion of the first
Germanic sound shift that changed the Indo-European words used by the Northern Europeans
into new words.
 The Second Germanic Consonant Shift divided the western Germanic Language in two
groups: the Low German language in the north that remained almost the same, and the High
German language in the south that had adopted many Latin words.
 Grimm’s Law, also known as the first Germanic Sound Shift, describes the development of
Proto-Indo-European stop consonants into Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC.
 Formulated by Jacob Grimm, Grimm’s Law states that unvoiced Indo-European stops
became Germanic unvoiced continuants, voiced stops became unvoiced stops, and unvoiced
continuants became voiced stops.
 The completion of the first Germanic sound shift created the Germanic language and
separated it from other Indo-European languages, leading to the creation of Proto-Germanic.
 The Great Vowel Shift, coined by Otto Jespersen, refers to changes in the pronunciation of
long vowel sounds in English, shifting them upwards in the mouth.

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 The transition from Middle English to Early Modern English marked by the Great Vowel
Shift changed the pronunciation of words, such as “meet” pronounced as “mate” and “house”
pronounced as “hoos.”
 Vowels in English are categorized as monophthongs and diphthongs, with the Great Vowel
Shift affecting mostly long vowels.
 A diagram of the Great Vowel Shift visually represents the changes in vowel sounds,
showing how they shifted higher up in the mouth.

REFERENCES

Ferdinand de Saussure. newworldencyclopedia. (n.d.-a).

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ferdinand_de_Saussure
Ubod, K. J. (2023, April 17). Historical timeline of noteworthy linguists. prezi.com.
https://prezi.com/p/ok7qc3yyfcu8/historical-timeline-of-noteworthy-linguists/
Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, May 29). Robert Lowth. Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lowth
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LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY N. EL-101

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ANSWER KEY

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 39

 BACHELOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION MAJOR IN ENGLISH

LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY N. EL-101

I. True or False
1. True
2. True
3. False
4. True
5. False

II. Identification
1. Vocabulary
2. The Black Death
3. Shakespearean English
4. William Caxton
5. John Wycliffe
6. Industrial Revolution and British Empire
7. William Shakespeare
8. The Great Vowel Shift
9. The Daily Courant
10. Middle English

III. Multiple choice

1. C
2. D
3. A
4. A
5. D
6. C
7. B
8. D
9. A
10. B
11. D
12. C
13. A
14. A
15. A

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY 40