INTRODUCTION

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from Englaland and their language was called Englisc - from which the words England and English are derived.

Old English (450-1100 AD)

Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old English.

The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around 1100.

Middle English (1100-1500)

In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today.

Modern English

Early Modern English (1500-1800)

 

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world. This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)

 

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.
 

Varieties of English

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance of cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology (including the Internet). But there are many other varieties of English around the world, including for example Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE VIKING INVASION

In several places in Scandinavia, where Vikings settled, it created new kingdoms which today we know as the name of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

The Viking age in European history was about AD 700 to 1100. During this period many Vikings left Scandinavia and travelled to other countries, such as Britain and Ireland. Some went to fight and steal treasure. Others settled in new lands as farmers, craftsmen or traders.


Vikings occupied and had control over large extension of land in the north and east of England, which is called Danlaws For 500 years, Vikings ruled the north of Scotland, the Orkney and Shetland isles and the Hebrides islands off the west coast. In Ireland, Vikings founded the city of Dublin.

In the Old English was very important the influence of the Scandinavian words introduced during the Viking invasion of the IX and X century.The Vikings spoke Old Norse which is very similar to Old English because they had the same roots in the Proto-German language. When these two languages joined, it created a mixed language: Old English with borrowed words of Vikings belong to different lexical fields:

Nordic	English	Spanish
Ancaire	Anchor	Ancla
Seol	Sail	Navegar
Vindauga	Window	Ventana
Margadh	Market	Mercado
Brog	Shoe	Zapato
Baggi	Bag	Bolso
Bathir	Both	Ambos
Kalla	Call	Llamada
Drit	Dirty	Sucio
Gaman	Game	Juego
Husbondi	Husband	Marido
Knifr	Knife	Cuchillo
Lagu	Law	Ley
Mistaka	Mistake	Error
Oddi	Odd	Impar
Reisa	Raise	Aumento
Steik	Steak	Filete
Uggligr	Uggly	Feo
Skata	Skate	Patín
oaf	elf	duende
Hitta	Hit	Golpe
birdr	Birth	Nacimiento

The relationship between both languages is so intimate that not only lexical items, but also certain grammatical structures, word endings and the so-called structural words were taken from Old Norse.

They introduced the pronoun they and the verb form are.

Many place-names have Old Norse suffixes such as: -thorp (place secondary to a –by), -by (new settlement. As a rule, they are relevant places), -thwait(e) (village smaller than a –thorp, normally in a clearing), -toft (settlement smaller than a -thwait(e)) and Grimston-hybrids (settlements that contain a Scandinavian person-name used before the eleventh century followed by the OE suffix –ton).

The prefixes be-, for- and with- were used to form many new verbs. New abstract nouns were formed from adjectives and substantives by the addition of the endings -ness, -hode , -hede and -ship; new adjectives in -sum, -ful, -lich (-ly); and new agent-nouns in -ere.

The ending -ing was more and more frequently added to verbs to form nouns of action, and, before the end of the fourteenth century, the derivatives so formed had come to be used as mere gerunds.

The suffix -liche (-ly) became a regular means of forming adverbs.

As the Old English endings -en and -icge, used to form nouns denoting persons of the female sex, had become obsolete, the French -esse was adopted, and added to native words, as in goddesse, fiendesse and sleeresse. In the southern dialect of the thirteenth century, there appears a curious abundance of feminine agent-nouns formed from verbs by adding the suffix -ild, of which there are one or two examples in Old English, though, singularly enough, they have been found only in Northumbrian. Instances of this formation from the Ancren Riwle are beggild a woman given to begging, cheapild a female bargainer, grucchild a female grumbler, mathelild a female
chatterer, totild a woman fond of peeping; other words of this formation which do not imply any disparagement are fostrild a nurse, and motild a female advocate.

Besides the feminines in -esse, the fourteenth century shows a few examples of the practice, which afterwards became so common, of appending Romanic suffixes to native words. Hampole has trowable for credible, Wyclif everlastingtee (after eternitee), and Chaucer slogardrie and slogardie (“sluggardry”), and eggement instigation (from the verb “to egg”).

ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

There are many reason why English is the International language. In the first place, English with more than 370 millions of speakers is one of the most spread languages in the world because of different political and historical reasons such us the World War II. Then, Chinese is spoken by more than a billion people, Spanish by about 240 million people, Russian by 210 million, Portuguese by 125 million, German by 110 million, French by 85 million native speakers and Italian by 65 million. However, English is spoken in the most important countries in economic matters like United States.

In the second place, the rapid technological development of the countries where English is the first language. Most of the technological-scientific texts are written in English. Moreover, press, cinema, television and literature in English are available for everyone. In the last years, the internet appearance which is consider now the major source of dates, images and texts, has increased the relevance of English language.

English as a first and second language

There are many countries where English is the official language and mother tongue such as United Kingdom, United States and also Australia and New Zealand.

Moreover, the English language expended because of the colonization of several African and Asian countries by England and more lately it continued because of the United States influence. So, in these countries, English is one of the official language a part of the own language like in India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka in Asia, and Kenya, Zambia, Liberia, Tanzania …in Africa. In these places, the English language is a hybrid language because it has the influence of the original language of the colonies so English language has a lot of varieties.


A part of the Known difference between American English and British English in lexical, (lift/elevator; lorry/truck, underground/subway), spelling and pronunciation level (Americans speak more slowly) there are another English language differences between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India speakers English.

In Australia the main difference is the accent and some words ending in –ie such as bikkie (biscuit), truckie (truck dirver). barbie (barbecue), bikkie (biscuit), cozzie (swimming costume), lippie (lipstick), mozzie (mosquito), surfie (surfboarder), truckie (truck driver).
New Zeland English is very similar to Australia English but there are some own words like bach (holiday`s house), togs (swimming suit), dairy (food shop), jandals (sandals). Moreover, the word Kiwi is the name of a fruit and a bird and it also means New Zealand.

In Canada the orthographic rules are similar to British English and the lexical is like in America. However, there are some exceptions in words like railway (railroad) , boot (trunk), bill (check), tap (faucet). Moreover, there are typical colloquial expressions, for example loonie or tonie to refert of one and two dollars coins respectively, and parkade (parking)

In South Africa many words are influenced of the African language, for example, robots (traffic lights), fundi (expert), padkos (travel food). Some words with African origin like aardvark, apartheid, township y trek now are incorporated in the universal English.

Finally in India there are many words like curry (curry), dungarees (jeans) and jodhpurs (riding clothes) that now are incorporated to the universal English language. There are some typical words like tiffin (picnic), crore (ten millions) y el uso de thrice (three times).

English as a foreign language

Nowadays English language is very important around the world so many people decide to study it, but we can`t know what may happen in the future. Now, we can learn English through two different ways:

In the one hand, in an involuntary way because we learn English inconscient when we listen to music, watch television, advertising, art, cinema or search in internet.

In the other hand we learn English in a voluntary way because of different reason such as:

• Schools where is obligatory to study a second language a part of the own language;

• Progress, If you speak two o more languages a part from your native language, you can find a better job.

• Fr Specific Purposes like:

1. Academic, many people want to study at the university in Britain, USA or Canada.
2. Science and Technology, many works require to know English language because scientific and technologies text are written in English.
3. Occupational, in many jobs you need to speak English because you dealing with people from other nationalities like traffic controllers, business executives and waiters.

• Culture because there are people who want to know the people, places and language of a different country.

• Miscellaneous, people who want to learn English because they have free time, they like travel or another motivations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• http://www.xoan.net/recursos/Geolinguistics.pdf
• http://www.oxfordlanguagedictionaries.com/Public/PublicResources.html?direction=b-es-en&sp=S/oldo/resources/es/Variedades-del-ingles-actual-es.html
• http://www.tdr.cesca.es/TESIS_UJI/AVAILABLE/TDX-1113103-120432//cap1.pdf
• http://www.tdr.cesca.es/TESIS_UJI/AVAILABLE/TDX-1113103-115747//cap2.pdf
• http://indo-european.eu/wiki/index.php/Old_English_language
• http://www.redaccion-digital.com.ar/vikingos.htm
• http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin/1 
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/vikings/who_were_the_vikings/
• http://www.uji.es/bin/publ/edicions/jfi10/fang/4.pdf