A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh

It covers the evolution from Old English to Middle English, from the Renaissance to modern usage worldwide.īaugh and Cable’s tale is not simple, but then again, neither is English’s. This textbook is perhaps the greatest work of its kind. Have you ever wondered how grammar and vocabulary have evolved over time? This book is for those (like me) who wish to understand the history of the English language. What lives cannot be contained it can only be described in each successive moment of its appearance-that's our language, and we should be proud that whatever grammatical boxes we place it in, it always manages to break out of. They ruin all the fun that writers like Shakespeare had with English-Shakespeare, who molded the tongue like clay, coining and using more words than almost anyone else in the Elizabethan period.īasically, this text confirms that English is an ever-changing, ever-living language, growing and morphing, adapting and revising itself according to the needs and circumstances of those who speak it. Prescriptivists like to assert rules for everything, from how a word should be used based on its etymology to how it should be used based on its usage in Greek or Latin, and even to how it should appear based on analogy (for example, if you write 'backwards' and 'forwards,' you should also write 'afterwards' and 'homewards.') Gah, I kind of detest these 18th century guys. When a grammarian makes people stick to certain grammatical rules, this is called 'prescriptive grammar.' This was also the period in which a grammarian named Robert Lowth condemned the double-negative, a construction often used by Shakespeare, but now deemed grammatically incorrect (as though English were equivalent to algebra!) We can thank the 18th century (Enlightenment period) for many of our more restrictive grammar rules of today for instance, 'lay'/lie,' 'between you and I,' 'between/among,' 'different from' versus 'different than,' etc. Also, Middle English grew out of a lack of regulation/caring on the part of the Norman invaders, who kept speaking their own version of French while the English middle/lower classes spoke a rapidly evolving (and unchecked) form of English. While we 'borrowed' a lot of words from the Norman French, we adapted our syntax to the Scandinavian model, so that our language became much simpler in terms of inflection compared to say, German or Latin. In fact, the Danish invasions of England prior to the Norman Conquest probably contributed a lot more to our loss of inflection (word endings) than the French influence on our language ever did. Old English conjugated them as 'hie,' 'hiera,' 'him.'

'they,' 'their,' and 'them,' our plural pronouns, were a Scandinavian (specifically Danish) import. This is a fantastic, highly detailed overview of the history of the English language in which I learned some surprising things, such as:

A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh