The Origins of English

 Marcio Lavandeira 12.ºCT8

English is a language that is spoken around the entire globe. But where did English come from? As we know English is a language that evolved through generations of speakers, undergoing major changes over time. While modern English shares similar words with Latin-derived roman languages, like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally part of it. They began appearing in the English language after the invasion of the Normans in 1066. 

After the French-speaking Normans conquered England, they brought their speech with them, adding an amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language spoken at that time ( today we call it old English). The old English belongs to the Germanic language family, first brought to the Britain Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles, Saxons, and the Jutes(anglo-Saxon language). Viking invaders in the 8th and 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse into the mix. And that invasions brought our English that we know today, which is spoken in the entire world.


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The Origins of English