英语发展历史

英语的最早形式是由盎格鲁-撒克逊移民于5世纪带到英国的一组西日耳曼语（Ingvaeonic）方言，被统称为古英语。中古英语始于11世纪末，诺曼征服英格兰；这是该语言受到法语影响的时期。早期现代英语始于15世纪后期引进的的印刷机到伦敦，在印刷国王詹姆斯圣经和开始元音大推移。

自17世纪以来，现代英语在英国和美国的广泛影响下在世界各地传播。通过各类这些国家的印刷和电子媒体，英语已成为国际主导语言之一，在许多地区和专业的环境下的语言也有主导地位，例如科学、导航和法律。

地理分布

由于英国过去在世界各地有许多殖民地的缘故，因此在现代，英语在许多国家与地区，都是通用语言或官方语言之一：

英语在下列国家和地区是第一语言：英国、美国、加拿大、澳大利亚、巴哈马、巴巴多斯、百慕大、圭亚那、牙买加、新西兰、圣基茨和尼维斯和特立尼达和多巴哥。

英语在下列国家和地区中是通用语言，这些国家和地区包括多米尼克、圣路西亚和圣文森特和格林纳丁斯、密克罗尼西亚联邦、塞浦路斯。

英语是下列国家和地区的官方语言（之一）：斐济、新加坡、加纳、冈比亚、基里巴斯、肯尼亚、纳米比亚、尼日利亚、马绍尔群岛、巴布亚新几内亚、所罗门群岛。

英语发展史可以追溯到公元前500年左右.在大不列颠岛(Great Britain)上史料记载的最早的语言是公元前500年左右的凯尔特语(Celtic).公元前55年,罗马人入侵大不列颠,并一直占领了大约500多年,拉丁语进入了该地区,并成为官方语言,凯尔特语的地位下降.约公元449年,居住于丹麦与德国北部的3个日耳曼人部族趁罗马帝国衰落入侵到大不列颠岛上.他们分别是盎格鲁人（Angles,入侵日德兰半岛中部）、萨克逊人（Saxons,入侵日德兰半岛南部）和朱特人（Jutes,入侵日德兰半岛北部）.在语言上,他们取代了当时该地所使用的凯尔特语.这三个日耳曼部族方言随着社会发展,逐渐融合为一种新的语言,即盎格鲁一萨克逊语（Anglo-Saxon）,这就是后来形成的英语的基础.到公元700年,人们把大不列颠岛上三部族混合形成的语言称为Englisc.到公元1000年,岛上整个国家被称作Englaland.这两个词后来就演变成English（英语）和England（英格兰或英国）这就是English和England两个词的历史由来. 8世纪末,丹麦人大批入侵英国,在其东北部建立丹麦区,持续了近300年,当时所带来的斯堪的那维亚语对英语的发展有很大影响.公元1066年,法国的诺曼蒂公爵侵人英国,并加冕为英国国王,建立了诺曼蒂王朝,一直延续到1154年.在诺曼蒂王朝统治期间,英国实际上存在着三种语言,法语是官方语言；拉丁语是宗教语言,用于阅读圣经、教堂宗教活动；英语则是下层社会劳动者用的世俗语言.法语在英国的特殊地位一直延续到14世纪,法院、学校、宫廷分别于1362年、1385年、1399年才停止使用法语.1382年用英语书写的圣经出现,才结束了拉丁语的宗教语言地位.这时英语才成为英国的全民语言.因此英语中保留着大量的法语词汇（如age,air,brush,cry,bourgeoisie）和拉丁语词汇（angel,candle,moke,pope）. 在“文艺复兴”时期（14世纪-16世纪）,由于人们对古希腊、古罗马文化表现出浓厚的研究兴趣,英语又吸收了大量古代社会及当时欧洲大陆文化精华,词汇大增.例如来自希腊语的geometry,astronomy,botany；法语的comrade,alloy,surpass；西班牙语的banana,cocoa,mosquito；意大利语的violin,piazza. 18世纪后,英国的工业革命兴起,对殖民地的争夺使英语随着帝国的发展走向世界.因此,在与各地交往中吸收大量新词汇.如来自非洲的zebra,chim-pazee；来自印度的cashmere,shampoo；来自汉语的tea,litchi；来自澳大利亚的kangaroo,boomerang；来自西印度群岛的cannibal,canoe.由于英国殖民地的发展与向海外的大量移民,英语亦从其本土向国外传播（例如BBC英语广播电台）. 目前在英国以外,把英语作为第一语言（即母语,Native language)的国家有爱尔兰(Ireland)、美国(America)、澳大利亚(Australia)、新西兰(New Zealand)、圭亚那(Guyana)、巴哈马(The Bahamas)、巴巴多斯(Barbados)、百慕大(Bermuda)、牙买加(Jamaica)、圣克里斯多福及尼维斯(Saint Christopher and Nevis)、特立尼达和多巴哥(Trinidad and Tobago),在加拿大(Canada)大部分人说英语；把英语作为官方语言的国家有尼日利亚、加纳、肯尼亚、乌干达、坦桑尼亚、赞比亚、津巴布韦、南非、新加坡、印度、菲律宾等国；作为第二语言的有丹麦、芬兰、瑞典、挪威、冰岛等国.英语逐渐发展成为一种世界语言,在外交上的地位也取代了法语,成为今天世界政治、经济、科技、文化交流最重要的语言.虽然以英语为母语的国家有前面列举的好几个,但我们还是推荐找外教以美国、加拿大、英国为主. 英语也存在着地域性差异.在英国本土,由于原来由日德兰半岛来到大不列颠岛的盎格鲁人、萨克逊人、朱特人分别定居于不同地点,这就使英语的发展在起始时期就出现地域差别.随着工业与城市的发展,伦敦不仅成为全国最大的城市,而且也吸收了国内各方言区来的居民,各种方言相互融合,以伦敦地区作为全国文化中心的牛津和剑桥所用的语言便成为英国的标准语,再通过广播和电视向全国及国外传播,使国内语言及海外英语逐渐统一. 2．英语发展史：英语的扩散和发展 在英国本土以外,通过移民与政治等作用,英语的分布范围逐渐扩大.同时,由于空间上与本土距离较远以及接受地的客观原因而出现英语的国外方言,主要有美国英语、澳大利亚英语、南非英语和印度英语等.其中,美国英语是英语在英国本土外使用最广,也是最重要的英语方言.从总体上来讲,目前美国英语在中国也最为流行. 17世纪时,英国移民开始在北美洲（现美国的东海岸）进行殖民活动.后来,移民人数增多,遂于沿海建立了13个殖民地.这13个殖民地经过独立运动,后建立了美国,并成为美国最初的13州.它们脱离了与英国的从属关系,所以当时移民所讲的英语就成为美国的语言. 由于美国与英国中间有大西洋相隔,两边人员来往、语言交流受到影响,两地的英语逐渐产生差异.美国英语方言主要分新英格兰、大西洋沿岸中部和南方三种.新英格兰方言区是以马萨诸塞州为中心的美国东北地区.该地居民都是英格兰人移民,三分之二来自东安利亚的清教徒,少数来自英格兰北部,是比较纯的英格兰英语.大西洋沿岸中部方言区以宾夕法尼亚州为中心,早期该地是来自英格兰北部的移民,后来则多为来自苏格兰、爱尔兰的移民,除定居宾夕法尼亚州外,还波及新泽西州和特拉华州.后来进入的移民还有荷兰人、德国人、瑞典人. 南方方言区以弗吉尼亚州为最早的核心区.移民来自英格兰,其中约一半来自英格兰的西南部.后来,随着美国在越过阿巴拉契亚山脉向西发展过程中,三个方言区的进展各有不同.新英格兰方言除围绕大湖南岸外,还出现以西雅图、旧金山和盐湖城为中心的三个语言岛.大西洋沿岸中部方言向西进入俄亥俄州等地,直达南、北国境线,成为美国最大方言区.

英语语言的发展史：

1、盎格鲁――撒克逊时期。

从公元前55年到公元五世纪，罗马人两次入侵不列颠，对其统治达400年之久，当时英语还存在只有凯尔特人的语言――凯尔特语。公元410年，罗马人由于应付自己国家局势的变化，被迫离开了不列颠，接踵而来的是日耳曼人，他们有三个部落组成：盎格鲁人、撒克逊人和朱特人，他们使用各自的日耳曼方言，勉强可以交流。后来三个部落合在一起，使用统一的语言――盎格鲁－撒克逊语，也就是我们今天所说的“古英语”。

2、古英语时期

从公元793年开始，北欧的维京人从斯堪的纳维亚入侵英国，对英语主要产生了两个方面的影响：受北欧语的影响，英语的词尾变化和名词的性逐渐消失，所以今天的英语不像其他的欧洲语言一样有着复杂的语法、复杂的词尾变化，以及名词和形容词性、数、格的变化。

3、中古英语时期

中古英语时期是英语发展史的第二个阶段（1150年―1500年），公元1066年，法国诺曼底公爵威廉率领法国人入侵英格兰，在黑斯廷斯战役中战胜英军，成为不列颠的统治者，后人称之为征服者威廉，这段历史时期被称为“诺曼底征服”。据统计，今天的英语中约有30%的词汇量来自于法语词汇，法语对英语的影响可见一斑。

4、18世纪后期

英国已通过其殖民地和地缘政治统治地位传播了英语。商业、科学技术、外交、艺术和正规教育都使英语成为第一种真正的全球语言。英语还促进了世界范围的国际交流。英格兰继续形成新的殖民地，后来这些殖民地发展了自己的言语和写作规范。

5、 现代

语法情况的丧失几乎是完整的，而SVO的字序大部分是固定的。一些更改，例如使用do-support已变得普遍。在－ing中使用渐进形式似乎正在传播到新的建筑，并且已经建造的形式变得越来越普遍。不规则形式的正则化也缓慢地继续，并且变形形式的分析替代方法变得越来越普遍。受美式英语在媒体中的强大影响以及与美国作为世界大国相关的声望，英式英语也在美式英语的影响下也在发生变化。

http://www.iselong.com/english/0001/1124.htm(英语简史(English Version))A Brief Look at the History of English The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A. D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down. The following brief sample of Old English prose illustrates several of the significant ways in which change has so transformed English that we must look carefully to find points of resemblance between the language of the tenth century and our own. It is taken from Aelfric's "Homily on St. Gregory the Great" and concerns the famous story of how that pope came to send missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves in Rome: Eft he axode, hu ðære ðeode nama wære þe hi of comon. Him wæs geandwyrd, þæt hi Angle genemnode wæron. Þa cwæð he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcum gedafenað þæt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon."A few of these words will be recognized as identical in spelling with their modern equivalents -- he, of, him, for, and, on -- and the resemblance of a few others to familiar words may be guessed -- nama to name, comon to come, wære to were, wæs to was -- but only those who have made a special study of Old English will be able to read the passage with understanding. The sense of it is as follows: "Again he [St. Gregory] asked what might be the name of the people from which they came. It was answered to him that they were named Angles. Then he said, 'Rightly are they called Angles because they have the beauty of angels, and it is fitting that such as they should be angels' companions in heaven.' " Some of the words in the original have survived in altered form, including axode (asked), hu (how), rihtlice (rightly), engla (angels), habbað (have), swilcum (such), heofonum (heaven), and beon (be). Others, however, have vanished from our lexicon, mostly without a trace, including several that were quite common words in Old English: eft "again," ðeode "people, nation," cwæð "said, spoke," gehatene "called, named," wlite "appearance, beauty," and geferan "companions." Recognition of some words is naturally hindered by the presence of two special characters, þ, called "thorn," and ð, called "edh," which served in Old English to represent the sounds now spelled with th. Other points worth noting include the fact that the pronoun system did not yet, in the late tenth century, include the third person plural forms beginning with th-: hi appears where we would use they. Several aspects of word order will also strike the reader as oddly unlike ours. Subject and verb are inverted after an adverb -- þa cwæð he "Then said he" -- a phenomenon not unknown in Modern English but now restricted to a few adverbs such as never and requiring the presence of an auxiliary verb like do or have. In subordinate clauses the main verb must be last, and so an object or a preposition may precede it in a way no longer natural: þe hi of comon "which they from came," for ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað "because they angels' beauty have." Perhaps the most distinctive difference between Old and Modern English reflected in Aelfric's sentences is the elaborate system of inflections, of which we now have only remnants. Nouns, adjectives, and even the definite article are inflected for gender, case, and number: ðære ðeode "(of) the people" is feminine, genitive, and singular, Angle "Angles" is masculine, accusative, and plural, and swilcum "such" is masculine, dative, and plural. The system of inflections for verbs was also more elaborate than ours: for example, habbað "have" ends with the -að suffix characteristic of plural present indicative verbs. In addition, there were two imperative forms, four subjunctive forms (two for the present tense and two for the preterit, or past, tense), and several others which we no longer have. Even where Modern English retains a particular category of inflection, the form has often changed. Old English present participles ended in -ende not -ing, and past participles bore a prefix ge- (as geandwyrd "answered" above). The period of Middle English extends roughly from the twelfth century through the fifteenth. The influence of French (and Latin, often by way of French) upon the lexicon continued throughout this period, the loss of some inflections and the reduction of others (often to a final unstressed vowel spelled -e) accelerated, and many changes took place within the phonological and grammatical systems of the language. A typical prose passage, especially one from the later part of the period, will not have such a foreign look to us as Aelfric's prose has; but it will not be mistaken for contemporary writing either. The following brief passage is drawn from a work of the late fourteenth century called Mandeville's Travels. It is fiction in the guise of travel literature, and, though it purports to be from the pen of an English knight, it was originally written in French and later translated into Latin and English. In this extract Mandeville describes the land of Bactria, apparently not an altogether inviting place, as it is inhabited by "full yuele [evil] folk and full cruell." In þat lond ben trees þat beren wolle, as þogh it were of scheep; whereof men maken clothes, and all þing þat may ben made of wolle. In þat contree ben many ipotaynes, þat dwellen som tyme in the water, and somtyme on the lond: and þei ben half man and half hors, as I haue seyd before; and þei eten men, whan þei may take hem. And þere ben ryueres and watres þat ben fulle byttere, þree sithes more þan is the water of the see. In þat contré ben many griffounes, more plentee þan in ony other contree. Sum men seyn þat þei han the body vpward as an egle, and benethe as a lyoun: and treuly þei seyn soth þat þei ben of þat schapp. But o griffoun hath the body more gret, and is more strong, þanne eight lyouns, of suche lyouns as ben o this half; and more gret and strongere þan an hundred egles, suche as we han amonges vs. For o griffoun þere wil bere fleynge to his nest a gret hors, 3if he may fynde him at the poynt, or two oxen 3oked togidere, as þei gon at the plowgh.The spelling is often peculiar by modern standards and even inconsistent within these few sentences (contré and contree, o [griffoun] and a [gret hors], þanne and þan, for example). Moreover, in the original text, there is in addition to thorn another old character 3, called "yogh," to make difficulty. It can represent several sounds but here may be thought of as equivalent to y. Even the older spellings (including those where u stands for v or vice versa) are recognizable, however, and there are only a few words like ipotaynes "hippopotamuses" and sithes "times" that have dropped out of the language altogether. We may notice a few words and phrases that have meanings no longer common such as byttere "salty," o this half "on this side of the world," and at the poynt "to hand," and the effect of the centuries-long dominance of French on the vocabulary is evident in many familiar words which could not have occurred in Aelfric's writing even if his subject had allowed them, words like contree, ryueres, plentee, egle, and lyoun. In general word order is now very close to that of our time, though we notice constructions like hath the body more gret and three sithes more þan is the water of the see. We also notice that present tense verbs still receive a plural inflection as in beren, dwellen, han, and ben and that while nominative þei has replaced Aelfric's hi in the third person plural, the form for objects is still hem. All the same, the number of inflections for nouns, adjectives, and verbs has been greatly reduced, and in most respects Mandeville is closer to Modern than to Old English. The period of Modern English extends from the sixteenth century to our own day. The early part of this period saw the completion of a revolution in the phonology of English that had begun in late Middle English and that effectively redistributed the occurrence of the vowel phonemes to something approximating their present pattern. (Mandeville's English would have sounded even less familiar to us than it looks.) Other important early developments include the stabilizing effect on spelling of the printing press and the beginning of the direct influence of Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek on the lexicon. Later, as English came into contact with other cultures around the world and distinctive dialects of English developed in the many areas which Britain had colonized, numerous other languages made small but interesting contributions to our word-stock. The historical aspect of English really encompasses more than the three stages of development just under consideration. English has what might be called a prehistory as well. As we have seen, our language did not simply spring into existence; it was brought from the Continent by Germanic tribes who had no form of writing and hence left no records. Philologists know that they must have spoken a dialect of a language that can be called West Germanic and that other dialects of this unknown language must have included the ancestors of such languages as German, Dutch, Low German, and Frisian. They know this because of certain systematic similarities which these languages share with each other but do not share with, say, Danish. However, they have had somehow to reconstruct what that language was like in its lexicon, phonology, grammar, and semantics as best they can through sophisticated techniques of comparison developed chiefly during the last century. Similarly, because ancient and modern languages like Old Norse and Gothic or Icelandic and Norwegian have points in common with Old English and Old High German or Dutch and English that they do not share with French or Russian, it is clear that there was an earlier unrecorded language that can be called simply Germanic and that must be reconstructed in the same way. Still earlier, Germanic was just a dialect (the ancestors of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were three other such dialects) of a language conventionally designated Indo-European, and thus English is just one relatively young member of an ancient family of languages whose descendants cover a fair portion of the globe.