In five pages the development of the English language is examined along with its linguistic contributors and form changes. Six sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: LM1_TLCEvLng.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
is spoken by nearly four hundred fifty six million people worldwide, yet the five hundred thousand words that make up the language are all borrowed or adapted from myriad other
languages. Contributors include Native American, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Russian, Scandinavian and Spanish. English reflects a number of dialects throughout that have, over time,
developed into mini languages of their own. As well, their modern day structures have greatly changed from their original form, having grown by many thousands of words, and their
various forms of pronunciation and spelling having been greatly altered since their inception many centuries ago. Changes such as these do not occur over a relatively fast amount of
time; rather, they happen slowly, over such a period of time that they are almost undetectable. Charting the development of the English language from 300 CE to 1400 CE finds
that Gothic is the primary language of East Germanic, whereupon the New Testament is translated into Goth between 311 CE and 383 CE. The use of Latin begins to
decline around 410 CE with the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britannia. The period between 450 CE and 1150 CE reflects the Old English period where, with the introduction
of Samuel Johnsons dictionary, the language becomes more consistent with regard to spelling and syntax (Old English). The "earliest written records of dialect" (Timeline for the History of the
English Language) are discovered in 700 CE and Beowulf is composed. Contemporary research shows that a society that speaks the same language also tends to pronounce the words in
the same manner, as well as make the same kinds of errors in syntax. It is due to these inaccuracies of the spoken language that a distinctive accent is