 |
| Svetainės tvarkdarys |
 |
Užsiregistravo: 05 Spa 2006 01:16
Pranešimai: 27135
Miestas: Ignalina
|
English language
http://perevod.lt/blog/2016/01/17/kas-yra-kalba/
Mankind uses hundreds of languages. Every language has some peculiarities. Grammar of some languages is quite complex. Some languages do not have sufficient number of words. Some languages have no script. Some languages are spoken by millions of persons. Some are spoken by just few hundred persons. England is the birthplace of English language. Due to process of history, this language has spread to many parts of the world. It is used as a link language for International business and diplomacy. It is rich in all kinds of literature, including technical books and journals. It is studied as a second language by millions of people in many non-English countries.
The English language is undisputedly one of the most challenging languages to learn, predominantly due to the vast number of inconsistencies and frequent irregularities and exceptions to the rule. English is a mixture of several languages. It contains several words of the Anglo-Saxon dialect spoken in ancient England. It has absorbed thousands of words from many other languages such as French, Latin, German, Greek and so on. One can find even Sanskrit words in English.
For example, Sanskrit words Guru and Pundit are used frequently in English. Original pronunciation and original meaning of many words have changed in English. English grammar is fairly simple. Nouns in many other languages have grammatical gender and accordingly some verbs and adjectives undergo changes. This complexity is absent in English. Thus, the adjective „big“ is common to all nouns such as man, woman, child, book, stone, dog, cat, river, idea, plan, and so on. Moreover, this adjective applies to both singular and plural nouns.
English nouns and position words are written separately, without any change in nouns. For example, note these words: in India, from India, to India. All words are separate and remain unchanged. Obviously, this is a great advantage for searching words in dictionaries. In many other languages, the noun takes an oblique form to which is attached the positional word after the noun. The composite word becomes long and difficult for dictionary purposes. Counting of large numbers is cyclic and simple in English. For example, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, etc forms a series. Next series is thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three etc. In many other languages all numbers, from one to hundred are unrelated and have to be memorized. Another feature of English is its sense of equality. Pronouns you, he, she are applicable to all persons irrespective of their age and status. In many other languages, these pronouns take different forms, sometimes causing great inconvenience.
English language does have terms like Your Majesty, Your Excellency, and His Lordship. These are exceptions. Basically English is a democratic language. The American President is addressed as Mr. President. English has changed some terms, which hurt sentiments of people. For example, the term Christian name became awkward when thousands of non-Christians, such as Hindus and Muslims started using English. So the term Christian name was changed to First name or Personal name. Term Negro caused offence, and it was changed to Black Person. We have seen many good points of the English language. It is rich in vocabulary, its grammar is simple, its counting system is simple, and its form is democratic.
However, English has one great drawback, which brings it a bad name. English spellings are highly irregular making the language difficult to learn. Take for example the symbol (a). It is used with different pronunciation in words alone (a-l-o-n-e), art (a-r-t), and (a-n-d), all (a-l-l), age (a-g-e). For a common pronunciation, there are two different spellings (c-e-l-l) and (s-e-l-l). Moreover, these two words carry a redundant extra symbol (l). Some words carry silent letters.
For example, the word (debt) is spelled as (d-e-b-t), wherein the symbol (b) is not pronounced. Combination (i-e) is used in word (believe) while reverse combination (e-i) is used in word (receive). An odd combination (o-u-g-h) is used with different pronunciations in words (though) spelled as (t-h-o-u-g-h) and (enough) spelled as (e-n-o-u-g-h). Many and many such absurdities of spellings can be quoted. If spellings are irregular, why are they not reformed? What are the difficulties? What is the way out? Let us examine this issue. A language, its script, its spellings are social institutions. Dictionaries and grammar books are prepared accordingly. Billions of books, newspapers, documents, signboards, maps etc have employed the current spellings. Teachers and Students, Suppliers and Customers, Bosses and Employees, Publishers and Readers, in fact all literate English-knowing persons are geared to the current spellings.
About 200 years ago, after America’s freedom, their leaders changed some spellings. For instance British spelling c-o-l-o-u-r is changed to American spelling c-o-l-o-r. They did not carry out reforms on a big scale. English language is now stuck in the mess. A student writing the word (sell) as s-e-l would lose marks in examinations. Newspaper publishers whose primary interest is to sell papers and not reform spellings will fire reporters, using non-standard spellings.
Since English is now a world language, it is likely that the non-English countries may oppose spelling reforms. One solution lies in retaining and studying English with its current spellings, and also in launching a parallel language, which we may call Globish. This new language will be informal at present, and contain initially about 2000 words to initiate the public. It will follow English grammar and words, but the spellings would be simplified and logical.
It will consist of small letters abcdef etc, without any capitals, and with triple dots instead of a single dot at end of a sentence. This would make the language look somewhat different from English. Full details cannot be given in this radio talk. By way of example, symbol (i) may stand for its sound as in words (it, if, ill) and then English word (busy) will be written in Globish as (b-i-z-i = bizi). All English words will be recast in Globish according to their pronunciation using these standard relations. If some words, such as names, cannot be respelled in this fashion, they may be started with a letter in capital form, to guide readers.
All existing machines will serve Globish.This option deserves support of people in all countries. Let us give legacy of an easy and logical language to the posterity. English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects and was brought to Britain by Germanic invaders (or settlers) from what is now called north west Germany and the Netherlands. It uses a vocabulary unlike other European languages of the same era. A large portion of the modern English vocabulary comes from the Anglo-Norman languages.
English frequently makes use of loanwords originating from other languages. Middle English differed from Old English because of two invasions, which occurred during the Middle Ages. The first invasion was by people who spoke North Germanic languages. They conquered and colonised parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries AD. The second invasion was by the Normans of the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and eventually developed an English form of this, called Anglo-Norman. A new vocabulary introduced at this time heavily influenced many organizations, including the church, the court system and the government. European languages, including German, Dutch, Latin and Ancient Greek influenced the English vocabulary during the Renaissance.
Old English initially was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant.
Written Old English of 1000 AD was similar to Old Frisian and, to a lesser extent, other Germanic languages such as Old Saxon, Old High German and Old Norse in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Written Old English is relatively unintelligible today, in contrast to written Modern English and written Middle English. Close contact with the Scandinavians resulted in much grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the English language, which had been based on Anglo-Frisian. These changes did not reach South West England until the Norman invasion in 1066. Old English developed into a full-fledged literary language, based on the most common manner of speaking in London during the 13th century.
English is divided into several historical forms. Each historical form of English had certain characteristics that distinguish it from the forms of English that came before and after it. The Old English period was from the mid-5th century to the mid-11th century, the Middle English period from the late 11th century to the late 15th century, the Early Modern English period from the late 15th century to the late 17th century, and the Modern English period from the late 17th century to the present.
The languages of Germanic peoples gave rise to the English language. The best known are the Angles, Saxons, Frisii, Jutes and possibly some people such as Franks, who traded, fought with and lived alongside the Latin-speaking peoples of the Roman Empire in the centuries-long process of the Germanic peoples’ expansion into Western Europe during the Migration Period. Latin loan words such as wine, cup, and bishop entered the vocabulary of these Germanic peoples before their arrival in Britain and the subsequent formation of England. The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive a style of English is, the more it tends to be from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it tends to contain Latin and French influences.
Until the 14th century, Anglo-Norman and then French was the language of the courts and government, but for example the Pleading in English Act 1362 made English the only language in which court proceedings could be held, though the official record remained in Latin.
Even after the decline of Norman French, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language—as in most of Europe during the period—and had a significant influence on the vernacular English, which is visible in Modern English today (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). A tendency for French-derived words to have more formal connotations has continued to the present day. For example, most modern English speakers consider a „cordial reception“ (from French) to be more formal than a „hearty welcome“ (from Germanic). Another example is the unusual circumstance of the words for animals being separate from the words for their meat, e.g. beef and pork (from the French bœuf and porc) are the products of „cows“ and „pigs“—animals with Germanic names.
English was also influenced by the Celtic languages it was displacing, especially the Brittonic substrate, most notably with the introduction of the continuous aspect (to be doing or to have been doing), which is a feature found in many modern languages but developed earlier and more thoroughly in English. Brittonic influence on English grammar spread from the north and west toward the south and south-east of England.
While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued until 1154, most other literature from this period was in Old Norman or Latin. A large number of Norman words were taken into Old English, with many doubling for Old English words. The Norman influence is the hallmark of the linguistic shifts in English over the period of time following the invasion, producing what is now referred to as Middle English.
English literature reappeared after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the first English government document to be published in the English language after the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. By the end of the century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language.
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“ [sic] and their language was called „Englisc“ – from which the words „England“ and „English“ are derived.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
_________________
Tautos jėga ne jos narių vienodume, o vienybėje siekiant pagrindinio tikslo - Tautos klestėjimo.
|
|
Prisijungti
Registruotis
DUK
Ieškoti
Dalyvių sąrašas
