The impact on English language

We know how to pronounce and write one to ten in Standard English. However, Old Norse and Frisian were Greek to Britons when the invaders and settlers used West Germanic dialects in the middle of the 5th century. Nevertheless, Britons learned them as they interacted with the foreigners.

   The words and pronunciations of one to ten have evolved over time. The changes are evident as shown below:

Old Norse	Frisian	Old English	Modern English
einn	Ien	an	one
tveir	twa	twã	two
Þrir	trije	thri	three
fjórir	fjouwei	fēower	four
fimm	fiif	fif	five
seks	feis	siex	six
sjau	sᾶn	seofon	seven
atta	acht	eahta	eight
niu	nojggen	nigon	nine
tiu	tsien	tyn	ten

   How did the Anglo-Saxons speak? The words used are certainly baffling to even modern-day native speakers!

   Here are some examples:

   Giese – yes

   Nese – no

   Wa la wa – woe!

   Wilcume – welcome!

   Ic þancie þe – thank you (I thank you)

   Ic nat – I don’t know

   Leof – friend

   Sweostor min – my sister

     

   Over the centuries, a number of significant changes have occurred in the development of the English language, otherwise we would still be using Old English today!

   The table below shows some of the major events that impacted on the gradual evolution of English.

449	Invasion of England by the Anglo-Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians who spoke West Germanic dialects
597	Christian missionaries injected Latin words into English
792	Viking raid on England; nearly 2,000 Norse words were introduced into the English vocabulary, including a sprinkling of Latin borrowings
1066	Norman conquest by William the Conqueror; French became popular among the upper classes while English was the language of peasants and slaves
1258	First royal proclamation was issued in English
1300	Nobility began to education their children in English
1362	English replaced French as the language of instruction in most English schools while Oxford and Cambridge universities retained Latin
1362	English became the official language of law courts
1384	Theologian-reformist John Wycliffe published the English translation of the Bible
1388	Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, using thousands of French borrowings
1450	The Great Vowel Shift was introduced with sound change of the long vowels of English
1474	William Caxton introduced the printing press
1475	Caxton produced the first book printed in English – Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
1594	William Shakespeare’s King Henry IV Part I and Part II were printed. He coined more than 1,600 words in his 38 plays and 154 sonnets
1604	The first English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall, was published
1611	The Great James Bible was published
17th-19th century	British imperialism saw the use of loan words from languages around the world
1702	The first English daily, The Daily Courant, was published in London
1755	Samuel Johnson published his dictionary
Mid-18th century	Onset of the Industrial Revolution; newly coined words such as biology, centigrade, chromosome and watt were used
1806	Noah Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language
1828	Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language containing 70,000 entries
1928	The Oxford English Dictionary was published