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Prior to the 5th Century, Britain was inhabited by several tribes who spoke a language called Celtic. The language spoken in Scotland and Ireland is highly influenced by this language.

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The Romans occupied Britain for over 400 years and some Latin words were adopted by the people.

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The Romans left and the British islands were now attacked by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. They brought their language with them. This language was called Englisc. English is a language that belongs to the Germanic group of languages. Unlike Latin, this new language was very useful as it had easy words to describe common everyday things used by the people like house, and, apple, good, bad, foot, eye, arm, boy, girl, woman, etc.  Four days of the week are named after their gods — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. About 26% of modern English vocabulary comes from this original language.

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Extract from Beowulf — one of the oldest English epic poems. 

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Old English did not sound or look very much like the English we speak today. However, there are still many words from this original language that are still in use in modern English like, strong, water, friend, word. In fact, the basic structure of English comes from this language.

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Prior to this, the people of England were pagans. St Augustine and other Christian missionaries arrived in England bringing their religion and language with them. This time around, quite a few words from Latin and Greek crept into English like bishop, martyr, font, democracy, academic, android, basic, climate, economy, geography, idea, philosophy, politics, technology, and so on.

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During this period, England was invaded several times by the Vikings who came from Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway). They brought their languages with them and left behind words like sky, drag, thrust, ransack, skull, die, give, take.

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In 1066, William the Conqueror came across the Channel from France and took over the throne. The French brought with them their language and it soon became the language of the royal court and the upper classes.

The lower classes continued to speak English but, with time, many French words crept into the language which came to be known as Middle English. Words like  jury, evidence, justice, liberty, journey are all from French. In fact, 29% of English words are from French and another 29% from Latin. While the names for the animals continued to be called cow, pig, calf, their meat was called beef, pork, veal.

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English still sounded very different from the language we speak today. One of the most famous texts in Middle English that is enjoyed even today is Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

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Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Prologue in Middle English (Not Complete)

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From the 16th century onwards, travel to other regions began to thrive. Europe was going through a period called the Renaissance and there was a deep interest in the Greek and Latin classical cultures. There was also a change in the way people pronounced vowels and something called "The Great Vowel Shift" took place at this time.

The printing press was also invented around this time and people began to learn how to read. The dialect of London became the standard and spelling and grammar began to follow certain fixed rules.

Shakespeare is credited with inventing about 2000 new words and phrases that we still use today like eyeball, puppy dog, anchovy, alligator, lacklustre, dauntless, good riddance, flesh and blood, green-eyed monster, dead as a doornail, breaking the ice.

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17th Century The Age of Science and Discovery

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17th Century The Age of Science and Discovery

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From 1600 onwards, English vocabulary kept growing. The need for new words for scientific and technological discoveries led to the coining of original words in English rather than relying on Latin.

This was also the age of exploration and as the English ventured out and colonized new lands, they not only spread their language in other countries, but also borrowed words from the local languages.

In America, English adopted many words from Spanish like ranch, canyon, breeze, cockroach.

From the Caribbean, English got words like canoe, barbecue, cannibal.

From India, they took words like cummerbund, thug, loot, jungle, shampoo, punch, bungalow.

From Africa, they picked up words like voodoo, zombie.

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In 1857, the Philological Society of London decided to put together the Oxford English Dictionary. It began as a four-volume work containing 6400 page but today, it has around 20 volumes and over 22,000 pages.

As science, technology and culture progresses, new words get added to the language all the time. For a word to be accepted as a new word in the English language, it has to be approved by the OED. The OED publishes its updates on a quarterly basis every year.

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Today, English is spoken by over 1 billion people in the world as a first or second language. It is the official language in over 67 countries around the world.

There are many varieties of English such as American English, Australian English, South African English, Caribbean English, and Indian English. In fact, there are also versions of English that combine two languages such as Spanglish (Spanish and English), Chinglish (Chinese and English), and Hinglish (Hindi and English).