Chapter 1. The English Language: History and Varieties
English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It developed from the languages of Germanic settlers who arrived in Britain in the fifth century and has been reshaped by contact with other languages ever since [1][2].
Periods of English
| Period | Approximate dates | Key features |
| Old English | about 450–1150 | Germanic grammar with many inflections; Beowulf |
| Middle English | about 1150–1500 | After the Norman Conquest (1066), heavy French influence; Chaucer |
| Early Modern English | about 1500–1700 | Printing (Caxton, 1476), Shakespeare, the King James Bible (1611), the Great Vowel Shift |
| Modern English | about 1700 to present | Standardization, dictionaries, worldwide spread |
A borrowing language. English has taken words from Latin, French, Old Norse, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish and many others. Examples include pyjamas (Hindi/Urdu), algebra (Arabic), kindergarten (German) and tsunami (Japanese) [1][2].
World Englishes. English is used as a first, second or foreign language across the world. Kachru described this as three “circles”: the inner circle (such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia), the outer circle (such as India, Nigeria and Singapore, where English is an institutional second language) and the expanding circle (where it is a foreign language) [22]. Varieties differ in pronunciation, vocabulary and some grammar, yet are mutually understandable in most contexts.
Standard and non-standard English. Standard English is the variety used in education, publishing and formal speech. Dialects and registers (formal, informal, technical) are appropriate in different settings. Choosing the right register for the audience is a key skill [1][3].
Review: From which language family does English descend? (Answer: Indo-European, in the Germanic branch.)