| 1 | The Story of the English Language (Level 1)

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The land of the Angles
England means "the land* of the Angles", but the Angles were not the first people in Britain.

The Celts
The Celts were the first to inhabit* the British Isles. They came from the European continent*. They spoke Celtic which is very different from English. The Celts were pushed back, first by the Romans and then by the Anglo-Saxons. There are still people of Celtic origin* in Britain, and Celtic is still spoken by small minorities* in the British Isles. 

The Romans 
The Romans invaded* Britain about 50 years B.C. (before Christ). They ruled* for more than 400 years. Hadrian's Wall, near the border between England and Scotland, is from the Roman period. The Romans spoke Latin. The names of some places, like Doncaster and Winchester, give us an idea of where the Romans settled. 'Caster' and 'chester' are forms of the Latin word 'castra', which  means camp*. 

Germanic tribes
At the beginning of the 5th century the Romans left Britain. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes moved across to Britain from the northern parts of Europe, and became the new masters*. They spoke slightly different Germanic languages. The period from the beginning of the 5th century to the next major* invasion, in 1066, is generally called Anglo-Saxon. That period is the beginning of the English language we speak today. It is basically a Germanic language , like German, Danish, and Dutch. Before 1066 the English language was not much influenced* by any language outside the Germanic group. The Vikings that raided* and ruled parts of Britain during three centuries before 1066 also spoke Germanic languages.

1066
The Norman invasion in 1066 (the Battle* of Hastings) was the beginning of a long period of French influence. William the Conqueror* and his men came from Normandy, France. French belongs, like Spanish and Italian, to the Latin group of languages, not the Germanic. French was spoken by the ruling classes for more than 300 years, but the English language survived*. When Henry IV became king in 1399, he was the first monarch who spoke English as his mother tongue* since before the Battle of Hastings. But he, and everybody else after him, had to live with thousands of French words that are still part of the English language.

Latin influence
Latin was the language of the Catholic as well as the Protestant church. It influenced English as well as other languages in Europe in no small way. For hundreds of years Latin was the language of not only the dominant* church, but also the universities and the schools. In Modern English more than half the total vocabulary* is of Latin origin.