Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, Þeod-cyninga.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures

soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote and speaking of piercing to the
roote. What in the world have I been saying in this speech? At first, you probably
wondered why I didn’t clear my throat before I walked up onto the stage but as I
continued, things become eerily familiar until you could understand the gist of what I was
saying and now well, now you can understand me perfectly or atleast I hope so. What you
heard in that introduction is an abbreviated history of the English Language. I started with
the opening lines of Beowulf and I finished off with the opening lines of The Canterbury
Tales. In this speech, we will be tracing the evolution of our language from that first
unintelligible sentence to the same thing I’m speaking right now. But before we get to the
actual interesting stuff I do have to say all facts and information comes from
thehistoryofenglishlanguage.com. The history of English is the history of England and we’ll
pick up our story when the Angles, Saxon and Jutes sailed across the North Sea from
modern day Denmark to their new home in the British Isles. By 600 AD they lived in
“Englaland” and spoke “Englisc” as we now call it “Old English” now old but definitely not
simple to say the least. Anyways, some of our most common words like I, you, he, she, it,
and rather amusingly all of our vulgarities traced directly back to Old English. Then,
Vikings happened. They started raiding in the mid-eighties century. Old English got mixed
up with Old Norse, the language of the Viking tribes. Old Norse ended up giving English
more than 2,000 new words. By this point, we’re up to around the ninth century and so,
take a guess as to what the next major influence on English will be? Yes. You guessed it.
Another invasion. But this time the invaders were French. The Norman invasion
established French as the language of royals and of power. By adopting French words,
the English language also became more sophisticated. By the 13th century, I guess you
can almost understand the English literature that time but nonetheless something is still
off, that something is pronunciation. Starting in the 15 th century and continuing to the 17th
was a complete overhaul of the English pronunciation system. Dirk changed to dark. Hurt
to heart. Leaf to Life. In the 14th-15th century, development of English literature and culture
was boosted, spearheaded by William Shakespeare. Printing also brought standardization to
English. And in 1604, the first English dictionary was published. It’s been a long way getting
Hwæt. We Gardena to like oh let me take a selfie! But I think it’s been an interesting journey.
So try to remember, just try to remember the history that hides behind every single word.