History in English Class...?

The English language is kind of like the gum stuck to the bottom of a restaurant table. Its been around for ages, its everywhere, and people just seem to add more and more to it over time.

From what we've covered in class, I've come to the conclusion that the English language is a very confusing and messed up language. Not only that, but it seems like the people who added words to it were not very original  At the beginning, we had Old English, which started around the Anglo-Saxon invasion in 450 and lasted to around 1100 AD. You might be wondering who the Anglo-Saxons were, so think of big, muscular, war fighting, avenge my fallen comrades by ripping your arms off type people. Most of their language consisted of nouns, with a couple adjectives and verbs and included some common words we use even today, like: wall, man, woman, sheep, cow, day, night, sun, moon and so on. They also spelled things the way they sounded, so there really was no standardization. The major piece of literature that survived from that time period was Beowulf  which is a story about, you guessed it, a big muscular warrior who has to avenge the deaths of hundreds killed by a monster by ripping the it's head and limbs off. This story is an example of an archetype, which is a model person, which everyone wants to be like.

The next period in our language is Middle English, which spanned from 1100-1500 AD. This period  began when the Normans(from France) conquered England and forced their culture upon the Anglo-Saxons. Very soon, it became evident that ruling class spoke Norman French, and the native people spoke old English  Because of this, the native people adopted some of the french terms for different things, and Middle English was born. Because of the new words added to the language, Middle English was very rich in synonyms and a loty of the new words centered around politics, the government and the church, such as: law, Parliament  chivalry and penance. The big piece of literature from this era was written by Chaucer, and was written for the common man and woman. It was called Canterbury Tales, and had no violence. It mainly focused on satire, word play, crude jokes and comedy in general.

Next we move on to the era of Early Modern English  This lasted from 1476-1800 AD. A big improvement in this period was the invention of the printing press, which allowed for more distribution and standardization of the language. The major changes in the vocabulary of this language, was the addition of many new words (you guessed it yet again) stolen from other languages. At this time, England was sending people around the world to explore by ship. Naturally  they began to pick up words used in the places they visited and brought them back to share with the rest of England. These words included: alligator, skate, sugar, sofa, calico, toboggan and moose. At this time, people were beginning to be more sophisticated, and the main literature were sonnets written in the Royal Court. Commoners enjoyed this because it was a way for them to connect with their "celebrities" the royals. There were two main writers at that time who contributed greatly to the sonnet literature, Sir Philip Sidney, who wrote about his love for Penelope Rich(another married royal) and Anne Locke, who wrote sonnets as hymns to god.

Finally, we've come to Modern English. This era started around 1800-present, but personalty I think we should make a new era where we add slang such as grease and YOLO, so we at least have some portion of the language that we came up with ourselves. When the Modern English period began, people started to quit their jobs and become writers. Up until now, most people who wrote literature were only part time writers, and they had to maintain another job to have enough money to write. Now novels were becoming popular, and that shows us that more people were seeking out higher literacy. The major example of writing from this period was Gulliver's Travels, which was a series put out ever other week about a man sailing around the world and having many adventures. There was a lot of satire used in this series, and each addition to the story was just long enough for people to read and anticipate the next chapter.

In conclusion, I really have no idea why the school board decided to force us to learn HISTORY in ENGLISH class, but regardless of that I found it fairly amusing and interesting. Will it ever come up in my day to day life? No, I don't think so, but most of the random facts on the internet will never help me either so I guess I'll live.