A conquered land

What we know as the English language was born out of foreign invasion and later spread across the world by invasion. From the fifth century AD onwards, waves of invaders from northern Europe came across the North Sea to England. They were Angles, Saxons and Jutes and came from present-day Germany and Scandinavia. They drove the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of England westwards into those areas known today as Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and the Scottish borders. They established themselves and their languages in the territory the Celtic speakers had occupied. The resulting mixture of Germanic and Scandinavian languages became the earliest form of English.

In 1066, William the Conqueror led the Norman French invasion of England. For a period of nearly 300 years French became the official language, although English continued to be spoken by the majority of common people. Modern English has its main origins in the mixture of these two languages, Anglo-Saxon and French. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centimes, British navigators sailed across the seas with the aim of extending Britain's power and prosperity. They colonised new territories around the world, taking their language with them. In many cases the process of bringing 'civilisation' to the existing peoples of these lands was accompanied by cruelty and injustice.

The first New World settlement was established in Jamestown in 1607. Canada was won from the French in 1763. During the seventeenth century, British rule was established in the West Indian islands of Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago.

Australia and New Zealand were discovered during Captain Cook's voyages between 1768 and 1779. At that time too, the British displaced the Dutch as the dominant power in South Africa. Later in that century, Britain, Belgium, France, Germany and Portugal all competed for influence in the rest of Africa. British rule was finally established in West Africa (Nigeria), East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe). British rule in India was established in 1750, although the East India company had existed since 1600.

 

New ideas, new words

On the fifteenth century onwards, the British X Navy slowly became the dominant force on the world's seas. By Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the British Empire had possessions in all five continents totalling about a quarter of the world's land mass and about the same proportion of the world's population.

English was imposed as the official language of the new colonies, but often words from the local languages started to trickle into the English of the colonisers. This occurred most frequently where an equivalent word did not exist in English. For example, barbecue and cannibal are words which have been borrowed from the Caribbean. Bungalow, pyjamas and shampoo have come into the language from India.

 

Independence and change

As the twentieth century progressed, a growing desire for independence spread among the countries of the Empire. As the former colonies gained independence, most of them joined the new association of the Commonwealth. Members recognize the Queen as a symbolic leader and share English as a common language, but have their own, independent governments. The present-day Commonwealth is estimated to have a population of over 100 million.

Political independence can be planned for a particular moment. Linguistic independence takes much longer to attain and can become a political issue. Under British colonial rule English was the language of education and administration. But in the newly independent states, it was sometimes associated with the colonial domination of the past. Nationalists campaigned to substitute English with the local variety of British English or one of the indigenous languages. But other citizens felt strongly that abandoning English disadvantaged the new state in its communications with the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, it seems that the trend is towards compromise. In many of the countries of the old Empire British English

continues to be accepted for official or semi-official purposes. Local languages and varieties of English are used in everyday conversation.