A Brief History of English
Paul Mchenry Roberts (1917-1967) was an American author and journalist . He taught college English for over twenty years, first at San Jose State College and later at Cornell University. He Published numerous books on linguistics, including Understanding Grammar (1954), Patters of English (1956), and Understanding English (1958). In this selection excerpted from the book Understanding English (1958), Roberts recounts the major events in the English history and discusses their implications for the development of the English language.
No understanding of the English language can be very satisfactory without a notion of the history of the language. But we shall have to make do with just a notion. The history of English is long and complicated, and we can only hit the high spots.
The history of our language begins a little after A.D 600. Everything before that is pre-history, which means that we can guess at it but cannot prove much. For a thousand years or so before the birth of Christ our linguistic ancestors, the Anglo-saxons, were wandering through the forests of northern Europe. Their language was a part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-european Family.
Not much is surely known about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons In England. We do know, however, that they were a long time securing themselves in England. Fighting went on for as long as a hundred years before the Celts in England were all killed, driven into Wales, or reduced to slavery. This is the period of King Arthur, who was not entirely mythological. He was a Romanized Celt, a general, though probably not a king. He had some success against the Anglo - Saxons, but it was only temporary. By 550 or so the Anglo - Saxons were firmly established. English was in England.
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