视听｜英语从哪里来？

点右关注▷ 英语世界 2022-11-21

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英语是从哪里来的？世界各国使用的不同语言有相似之处吗？让我们跟着Claire Bowern 一起追溯英语的古老来源，看看英语是如何世代演化而成今天的模样的。

Where Did English Come from？

When we talk about English, we often think of it as a single language but what do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common with each other, or with the writings of Chaucer? And how are any of them related to the strange words in Beowulf①? The answer is that like most languages, English has evolved through generations of speakers, undergoing major changes over time. By undoing these changes, we can trace the language from the present day back to its ancient roots.

① Beowulf /ˈbeɪəˌwʊlf/ n. an anonymous Old English epic poem in alliterative verse, believed to have been composed in the 8th century ad 贝奥武夫（有记载的最早的一部英国文学作品）

While modern English shares many similar words with Latin-derived romance languages, like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally part of it. Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England and became its ruling class, they brought their speech with them, adding a massive amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language previously spoken there. Today, we call that language Old English. This is the language of Beowulf. It probably doesn't look very familiar, but it might be more recognizable if you know some German. That's because Old English belongs to the Germanic language family, first brought to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles②, Saxons③, and Jutes④. The Germanic dialects they spoke would become known as Anglo-Saxon. Viking⑤ invaders in the 8th to 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse⑥ into the mix.

② Angles /'æŋɡlz/ n. a member of a Germanic people who conquered England and merged with the Saxons and Jutes to become Anglo-Saxons 盎格鲁人；盎格鲁族③ Saxons /ˈsæksnz/ n. 撒克逊人④ Jutes /dʒuːts/ n. 朱特族；朱特人⑤ Viking /ˈvaɪkɪŋ/ n. a member of a race of Scandinavian people who attacked and sometimes settled in parts of NW Europe, including Britain, in the 8th to the 11th centuries 维金人，北欧海盗（斯堪的纳维亚部落成员，8–11世纪时劫掠英国等西北欧部分地区，有时在当地定居）⑥ Norse /nɔːs/ n. the Norwegian language, especially in an ancient form, or the Scandinavian language group 诺尔斯语；（古）挪威语；古斯堪的纳维亚语

It may be hard to see the roots of modern English underneath all the words borrowed from French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages. But comparative linguistics can help us by focusing on grammatical structure, patterns of sound changes, and certain core vocabulary. For example, after the 6th century, German words starting with "p," systematically shifted to a "pf" sound while their Old English counterparts kept the "p" unchanged. In another split, words that have "sk" sounds in Swedish developed an "sh" sound in English. There are still some English words with "sk," like "skirt," and "skull," but they're direct borrowings from Old Norse that came after the "sk" to "sh" shift. These examples show us that just as the various Romance languages descended from Latin, English, Swedish, German, and many other languages descended from their own common ancestor known as Proto-Germanic⑦ spoken around 500 B.C.E. Because this historical language was never written down, we can only reconstruct it by comparing its descendants, which is possible thanks to the consistency of the changes.

⑦ Proto-Germanic n. the prehistoric unrecorded language that was the ancestor of all Germanic languages 原始日耳曼语

We can even use the same process to go back one step further, and trace the origins of Proto-Germanic to a language called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 6000 years ago on the Pontic steppe⑧ in modern day Ukraine and Russia. This is the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European family that includes nearly all languages historically spoken in Europe, as well as large parts of Southern and Western Asia. And though it requires a bit more work, we can find the same systematic similarities, or correspondences, between related words in different Indo-European branches. Comparing English with Latin, we see that English has "t" where Latin has "d", and "f" where latin has "p" at the start of words. Some of English's more distant relatives include Hindi, Persian and the Celtic⑨ languages it displaced in what is now Britain. Proto-Indo-European itself descended from an even more ancient language, but unfortunately, this is as far back as historical and archeological⑩ evidence will allow us to go.

⑧ steppe /step/ n. a large area of land with grass but few trees, especially in SE Europe and Siberia （尤指东南欧及西伯利亚树少的）大草原，干草原

⑨ Celtic /ˈkɛltɪk/ adj. If you describe something as Celtic, you mean that it is connected with the people and the culture of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and some other areas such as Brittany. 凯尔特人的; 凯尔特文化的

⑩ archaeology /ˌɑːkiˈɒlədʒi/ n. the study of cultures of the past, and of periods of history by examining the remains of buildings and objects found in the ground 考古学

Many mysteries remain just out of reach, such as whether there might be a link between Indo-European and other major language families, and the nature of the languages spoken in Europe prior to its arrival. But the amazing fact remains that nearly 3 billion people around the world, many of whom cannot understand each other, are nevertheless speaking the same words shaped by 6000 years of history.

文章来源：TED-Ed官网

北京师范大学外国语言文学学院实习生

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