Historical linguistics is the study of
language change. Commonly, it is known as diachronic linguistics. The
term diachronic is derived from Greek dia-
‘’through’’ + chronos ‘’time’’ + -ic. Diachronic linguistics concerned to
language change or language over time, for example we study linguistics changes
from Old English to Modern English.
While synchronic linguistics refers to a language at a one point in
time.
The
changing of language appeared in each period. There are four periods of
linguistic changes, Old English, Middle English, Early of Modern English and
Modern English. If we want to see the linguistic changes in each period, we can
see the changes in translation of the Bible below, as a small sample from
various stages of English.
1.
Old English (The West-Saxon
Gospels, c. 1050):
þa æfter
lytlum fyrste genēalæton þa
ðe þær stodon, cwædon
to petre. Soðlice
þu aert of hym, þyn spræc
gesweotolað.
(Literally: then after little first approached they that there
stood, said to peter. Truly thou art of them, thy speech thee makes clear.)
2.
Middle English (The Wycliff
Bible, fourteen century):
And a litil aftir, thei
that stooden camen, and seiden to Petir, treuli thou art of hem; for thi speche
makith thee knowun.
3.
Early Modern English (The King
James Bible, 1611):
And after a while came
vnto him they that stood by, and siade to Peter, Surely thou also art one of
them, for thy speech bewrayeth thee.
4.
Modern English (The New English
Bible, 1961):
Shortly afterwards the
bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘surely you are another of them; your accent gives you away!’
(Campbell, 1998: 7).
It is
common for one language to take words from another language and make them part
of its own language (loanwords), and the process of it is called borrowing. In
borrowing, of course, there are two or more languages that mixed up with the
borrowing; the language which borrows or recipient language and the language
which is borrowed from or donor languages.
There
are some matters that we have to know in borrowing. The first is about
loanword. Loanword is a word which has been ‘borrowed’ from another language. A
word that originally was not part of the vocabulary of the recipient language
but was adopted from some other and made a part of the borrowing language’s
vocabulary, for example, Old English did not have the word pork; this became an English word only after it was adopted from
French porc ‘pig, pork’,borrowed in
the late Middle English period, so the word pork
is a French loanword in English. French has also borrowed words from English,
for example bifteck ‘beefsteak’, and
see the example of English’s words that was borrowed from another language;
English’s words
|
Donor words and its country
|
ketchup
|
from
Malay kechap, taken by Dutch as ketjap
|
chocolate
|
from
Spanish chocolate
|
Flour
|
from
French fleur
|
tomato
|
from
Spanish tomate
|
Juice
|
from
French jus
|
Pantry
|
from Old
Frech paneterie
|
pepper
|
from
Germanic people via Latin piper
|
and so
on
|
……
|
In
English case, linguistic change was happened because of some colonizer came to
England, such as Roman, German, Scandinavian, France, and so on. Of course, when
new people and new language had come to a country, the amalgamation between two
peoples and also two languages appeared between them and it will influence to
the native language.
We can
take the history of other countries, when they came to England. Roman as the
first colonizer, conquered some districts in England, then brought Christian
religion to England, whereas at that time the People of England as paganism. In
this case, Roman used Latin as the language in the church and also in the
Bible. Of course, people of England learned Latin, and automatically two
languages mixed in England.
The
second new comer was German. German (Anglo and Saxon) came to England not for
conquered, but they came to England because of an appeal for help of Celt (one
of the district in England that was conquered by Roman).
The
third of new comer in England was Scandinavian (Denmark). When Scandinavian
came to England, the amalgamation of two peoples appeared between them. Of
course, it had impact to the English, for example: Scandinavian countries it
retained its hard sk sound. Consequently, while native words like ship,
shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed from the
Scandinavians are generally still pronounced with sk: sky, skin, skill,
scrape, scrub, bask, whisk.
The next of colonizer was Norman (the people from
French; Normandy). When Norman came to England, English was used for the lower
class and middle class, whereas French was used for the upper class and middle
class. In this period, two languages also mixed in England’s society. The
middle class should learn two languages (English and French) because their
position as a bridge, that was to connect between lower class and upper class.
The lower class also learned French because they had married with the Norman.
The influence of the foreign languages to English was not only in words form
but also pronunciation, grammatical gender, adjective, definite article, syntax
and so on. All of them gave impact to the linguistic change. MK
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