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AMERICAN ENGLISH, BRİTISH ENGLISH AND THE BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH
About 5000 B.C. a tribe called the Indo-Europeans lived in Central Europe.
They were farmers and they had their languages.
The Indo- Europeans who traveled to Britain were the Celts.
The Celts were the only people in Britain for over 2,000 years.
Then the Romans arrived.
They brought a new language- Latin!
The Romans left Britain in 410 A.D.
Forty years later, a new group of invaders arrived.
These were the Angles and Saxsons.
(Today, British and American people are still often called Anglo-Saxons.)
They came from Holland, Denmark and Germany.
The language of the Angles and Saxons was "Englisc" or "Old English".
Latin appeared again in 600 A.D.
This time, hundreds of Latin (and Greek) words entered Old English.
The next important step in the history of English came between the years
750 and 1050.
That´s when the Vikings began to attack Britain.
They came from Scandinavia and their language, "Norse", sounded a lot like
modern Swedish.
After the Battle of Hastings, French words became an important part of English.
In the next 200 years, Old English (with Norse, Latin and French vocabulary)
changed and became "Middle English".
In 1620, the British settlers sailed to America.They stayed in America,
built towns and started a new life there.
In the next years, more than 250,000 people from all over Britain followed them.
But the English language did not just travel west to America.
It went to Australia, too.
Many of the British settlers were criminals.
The first English dictionary appeared in 1775.
It contained more than 40,000 words.
Another important date in the history of English is 1800.
That´s when the "slave trade" stopped.
For 150 years before 1800 British ships took West African people
to America.There, they sold them to rich farmers.
These "West African slaves" were the first black Americans.
Between 1800 and 1900 Britain became the richest country in the world.
It was powerful, too.
Britain controlled an "empire" of foreign countries.These included
India, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria and South Africa.
At the same time, The U.S.A, was quickly growing richer and more powerful.
Finally, by the 1950´s, America was the English-speaking super power.
For 150 years before 1776 America was a British colony and British English and
American English were almost exactly the same.
Then in 1776 there was a war between Britain and America.
It was called "the War of Independence".
America won, and after 1776 America became a free and independent
country.
And American leaders began to talk about "the American Language".
At that time there were 5 million Americans, 90 % of them came from the
families of British settlers.
Britain kept empire until the middle of the 20th century.Then, one by one,
like India, Kenya, Canada and New Zealand became independent.
Then the American population also grew quickly.
Between 1800 and 1900, sixteen million Europeans began new lives in the U.S.A.
Many of them came from Italy, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia and other
European countries.
In fact, American English is growing faster now than ever before.
Today there are thousands of twentieth - century words in American English.
Where are the new words coming from?
American English is a global language now.
But it is not a world language.
The second most important language in the world is "Mandarin Chinese".
And others?...
What do you think?...
Edited (12/3/2012) by og2009
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