The development of the English language is usually divided into several stages.
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Old English (c. 500 - c. 1100)
Middle English (c. 1100 - c. 1500)
Early Modern English (c. 1500 - c. 1800)
Late Modern English (c. 1800 - Present)
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Of course, people of the Middle Ages did not find themselves speaking “Old English or Middle English”: these divisions are a creation of modern scholars on the basis of linguistic feature and changes.
Interestingly, or naturally, they have all “English” in each period, showing that English was "English" from the start. Yet, it is often said that Old English is unaccessible, extremely hard to read as it is more like a German. Even native speakers of English have tremendous difficulty understanding it. It is a completely different language despite the fact that it is called “English.”
Related to this, Simon Horobin poses an interesting question:
Works cited:
Horobin, Simon. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.
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Old English (c. 500 - c. 1100)
Middle English (c. 1100 - c. 1500)
Early Modern English (c. 1500 - c. 1800)
Late Modern English (c. 1800 - Present)
----------
Of course, people of the Middle Ages did not find themselves speaking “Old English or Middle English”: these divisions are a creation of modern scholars on the basis of linguistic feature and changes.
Interestingly, or naturally, they have all “English” in each period, showing that English was "English" from the start. Yet, it is often said that Old English is unaccessible, extremely hard to read as it is more like a German. Even native speakers of English have tremendous difficulty understanding it. It is a completely different language despite the fact that it is called “English.”
Related to this, Simon Horobin poses an interesting question:
“English has been in use for 1,500 years; during that time it has changed to such an extent that the form of the language used by the Anglo-Saxons is unrecognizable to contemporary English speakers. Today we refer to this language as Old English, but should we perhaps think of it as a different language altogether? Modern Italian is descended from the Latin spoken by the Romans, but these are considered to be different languages. Might that not also be true of Old English and Modern English? (2)Yes, Italian comes from Latin, but the latter is not referred to as “Old Italian,” so do other Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, Romanian. They do not share the consistent naming, diverging into one distinct language.The terminology employed in the history of English implies how much later people stress and cherish the historical continuity of their mother tongue. Hence, the division of English historical evolution not only results not only from the meticulous analysis of linguistic changes, but also from a desire to claim the coherence and identity of English.
Works cited:
Horobin, Simon. How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016.
