English Language through Religion. Historical Evolution

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English Language Through Religion
Changes in language normally look mysterious and rather obvious at the same time. For example, there are a lot of differences in the English spoken today compared to those of the 19th century. The differences and changes lead people to ask how English changed over time and why it did change like that. There have been three major periods in the evolution of English. Between 450 and 1100 AD, it was old English. Between 1100 and 1500, it was middle English and from 1500 AD to present time, it is the modern English (Kristó 13). In this paper, I am going to look at how English changed over time and how religion changed with the people that spoke it.
Historical Evolution of the English Language
Linguistic studies show that the modern English language borrowed a lot from the Indo-European (IE). English spoken during this period was characterized by pitch stress especially for the letters l, m, and n. The letter r was also rolled and there were noun clauses used that would later on give rise to genders. As the Romans worked to make Christianity the universal religion, a lot of people were converted into Christians. However, because most of the Roman Missionary spoke Latin, there was difficulty in communication with the natives of the areas they operated. In their communication, they had to borrow a lot of Latin words to make some of the religious words used.
The incursion of the Viking into British Isles that took place in the late 700’s known as the Norse Invasions brought the second major change in the English language. The Anglo-Saxon that was spoken at the time was mixed with Norse and produced what is currently known as the Old English. There was enrichment of the vocabulary and several synonyms were created including no/nay, from/fro, hide/skin, craft/skill, carve/cut, rear/raise etc (Hogg 24). It was also during this period that the English language adopted the words that had SK.
Normam period followed the Anglo-Saxon. It was the French invasion that led to the change from the Old English to the Middle English (Deutschmann 5). Because of this period, several words that were used in Old English narrowed in meaning and were used more to describe the crude aspects of life (Chamonikolasová 67). New Norman words were used to describe things associated with fine living, culture, and abstract learning. Therefore, new words such as perspire/sweat, deer/venison, sheep/mutton, swine/pork, calf/veal, beef/cow etc. were introduced in the English language (Chamonikolasová 69). During the Norman invasion, more Latin based words were used in the English Language. Several English words sued today still incorporate Norman French words alongside Anglo-Saxon synonyms such as lord and master, ways and means, love and cherish, law and order etc (Chamonikolasová 80). The changes that English underwent during this period were so great that even the English grammar was affected. Several Norman French affixes and suffixes were used and they almost completely replaced the ones used in Anglo-Saxon. At the close of the Middle English Period, Normal French words mad over half of the English vocabulary.
The Anglo-Saxon and Norman French would lat...