我們搞GAG是對的

這學期我很不怕死地衝去上德語和 Contrastive Languages Studies (English & Chinese) ，雖然很辛苦，可是挺有意思的。
那個 Contrastive Lang. 說到從性質上分的不同語言種類： analytic, synthetic, paraxical, hypotoxical......oppsss 頭好暈。
看了一堆中文的參考資料，不知為何我好想轉為英語簡述一次。來吧。

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The Development of English

English is a language belongs to the Germanic Language Family (日耳曼語族) of the Indo-European Family (印歐語系). Today English is the official language of the United Kingdom (to be accurate, it should be "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" =__= ) and an international bussiness language. To study the development of English, we have to trace back the British history to 2500 years ago.

Before B.C. 500, only the Iberians (伊比利亞人) were living in the British Islands. In B.C. 500, the Celts (凱爾特人), who came from the northern France, invaded the British Islands and killed the Iberians then settled down there. The Celtic language was the origin of Irish, Scots and Welsh.

When it came to B.C. 55 to 43, the British Islands were again invaded by foreigners. The Roman Empire conqured the middle and west-eastern part of Britain (known as the territory of England today). The Celts were forced to move northword. They finally stayed in the north-western areas (known as Scotland and Wales today).

The most important conquest in English history would be the Germanic Conquest (日爾曼人征服). In A.C. 450, three Germanic tribes: Angles (盎格魯人), Saxons (撤克遜人) and Jutes (朱特人) from Jutland (known as Danmark and Schleswig-Holstein today), arrived Britain by sea. They conqured the whole Britain, forcing the Celts moved even northword. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes shared similar languages, cultures and living habits. They gradually grouped as a united race, the English. Hence the year A.C. 500 was generally marked as the beginning of the development of English.

The word "English" came form "Angle". In Old English the Angles was called "Engle" because Jutland was "an angle of the territory" (陸地之"角"). They named their nation "Englaland" [Land of the Angle], which changed to "England" later. From the 10th century onward, the West Saxon (西撤克遜方言) became the national language of England. The West Saxon was the most representative language of Old English. For clarification, English is NOT a native language in the UK. It is a foreign language came from outside lands.

In 1066, the French Normans (諾曼底人) invaded England under William The Conqueror and crowned themselves Kings of England. This was the famous Norman Conquest. For the next 150 years, England was ruled by French. They made French to be the official language of England. People who spoke French or Latin in England was regarded as having a higher social states, e.g. the noblemen, aristocracy. English was a speaking language among the lower class. Some grammatical features of French and English were somehow integrated. During the Hundred Years War (英法百年戰爭) [A.C.1337~1453], the English-translated version of Bible was publicated. Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature, was born. He was the first person who presented literature work in English rather than French or Latin. So the importance of English rose quickly in the 15 century.

In late 15th century, the vernacular language in London became standard pronunciation (標準音) of English. The history of Modern English started here - in Shakespear's ages.


P.S. ...BTW Chinese belongs to the Chinese-Tibetan Language Family (漢藏語系).