When we talk about English, we often think of it as a single language but what do the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common with each other, or with the writings of Chaucer? And how are any of them related to the strange words in Beowulf? The answer is that like most languages, English has evolved through generations of speakers, undergoing major changes over time. By undoing these changes, we can trace the language from the present day back to its ancient roots. While modern English shares many similar words with Latin-derived romance languages, like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally part of it. Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England and became its ruling class, they brought their speech with them, adding a massive amount of French and Latin vocabulary to the English language previously spoken there. Today, we call that language Old English. This is the language of Beowulf. It probably doesn't look very familiar, but it might be more recognizable if you know some German. That's because Old English belongs to the Germanic language family, first brought to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The Germanic dialects they spoke would become known as Anglo-Saxon. Viking invaders in the 8th to 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse into the mix. It may be hard to see the roots of modern English underneath all the words borrowed from French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages. But comparative linguistics can help us by focusing on grammatical structure, patterns of sound changes, and certain core vocabulary. For example, after the 6th century, German words starting with "p," systematically shifted to a "pf" sound while their Old English counterparts kept the "p" unchanged. In another split, words that have "sk" sounds in Swedish developed an "sh" sound in English. There are still some English words with "sk," like "skirt," and "skull," but they're direct borrowings from Old Norse that came after the "sk" to "sh" shift. These examples show us that just as the various Romance languages descended from Latin, English, Swedish, German, and many other languages descended from their own common ancestor known as Proto-Germanic spoken around 500 B.C.E. Because this historical language was never written down, we can only reconstruct it by comparing its descendants, which is possible thanks to the consistency of the changes. We can even use the same process to go back one step further, and trace the origins of Proto-Germanic to a language called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 6000 years ago on the Pontic steppe in modern day Ukraine and Russia. This is the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European family that includes nearly all languages historically spoken in Europe, as well as large parts of Southern and Western Asia. And though it requires a bit more work, we can find the same systematic similarities, or correspondences, between related words in different Indo-European branches. Comparing English with Latin, we see that English has "t" where Latin has "d", and "f" where latin has "p" at the start of words. Some of English's more distant relatives include Hindi, Persian and the Celtic languages it displaced in what is now Britain. Proto-Indo-European itself descended from an even more ancient language, but unfortunately, this is as far back as historical and archeological evidence will allow us to go. Many mysteries remain just out of reach, such as whether there might be a link between Indo-European and other major language families, and the nature of the languages spoken in Europe prior to its arrival. But the amazing fact remains that nearly 3 billion people around the world, many of whom cannot understand each other, are nevertheless speaking the same words shaped by 6000 years of history.
当我们谈到英语,我们常常想到 它是一种语言 但是那些遍布世界各国不同的方言呢 它们彼此间有什么相似之处 或者说和乔叟(英国诗人)笔下的诗句有什么相似之处呢 它们和《贝奥武夫》(一部古英语史诗)里让人看不懂的单词又有什么共同之处呢 答案就是英语和大多数语言一样 在数代运用这门语言的人中进化 随着时间的流逝经历了重大的改变 如果还原这些变化 我们可以将现代英语 追溯到它古老的源头 虽然现代英语,和源于拉丁语的罗曼斯语 比如法语和西班牙语 有很多单词是相似的 但是这其中绝大部分的单词起初并不属于英语 而是在1066年诺曼入侵英格兰时 才开始变为英语的 当说法语的诺曼人征服英格兰 成为那里的统治阶级时 他们的语言也深深影响了英格兰 为英格兰当地的本土英语 增添了大量法语和拉丁语词汇 现如今,我们称那时的英语为“古英语” 《贝奥武夫》就是用这种古英语写成的 古英语也许让人看起来觉得陌生 但如果你懂一些德语,就会更加容易辨认它了 这是因为古英语属于德语的日耳曼语系 起初是在5世纪和6世纪 被盎格鲁人,萨克逊人和朱特人带入不列颠群岛 他们所讲的日耳曼方言就是我们今天所知道的盎格鲁撒克逊方言 8世纪到11世纪时的维京入侵者 又将更多古诺尔斯语加入到了英语之中 因为有太多从法语,拉丁语,古诺尔斯语 和其他语言中借来的词汇 所以也许很难从中找出现代英语的源头 但比较语言学可以通过专注于语法结构 声音变化的模式 以及某些核心词汇来帮助我们找出源头 例如说,在6世纪之后 德语中以“p”开头的单词的发音全都系统地转换成了“pf” 而与之相对应的古英语却没有发生变化 在其他方面,那些具有“sk”发音的瑞典语词汇 在英语中变成了“sh”的发音 英语词汇中还是有很多单词具有“sk”发音 比如“裙子”(skirt)和“头骨”(skull) 但是它们是从古诺尔斯语中直接借鉴来的 这种借鉴发生的时间在从“sk”到“sh”的转换之后 这些例子告诉我们 正如很多罗曼斯语言来源于拉丁语 英语,瑞典语,德语,以及很多其他语言 都来源于它们共同的祖先“古日耳曼语” 这种语言在公元前500年被广泛使用 由于这种历史古老的语言从未被转化成文字 我们只能通过比较它的衍生语言来重建它 而这可能要归功于这些衍生语言变化的一致性 我们甚至可以用同样的办法再往前跨一步 追溯到古日耳曼语来源于古印欧语 这种古印欧语来自6000年前的东欧大草原 也就是今天的乌克兰和俄罗斯地区 这就是重建的印欧语系的祖先 囊括了历史上欧洲以及西南亚很大一部分地区 所出现的所有语言 尽管需要多费点儿功夫, 我们仍从不同的印欧语系分支里有关联的词汇中 找到系统的相似或者一致之处 如果将英语和拉丁语相比较 我们会发现拉丁语中以“d”开头的单词,英语却以“t”开头 拉丁语中以“p”开头的单词,在英语中却变成了“f” 而有些英语的“远亲”,包括北印度语,波斯语 以及波斯语,则被转换成了现在的大不列颠英语 古印欧语本身源于一种深知更加古老的语言 不幸的是,这种语言实在太古老 目前还没有历史和考古学证据能让我们了解它 很多谜团都还无法被解开 比如印欧语系及其他语系会不会 与在先于它们出现在欧洲的语言特性 有某种关联 但这仍然改变不了一个令人不可思议的事实,那就是全世界近30亿人 尽管他们中的一些人听不懂彼此所说的语言 但他们却说着历经6000年历史淬炼的相同的词汇