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.
談到英語時 我們時常認為它是一種語言 但在全世界數十個國家的方言之間 究竟有什麼相同的地方? 與喬叟的文字有何相同之處? 這些英語又與《貝武夫》中的 陌生文字有何關係? 答案是,如同大部分的語言 英語是經過世代口耳相傳而演化出來 期間經歷一些重大變化 透過還原這些變化 我們能夠從現今的英語 追溯至其古代根源 現代英語與拉丁語衍生的羅曼語 有很多相似的單字 正如法語和西班牙語 大部分英語單字原本並不屬於英語 而是在1066年 諾曼人入侵英格蘭時傳入 成為英語的一部分 當說法語的諾曼人佔領英格蘭 成為其統治階級 他們帶來了自己的語言 非常多的法語和拉丁語字彙 被引入於當時本土所說的英語 今天,我們把那種英語稱為「古英語」 即是《貝武夫》所用的語言 古英語可能看似較為陌生 但如果你懂一點德語的話 就較能辨認出古英語 這是因為古英語屬於日耳曼語族 於5至6世紀,初次傳入不列顛群島 透過盎格魯人、撒克遜人和朱特人 他們所說的日耳曼方言 日後成為了盎格魯-撒克遜語 於8至11世紀,維京人的入侵 為英語帶來源自古北歐語的新字彙 要理解現代英語的根源似乎相當困難 因為需要溯源至 這些分別來自於法文、拉丁文 古北歐語和其他語言的單字 但比較語言學 能夠幫助我們專注於文法結構 語音轉變的格式 和一些核心字彙 例如,公元六世紀後 德文中,以「p」為首的單字 一律轉成發「pf」音 而在古英語則保留了「p」的發音 在另一種情況中,瑞典語中的「sk」音 於英語發展成「sh」音 現在仍有英語單字保留「sk」 例如「skirt(短裙)」 和「skull(頭骨)」 它們雖然直接來自古北歐語 但是在「sk」音變成「sh」音後 才傳入英語 這些例子告訴我們 正如種種羅曼語同源於拉丁語 英語、瑞典語、德語和很多其他語言 同源於一種語言 即是於約公元前500年 使用的原始日耳曼語 因為這古老的語言 從未留下任何書面記錄 我們只能夠比較它的後繼者來重塑它 這方法有賴於語言轉變的連貫性 我們甚至可以運用相同方法來更進一步 把原始日耳曼語溯源至 約6000年前的原始印歐語 來自東歐大草原 位於現今烏克蘭和俄羅斯境內 原始印歐語是印歐語系重塑出來的祖先 印歐語系包括絕大部分的古代歐洲語言 和大部分的古代西南亞語言 雖然尚有工作還未完成 但是我們能夠在印歐語系 各種語言的相關詞彙之間 找出相同的系統相似性或對應性 例如,比較英語和拉丁語 可以發現單字中 英語有「t」,拉丁語則有「d」 而英語有「f」,拉丁語則有「p」 部分英語的遠親包括了印地語、波斯語 和現時仍存在於不列顛上的凱爾特語族 原始印歐語本身源於更古老的語言 但不幸地,這已經超出歷史和考古證據 無法讓我們繼續深究 很多謎團尚未解開 例如印歐語系和其他主要語系之間 有沒有關聯 以及原始印歐語傳入前 歐洲本土語言的性質如何 但奇妙的事還有 全球當中有約30億人 雖然大部分聽不懂對方說的話 但經過6000年語言演變 都仍說著相同的字彙