The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
27. Where did English Come From?
The Five-Minute Linguist - Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages Third Edition - Caroline Myrick
John Algeo [+]
University of Georgia
John Algeo is Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia. He is the author of British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns (2006) and The Origins and Development of the English Language (sixth edition 2010), and editor of The Cambridge History of the English Language: Volume 6, English in North America (2002) and Fifty Years Among the New Words (1993). He was past president of the Dictionary Society of North America, the American Dialect Society, and the American Name Society. He and his wife, Adele, wrote ‘Among the New Words’ in the journal American Speech for ten years.
Description
In the fifth century, Germanic tribes took over the British Isles where Celts were living. Two of the main tribes came from regions called Angeln and Saxony, which is why the language they brought to Britain was called ‘Anglo-Saxon’.