Old
English
The first page of the Beowulf manuscript
The invaders' Germanic
language displaced in some areas the indigenous Brythonic languages
of what became England. The original Celtic languages remained in parts of Scotland, Wales
and Cornwall (where Cornish was spoken into the 19th century). The
dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons formed what is now called Old English.
The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf composed by an unknown poet.
Old English did not sound or look like the Standard English of today. Any native English
speaker of today would find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a
separate language. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in
Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water,
for example, derive from Old English; and many non-standard dialects such as Scots and Northumbrian English
have retained many features of Old English in vocabulary and pronunciation.[2] Old English was spoken until sometime
in the 12th or 13th century.[
Basic and simplified versions
To make English easier to read, there are some simplified versions of the language. One basic version is named Basic English, a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English. Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies that need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.Ogden did not include any words in Basic English that could be said with a combination of other words, and he worked to make the vocabulary suitable for speakers of any other language. He put his vocabulary selections through a large number of tests and adjustments. Ogden also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users. Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.
Another version, Simplified English, exists, which is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardised[100] subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word close can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".
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