Week 14: The History of English

It was quite interesting to read the shifting history of the English language, from Old English, Middle English, and turn to now Modern English. In Old English, it was highly inflected. It also preferred the grammatical structure patterns “SVO” and “SOV”, where the exclusive use of the "SVO" pattern is used principally nowadays. Some word-initial consonant clusters were used; the subjunctive was used frequently. Word order was more flexible than in Modern English. Middle English was a transitional period. It had influenced by French due to the Norman invasion and had borrowed thousands of French words. Word order became fixed increasingly. Modern English has fewer inflections and it relies on word order. Also, a great many words have borrowed from Latin and Greek.