All the languages of Europe, and many languages of western and southern Asia, belong to a group of languages known as the Indo-European group. It is assumed that an Indo-European language must once have existed in some form or another and that it formed the basis of most languages from India through Persia to Europe. Proof of this theory can be found in the modern-day languages of this area - notice how there are very similar basic root words in nearly all Indo-European languages, such as the word for mother (mutter, mère, madre, etc. just to mention languages that are close to home) or many of the numbers (4 and 5 being notable exceptions). Certain sounds in particular seem to have remained unchanged in the Indo-European languages for milleniums, sounds such as 'm', 'n', 'r/l', 's', and 'st'. Other sounds, have however "shifted" the southern European 'p', for example has become the northern European 'f' (pesce/fish, padre/father, piro(mane)/fire, piede/foot, etc.). This should not surprise us, because sound shifts have happened throughout the history of languages and because 'f' and 'p' sounds are quite closely related from a pronunciation point of view. Other closely related sounds, and relative shifts, include 'c' to 'h' (corno/horn), 'h' to 'g' ([h]ospite/guest), 'gr' to 'c' (grano/corn, but note "grain", too) and 'd' to 'h' (domestico/home). Therefore, words which sound eminently Anglo-Saxon (such as 'home') are in fact related to words considered to be epitomes of the Latinate languages (eg 'domestic').

By working out which words are in some ways similar and related to each other in most Indo-European languages, scholars have found that there is no common Indo-European root for the concept of the sea (le mer), an island, a vine, a tiger or a palm tree, and so on. It can therefore be deduced that the original Indo-European language was not a southern language, neither used near the sea, nor anywhere near India, and so on. Careful analysis has located the Indo-European culture somewhere in the upper Danube region, in other words in the area of present day Hungary-Romania-Slovenia. And it can be dated even as far back as around 6,000 BC.

It is thought that the Indo-European culture must have prospered significantly. The Danube valley is good farming land and the Bronze age perhaps started with these people around 3,000 BC. Clearly the Indo-Europeans extended their influence, mixing with local culture, moving and settling from the original centre, but, of course, communications were very difficult. Population was sparse, the only means of travel was on foot, living was a precarious task and any migration of even just a few hundred miles was probably permanent and involved losing touch completely with former acquaintances. Contacts were therefore very difficult. Nevertheless, the Indo-European migrants must have fanned out, 'empire-building' and spreading the influence of a superior culture, though they clearly picked up aspects of local culture.

Geographical barriers meant that there were different patterns of development, and the biggest geographical barrier in Europe, the Alps, was also the biggest cultural divide. It is no surprise that the Germanic and the Romance cultures and languages are so divided. Separate geographical areas will naturally develop the same language along different routes (we only need to think of the differences in British and American English that have developed over a few centuries despite ease of communication). And language naturally changes and develops in a number of ways: structures alter (grammar rules change), meanings alter (words shift in their meanings) and sounds alter (pronunciation varies). This happens all the more quickly when there is no standardizing influence, such as mass media or ease of communications.

Therefore, around the year 0, the situation that had emerged in Western Europe was that of four main language areas: Scandinavian, German, Italic and Celtic (Celtic being used in the extreme west, having been pushed out of its original central European cradle). In many ways these language areas reflect the geographical divisions of the continent.

The original language of Britain was not English, but Celtic. Until the 5th century, despite the invasion and occupation of the southern part of Britain by the Romans, Britons spoke only Celtic. Though the Celtic tribes had been subjugated by the Romans, there is little evidence that much Latin was ever spoken in daily life by the native British or that much Latin vocabulary was borrowed by the tribes.

The only permanent linguistic signs of the Romans' presence are the names for towns, settlements and roads, especially the ones they built. A number of towns and cities in Britain have names ending in -chester or -caster (deriving from the Latin castra meaning "camp") and many of the Roman roads are known as "streets" (from the late Latin via strata - "paved road"). The city of Chester (the fort) was the location for the central fort in the north of England - the main base for quelling the Northerners and the Welsh.

The Celtic languages were once widespread in Western Europe, divided into two subgroups - Gaulish and Insular Celtic. The Gaulish languages are now extinct being superseded in early medieval times by the Romance and Germanic languages. Insular Celtic should be further subdivided into the Goidelic branch (including Manx and Gaelic) and the Brythonic branch (including Welsh, Cornish and Breton).

The Celtic language, or group of languages as we should now call it, still survives and is used in the west of Britain, in Ireland and Brittany. The languages spoken today include:

• Scottish Gaelic, spoken in the highlands and islands of Scotland by about 75,000 people (some Scottish Gaelic words used in English today include 'clan', 'glen', 'slogan', 'whisky');
• Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, now almost extinct, although attempts are being made to revive it;
• Irish Gaelic or Erse used mainly in western Ireland (100,000 speakers use it as their first language, another 700,000 as a second language - "bog" is Irish Gaelic but used in English);
• Welsh (Cymric) spoken by about 19% of the whole population of Wales, particularly in north-western and central parts; Welsh literature is particularly rich (600,000 speakers - "bard" and "eisteddfod" have been loaned to English); Welsh has been revived recently - starting from the 1970s - and it is now gaining ground;
• Cornish, formerly spoken in Cornwall and Devon, just about extinct;
• Breton, divided into four distinct dialects, originally introduced into Brittany by immigrants from Cornwall and Devon; it has been influenced by French and has a literature dating from the 15th century (1 million speakers, but declining).

The arrival of Old English can be dated to around the fifth century AD, more or less the same period as the Roman withdrawal. Tribesmen from Frisia (now northern Holland) and neighbouring areas began to make for eastern Britain. Like most invaders, they were looking to exploit fresh lands, and in Britain there seemed to be plenty. Furthermore, the British probably put up little resistance. Perhaps they assumed that they would be allowed to get on with their normal way of life as they had done under the Romans. But this invasion was very different. The main difference was that this was a mass invasion. Warlike tribes from various parts of continental northern Europe began to arrive, not just Frisians, but Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and so on. It is interesting to note that the Angles are so called because they came from the 'angle' in the eastern coastline of what is now Denmark, near to Germany.

There were a number of battles with the locals, but the invaders were stronger and gradually many Britons began to retreat from the east, heading towards the hills in the west of the island. This explains why the original British language - Celtic - came to be used exclusively in these western areas, and it also explains how a new Germanic language came to be used in Britain.

The invaders were first referred to by the general term of "Saxons", but Latin writers began to call them "Angles", regardless of which tribe they actually came from. The country was referred to as Angelcynn, or Anglalond, which, of course, developed into "England". The language which developed around the time, a mixture of the languages of the invading tribes, started to be called Englisc, written with a final "sc" instead of the present-day "sh", though the pronunciation is more or less the same. Nowadays, we refer to this phase of the English language as either as Old English, or as Anglo-Saxon (English).

Old English differed from modern English in three ways: some unfamiliar vocabulary, a different grammar and a different written form.

The most striking feature of Old English is undoubtedly its alphabet, the way it is written. The Anglo-Saxons who invaded Britain used what is known as the "runic alphabet", perhaps a modified version of the Etruscan or the Roman alphabet, though with significant differences. It originated in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, and was used up to the 14th century. The Gothic word runa refers to secrets and mysteries, and likewise the runes were always associated with magical, mysterious powers.

The runic alphabet had 24 letters when it was brought to Britain, though over the centuries other letters were added. Ordinary people were illiterate, but their rune-master - a cross between a witch-doctor and a lawyer - would carve inscriptions on objects to indicate ownership and to endow them with powerful spells. Each character was both a letter and a word - the character æ corresponds to the letter "a" in today's alphabet, as well as to the word æsc, "ash" as we write it today.

There are a number of inscriptions that have survived up to the present day and can be deciphered with a little effort. Runes continued to be used in Scandinavia until the nineteenth century; two runic letters are still used in the Icelandic alphabet; J.R.R. Tolkien used runes in his books "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Certain runic characters have given us extra letters in our modern alphabet. It is from the runic alphabet that the letters "æ", "w", "k" and "x" have probably developed. Confusion between the fairly similar-looking runic letter for the sound "th" or thorn and the Roman letter "y" explains the signs we see today for "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe" - the "Ye" should of course be "The".

The vocabulary of Old English was almost entirely Germanic. Nouns had to be declined and were either masculine, feminine or neuter, rather like modern-day German. From a grammatical point of view, word order was very different from modern English, but already one or two particular features were emerging - adjectives went before nouns, as did prepositions and articles. The position of the verb, however, was very different from today, often going at the beginning or at the very end of a sentence, once again more reminiscent of modern-day German.

From what has been said so far, it could possibly be thought that there was just one Old English language. This is very far from the truth. The language spoken in eastern Britain between the 6th and the 10th centuries was in fact divided into a number of distinct dialects. The main dialect divisions reflect the origins of the invading tribes. In north-east England, known as Northumbria, and in middle England, known as Mercia, two different dialects based on the Angles' language developed. In Kent and south-east England, the Jutes' dialect developed into the Old English Kentish dialect; and in south-west England, the dominant tribe was the Saxons, giving us the West-Saxon or Wessex dialect. The West-Saxon kingdom and dialect became predominant in the south of England, spreading into the areas we now know as Sussex (South-Saxony), Middlesex (Middle-Saxony [London area]) and Essex (East-Saxony). In many ways, present-day geographical divisions of dialects and accents in Britain reflect these Old English dialects.

The invasion of tribes from the areas we now know as Holland, Germany and Denmark was not the only influx that helped mould the language, however. During the Old English period, two other "invasions" played a major part in shaping the developing English language.

The first was a peaceful "invasion" by Christian missionaries who first arrived in England in the year 597 AD, led by Saint Augustine. They introduced about 450 new words, most of which have survived the times. They mostly deal with the church and religion, though they also include some other household words. The beginning of the demise of the runic alphabet coincided with this arrival of Roman missionaries who, of course, used the Roman alphabet. Sometimes Christian missionaries translated Latin words into English to provide new vocabulary, and therefore we have the word "forgive" - a direct translation of "perdonare". Sometimes this translation was not particularly precise and the "Spiritus Sanctus" was translated as the "Holy Ghost", though the word "ghost" is far removed from the idea of an interior "spirit".

The second linguistic invasion was anything but peaceful. The powerful but warmongering Scandinavians, known as the Vikings or the Norsemen (i.e. "northmen"), began to invade Britain, Belgium and northern France from about AD 787 onwards. The Danes led this onslaught and by the ninth century they controlled most of eastern England. There was plenty of warring with the English, but in 878 a treaty was made with King Alfred "drawing" a line across the country, more or less from Manchester to London, the northern half becoming part of Danish law (and known as the Danelaw). The treaty did not last long, but for a time England and Denmark were one kingdom.

From a linguistic point of view, it is reckoned that a couple of thousand Scandinavian words entered the language at this time, and they are still to be found in modern English. Most English words beginning with "sk" comes from Scandinavian (eg sky, skin, skill, skull). At times the same word has been borrowed from the Germanic languages and from the Scandinavian languages, hence we have "shirt" and "skirt", "shatter" and "scatter", "ship" but "skipper". From a grammatical point of view, it was probably the Vikings who brought verbs with adverbs and prepositions, or what we now know as phrasal verbs, into English, though they also helped to simplify syntax. More significantly, the influence of the Scandinavian languages is reflected in regional dialects of north-eastern England.

The Old English period came to a close around the year 1100 AD when invasions from the north and the east had more or less ended. Though Old English or Anglo-Saxon differs greatly from modern English, it is the clear basis for the present-day language. It has in fact been calculated that half of the vocabulary of the modern English language is Germanic in origin, and therefore stems from Old English.

The most famous date in English history is 1066 - the year when the Normans invaded Britain. The Normans, from Normandy in northern France, were not true Frenchmen. Northern France had been invaded by Vikings, and they had colonised the area, setting up Normandy - "North-men's land". They had integrated with the locals to a great degree and lost their Scandinavian language. They spoke Norman French, a variety which was quite distinct even from Parisian French, for example.

William of Normandy, or William the Conqueror as he is known in Britain, rapidly took control of the country, just as he had done in much of France and even as far afield as southern Italy. He appointed French-speaking barons and French-speaking bishops to oversee secular and religious life in Britain. Links with Normandy were strong, indeed most of the nobles had estates there, and returned frequently. The elite hardly used English; some tried to learn it but with little success, though they were apparently quite adept at swearing in English.

During the next 100 years, French remained the language of the nobles who ruled Britain and parts of France, Old English was used by the vast majority of the population, and Latin was the language of the Church and a lot of written texts. As late as the fifteenth century, an English scholar would be expected to know French and Latin. However, there was no great influx of settlers to the British isles as there had been with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and therefore ordinary people had little to do with the French-speakers. Clearly during this first hundred years of Norman-French rule, there was some contact between French-speakers and English-speakers, but not really enough to affect either language greatly. The nobility kept up their links with France, for generations, as for example can be realised from the movements of King Henry II. In many ways, the English language of today reflects this division between rich and poor. The 'richer' words tend to come from Norman French while the 'poorer' ones come from Anglo-Saxon ("leisure" and "profit" versus "work", "manor" and "castle" versus "cottage", "easy" versus "hard", "pork" versus "pig", "madam" versus "woman" and so on).

By the end of the twelfth century, things were changing. Many of the French nobles had lost their lands in France; there had been a good deal of inter-marriage; the status of French was decreasing. From a political point of view, in 1204 King John came into conflict with King Philip of France and lost control of Normandy. England - country, king and language - was once again a separate entity. French was used less and less, only being used for formal occasions, and even many public proceedings gradually began to be held in English. Likewise, Latin was also losing its importance, and more and more documents were being written in English. But that is not to say that French and Latin did not have any effect on English at that time. The effect was great, and, together with a natural development of the language, this heralded a new linguistic period.

There is little documentary evidence to show how the language developed between the 11th and 13th century. Clearly it was a gradual process, affecting vocabulary, grammar, spelling and pronunciation. It was such a significant development that it is useful to differentiate between the English used up until around the end of the 11th century and that used after. It is difficult to fix any clear dividing line, but by the 13th century a clearly distinct variety of English - Middle English as we call it - had developed.

In many ways the most radical change that stemmed from Norman influence was in the vocabulary. It has been estimated that about 10,000 Norman French words came into English around this period. Certain semantic fields are particularly rich in such words - administration, law, combat, culture, fashion, food, drink, art and medicine are some of the best examples. Norman French words are to be found throughout the language, however. Even in very basic, everyday matters, the odd Romance word is to be found. A good example is numbering - the word second, curiously surrounded by all Anglo-Saxon terms (though perhaps "twoth" was dropped to avoid confusion with "tooth"). So, some Old English words were replaced by these new words; some gaps in the language were filled by these Norman French loan words; sometimes both terms continued to exist side by side. When both the English and the Norman French word continued to exist, though they remained synonyms, there often developed a subtle difference between the two.

Later, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thousands of words entered Middle English directly from Latin and sometimes from Greek - the main areas were the law, medicine, religion theatre and literature as well as many concepts and abstract terms. As learning developed, it became quite common to adopt and adapt Latin terms for scholarly pamphlets and other educated requirements. The result of this is that once again, some earlier terms were lost, or a gap was filled, or a further synonym was added. Nowadays many of these synonyms have taken on slightly different meanings, or in other cases one is used rather than another for reasons of collocation.

New terms were often coined by using prefixes and suffixes, but little did it seem to matter whether a Norman French or Latin word was given an English suffix, or vice versa an English word was Latinized through affixation. "Beauty" is Norman French, but the suffix "-ful" is English, giving "beautiful". The English verb "to bear" was given the Latinate suffix "-able", and we have the word "bearable". Likewise we have "amazement", "courtly", "scholarship", "starvation", "answerable", and many more.

During the same period, great changes came about in grammar and syntax. The natural development as well as the influence of French led to the grammar changing away from that of the Germanic languages. The cases, such as dative, accusative and so on, began to disappear, being replaced by prepositions and regular syntactical patterns to indicate the relationships of parts of a sentence. Sentence patterns therefore became simpler once again, and similar to those we find today. The only case to remain, in a somewhat modified form, is the genitive form, the "apostrophe s" form. It is sometimes referred to as the Saxon Genitive, since it is a remnant of Old English or Anglo-Saxon English. A little of the accusative form is still to be found in pronouns - he/him, she/her, etc. Possibly the reason why gender disappeared at this time was that there were clashes between Old English gender and French gender - an object might have been masculine in Old English and feminine in French, leading to confusion and eventually the development of a neutral alternative. Also at this time, verb forms still kept to their Old English form, but many irregular verbs began to become regular. Likewise many irregular plurals also became regular.

Spelling underwent a change during the Middle English period, too. Many of the scribes who wrote early Middle English were Norman French, or had been trained by the French. The last of the old runic letters gradually disappeared. The letter "thorn" was the last to go in about the 14th century - except as we have seen in some name signs. The sound "th", therefore had no single letter to represent it. Old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon spellings were "Frenchified", the spelling of cwic, for example, changed to "quick", and cwen to "queen", to match similar-sounding words from the Romance languages, such as "quiet" or "quest". Likewise, the French spelling was maintained for words like "cell" or "circle", signifying that the letter "c" no longer corresponded to the sound of the letter, as it had done up to the point. English spelling became a curious mixture of two systems - Old English and Norman French. Spelling began to drift away from pronunciation. This was the point where English spelling began to throw off a phonetic basis.

An excellent example of many aspects of the language used in the late Middle English period are the works of Chaucer, above all his Canterbury Tales, circa 1390.

The final area of development in Middle English was pronunciation. There does not seem to have been a great change in the way the language was pronounced for most of the Middle English period. However, the last few years of this period seem to have made up for this idleness. Languages are always changing, sometimes more quickly than others; there are many examples of "shifts" for consonants and vowels, but few have ever been so quick and so significant as the shift in English vowels in the late Middle English period.

The "Great Vowel Shift" took place during the first half of the fifteenth century. In just a couple of generations, nearly all long vowel sounds in English had changed. Exactly why this happened has never been clearly explained. It has been called the "Great Vowel Shift" because it was the greatest change in the pronunciation of English; vowel sounds tended to shift or move around so that one spelling took over the sound of another and so on. Before this episode, English was still fairly phonetic, more or less all letters were pronounced, and only relatively few letters had more than one sound. After the "shift", the way a vowel sound was written did not necessarily have any bearing on its pronunciation. During this period, there were also other less major changes in pronunciation. The final "e" stopped being pronounced; many "s" sounds started to be pronounced "z", though spelling did not change; and "r" before a consonant or at the end of a word stopped being pronounced in much of central and south- eastern England (eg "better", "fair", "horse", "near", "north", "part", "scared"). These changes did not all take place in all parts of Britain. Irish English pronunciation, for example, is closer to the English pronunciation of the fourteenth century than any other form of modern-day English.

From what has been said so far, it might seem that English had become standardised throughout England. This is very far from the truth. There was a great deal of variation, more or less divided along the lines of the dialects of the Old English period. Probably the main differences between the areas were to be found in grammar. The "-ing" ending of verbs was a -and(e) ending in the north; it was -end(e) or -ind(e) in the Midlands and "-ing" only in the south. The third person singular ending of verbs was -(e)s in the north but -(e)th in the south. Generally the form that is now found in standard English is that of the East Midlands dialect (the area which included London, Oxford and Cambridge). This area was the wealthiest, it had the largest population and was centrally located. The key factor to the development of a standardised form of English came towards the end of the 15th century; it was the advent of printing.

In 1476 the first press was set up in England by William Caxton, the father of English printing. He set up his printing works in Westminster in London, mainly producing books, at least at first, for the London area. He naturally chose to use the East Midlands dialect. He also had to adopt a standard spelling for many words which had more than one common spelling. This, then, was the first influence that printing had on the language - a more standardised language based on the East Midlands dialect. And this also marks the beginning of a standard, modern written English language.

The availability of printed books throughout the country had the effect of spreading Caxton's standardised forms, though it took another 100 years before uniformity in the written word was really to be found. This process of standardisation took place at an unfortunate time in the history of English, however. Different spelling systems - mainly Anglo Saxon and French - were still mingling, there were significant dialect differences throughout England and the "Great Vowel Shift" was by no means over. Therefore the English that was standardised through printing was a young language that was still in the process of development. As a result, the written form we still use today usually reflects the English of Caxton's time, while the English we speak is a more recent development. This is the main reason why the English spelling system is not phonetic.

There were, however, a good number of positive development stemming from printing and the fact that books became available to a much wider public. There was a renewed interest in the classics and classical languages - this was the age of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance period which, in England, reached its height in the 16th century, was a period of interest in Greece and in Rome, but also in new scientific discoveries. These new perspectives required new terminology, lacking in English, and so once again English began borrowing from Greek and Latin, as has already been mentioned. Many writers and scientists still used Latin for their works - Latin was still the international language, the language of learning. But things were to change. Isaac Newton, for example, wrote his "Principia" in 1687 in Latin, but his "Opticks" in 1704 in English.

Examples of Latin words acquired in the 16th century include: "capsule", "agile', "expensive", "dexterity", "insane" "habitual" and so on. Examples from Greek via Latin include: "atmosphere", "autograph", "climax", "critic", "parasite", "pneumonia" and others. Directly from Greek we have: "anonymous", "catastrophic", "ostracize", "tonic", etc.

This was also the age of discovery, the Elizabethan period when English navigators reached various far-flung corners of the world. And returning from their travels they began to bring back a variety of discoveries - spices, tobacco, new plants and vegetables, and, of course, new vocabulary. And at the same time, there were borrowings (though not so numerous) from French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and from their colonies.

Printing had more than just the effect of standardising spelling. It gave large number of people access to the same work. The best examples are Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the Authorised Version of the Bible (1611). Shakespeare introduced many new words into the language - examples are "accommodation", "assassination", "eventful" and "laughable". Both Shakespeare and the Bible introduced a whole host of idioms.

The language found in Shakespeare and the Bible is fairly close to the English we know today, most of the vocabulary is known and grammatical and syntactical patterns are familiar. There were, however, a number of significant differences from English today which were even to last into the 18th century. They are summed up in the illustrative table.

Dictionaries really only began to become widespread in the 17th century, the most famous being Dr Johnson's Dictionary of 1755. The appearance of dictionaries continued the process begun by printing - the standardisation of the language. The better compilers of dictionaries had a significant influence on spelling and definition, but it was probably the grammarians who caused more of an upset.

English was considered by many scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries to be inferior as a language - it had a hotch-potch of a word stock, it had no real future tense, it had a grammar that varied and, disgrace upon disgrace, it had no subjunctive form! Of course, this inferiority arose from comparison with Latin and other European languages.

Some grammarians started trying to put things right. They wrote grammar books which attempted to make English conform to Latin grammars. There are many examples, and a good number are still taught to children today:

• they declared that as a Latin or French infinitive was just one word, not two as in English, it was therefore wrong to split an English infinitive - "to quickly eat" was incorrect;
• they judged that it was wrong to end a sentence with a preposition (Latin never did and "pre-position" prae-positio meant "placed before", so the very name prevented it from coming at the end);
• they insisted that only the form "If I were" was correct, inventing an English subjunctive out of a regional variety;
• they solved the confusing use of both "shall" and "will" to indicate the future with a compromise - "shall" for "I" and "we", and "will" for the other persons;
• they banned colloquial terms (like "hotch-potch");
• they ignored the fact that nearly everyone said; "It's me!" and insisted that an analysis of Latin grammar dictated that the correct from was: "It's I!";
• they considered the use of "whom" compulsory when introducing a relative clause with a different subject.
• All of this had a remarkable effect on written English, though spoken English tended to continue with its freer forms. Nowadays, however, modern English grammar books simply tend to describe the language without reference to rules.

The grammar and vocabulary of standard, non-colloquial English of today is not significantly different from that of the English used in England in 1800. Change in the standard form of the language has in many ways been slowed down during the last two hundred years by printing, dictionaries, grammar books, ease of communication and all the various media. At this stage, however, when we start talking about the 19th and 20th centuries it becomes necessary to stop talking just about England. English was exported to many far-flung corners of the globe as discovery and exploitation spread. For an appraisal of modern English it is necessary to consider the various international varieties which have developed over the last few centuries.