Chapter 2 Sources of English Vocabulary

Chapter 2 The sources of the English Vocabulary

The English people are of a mixed blood. At the beginning of the fifth century Britain was invaded by three tribes from the Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

These three tribes landed on the British coast, drove the Britons west and north and settled down on the island.

These three three tribes merged into one people: the English people and the three dialects they spoke naturally grew into a single language: the English language.

The world has nearly 3,000 languages, which can be grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities in their basic word stock and grammar. The Indo-European is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the near East, and India.

Indo-European Language

Eastern Set

Western Set

Eastern Set

Balto-Slavic

Indo-Irannian

Armenian

Albanian

Balto-Slavic

Czech Russian

Prussian

Polish

Slovenian

Lithuanian

Bulgarian

Indo-Iranian

Persian

Bengali

Hindi

Romany

Derived from Sanskrit

Armenian

Albanian

Armenian

Albanian

Western Set

Celtic

Italic

Germanic Hellenic

Celtic

Scottish

Irish

Welsh

Breton

Italic

ItalianFrench

Portuguese

Spanish

Romanian

Germanic

Norwegian Icelandic Danish Swedish

German Dutch Flemish English

Hellenic

Greek

A Historical Overview of the

English Vocabulary