History of the English language
· about 5000 B.C. a tribe called the Indo-Europeans lived in central Europe, they had their own language, and when they discovered the wheel around 3000 B.C., they were able to travel; some went on east, some on west and those, who came to Britain, were the Celts
· today the Celts live still in Scotland, Western Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany (northern France)
· after more than 2000 years the Celts were the only people living in Britain; than the Romans arrived and Julius Caesar with his army brought there new language – Latin; but Romans lived only in England, so only very few words entered the Celtic language
· the Romans left in 410 A.D., but 40 years later the Anglo-Saxon invaded the Britain – they came from Holland, Denmark and Germany (England means ‘land of the Angels’); their language was Old English and many of their words are still in dictionaries (sheep, earth, dog, work, field; the, is, you)
· in 597 A.D. Saint Augistine brought Christianity to Britain and hundreds of Latin and Greek words entered Old English
· another words (get, wrong, leg, want, skin, same and low) have their roots in Norse – a language of Vikings, who lived in Scandinavia and invaded Britain between the years 750 and 1050
