English is my second language. When I was 12 years old, our family escaped from Czechoslovakia, which was then still under communist rule, to begin a free life elsewhere. After 18 months under political asylum in beautiful Austria, a chain of interviews at embassies, and to my delight, a temporary exemption from school, we boarded a plane to begin a completely new life in Canada.
None of us spoke a word of English. In Toronto, my brother and I were immediately enrolled in school, and so began my English education through a national program offered by Canadian school boards: English as a Second Language (ESL).
Coming from a relatively fast-paced Czech education system, I was ahead in the core curriculum except for English and French. I was able to stay with my age group despite the language barrier and focus on learning the language. One school year of intense vocabulary and grammar for three hours per day, then the rest of the day in full unassisted immersion in classes with Canadian kids.
That experience left me with a deep appreciation for the lexical range of English. Though very different from Czech in structure and behaviour, it offers the same kind of flexibility for switching across registers and expanding expression.
So here, I look at English through a foreigner’s lens. And because I love world history, the best place to begin is with a short version of the 2000-year-long journey that made English what it is.
Where Did English Come From?
Before English existed in Britain, much of the island was inhabited by Brittonic Celtic-speaking populations.
The Ancient Roman Empire
The ancient Roman Empire conquered much of Britain by 43 AD. The final conquest is largely attributed to Emperor Claudius, the physically disabled and underestimated protagonist in Robert Graves’ biographical bestseller “I, Claudius.” The Roman expansion met strong resistance in Scotland, which limited Rome’s control of the island’s northern territories. The 73-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall near Newcastle upon Tyne marks the boundary of Roman conquest in England. The Romans brought Latin, Roman administration, roads, towns, military infrastructure, and Christianity.
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes
After the Roman withdrawal in the early 5th century, West Germanic-speaking groups from across the North Sea, traditionally identified as Angles, Saxons and Jutes, began settling in Britain. Their dialects mixed with British Latin formed the basis of Old English.
Old English looked and sounded much different. It had fuller inflections, grammatical gender, a four-case nominal system, strong and weak adjective paradigms, syntax that relied less on fixed word order, and a vocabulary that most English speakers today would find nearly unrecognizable.
Here is an example:
Modern English
“Hello, how are you?”
Old English
A rough equivalent might be:
Wes þū hāl. Hū eart þū?
Pronounced: Wes thoo haahl. Hoo art thoo? (“þ” carries the “th” sound.)
Approximate meaning: “Greetings. How are you getting on?”
The Eastern Roman Empire
In the late 6th century, during the Byzantine era, when Constantinople was the administrative centre of the Roman Empire, Pope Gregory I sent Augustine of Canterbury to Kent to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The Roman Church hadn’t yet separated into Catholic and Eastern Orthodox institutions. Christianity had been practiced across England since Roman times, but not by all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Augustine was received by King Æthelberht of Kent, whose Christian queen, Bertha, helped make that mission politically possible. He set up his base at Canterbury, and within about 90 years, all the main Saxon kingdoms had converted. The new religion brought Latin literacy, monastic scholarship, and a much stronger written culture that deepened Latin influence on Old English.
The Vikings
Next came the Viking period. Vikings were Scandinavian seafarers from what is now Denmark, Sweden and Norway. They were a powerful group of traders who built ships and sailed in search of land, control of long-distance trade routes and wealth. They raided the north and east of England from the late 8th century and colonized it. With them came Old Norse, a North Germanic language related to Old English. Though they were different languages, speakers could partly understand each other. Like Latin, Old Norse contributed a substantial number of words to English.
Over the following two centuries, conflicts among Britons, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings gradually shifted political and cultural power southward. There, kingdoms began unifying and forming the base of resistance against Viking settlement and power in the north. The south became the place of government, and by the early 11th century, a more united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England emerged.
The Normans
Then came the Norman Conquest. At the beginning of the 11th century, William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and became King William I of England, also known as William the Conqueror. Normandy became a part of the kingdom of England. Norman French became the language of court, law and administration, while Latin continued to serve in religion, scholarship and record-keeping. English was spoken in everyday life.
For centuries, English absorbed huge amounts of French vocabulary. Everything from government, law, food, and culture. French gave English a new upper register. Through daily contact between English, French and Latin, the old grammatical system of Old English continued to erode, and Old English developed into Middle English.
Middle English leaned more heavily on word order, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs. Over time, the Norman elite in England became more English, and after the French Crown annexed Normandy from England in the 13th century, English gradually replaced French in English court.
The English
As English regained prestige, London was becoming a political and commercial centre of England. When printing arrived in England in the 15th century, the London-based written form increasingly became the model for literary English, and spelling started to stabilize. This was the era of Early Modern English.
Spoken English, however, continued to change. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, English underwent a large-scale phonological reorganization that linguists call The Great Vowel Shift. Many long vowels changed in quality, which is one of the main reasons modern English spelling is so poorly matched to modern pronunciation. Written English evolved more slowly than spoken English. Printing presses preserved stabilized forms, while spoken English continued to evolve faster than reforms in written English would be possible.
Early Modern English is the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. If you have ever been forced to read Shakespeare in this variety of English, you know how dramatically different it is from the English we speak today. For me, this part of formal English education was a linguistic nightmare.
The Renaissance
From the 16th to 18th centuries, English continued to expand through print, scholarship, government administration, dictionaries and gradually standardized grammar. Renaissance humanism brought in large numbers of Latin and Greek terms, especially in philosophy, science, medicine, literature and formal thought.
By the late 18th century, grammarians, lexicographers, teachers, writers, and printers had helped establish a more stable literary standard, largely based on the London dialect. This richer, more standardized, multi-register form of the language developed into Late Modern English, the direct ancestor of the Present-Day English we speak now.
Present-Day English: The World's Lingua Franca
English is the world’s common language today.
Contrary to popular theory, this is not because it is easy to learn. In fact, it is far from easy. Structurally, it may be simpler than some languages in its very limited grammatical gender, modest verb inflection, and almost non-existent noun case marking. But its lexical range and constant register-switching are difficult to master. Its spelling is illogical, and for a Slavic speaker, its pronunciation is linguistic punishment.
Words like three, the, thinking, through, though, thought, tough, bought, or ought are brutal for a new learner whose native language expresses vowels and consonants differently. Then there are phonemes like wine, vine, west, vest, worse, and verse. It takes real auditory training not only to hear the difference in the v versus wuh sound, but to reproduce it when your own language doesn’t distinguish phonetically between v and w. Then there is also its polysemic vocabulary – the word set has 52 different meanings!
So, how did it become the world’s common denominator for enabling conversations among speakers of other languages?
As a small island kingdom with a long history of repeated invasions, dynastic rivalry, and the constant need to protect itself from stronger continental powers, it focused on building its Navy. Under the rule of King William III and his successors, England gradually became a military powerhouse in its rivalry with France. Over the following centuries, England, and later Britain, launched effective naval campaigns to capture trade, colonize new territories, establish their laws in foreign lands, dispatch missionary work, and to educate and govern in the English language. Dynastic marriages also played their part, helping secure alliances and succession, and extend influence across Europe’s ruling houses.
By 1922, at its height, the British Empire covered nearly one-quarter of the world’s land surface and ruled more than one-quarter of the world’s population; approximately 458 million people at that time. Its holdings stretched across the United States, Canada, parts of the Caribbean, large parts of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, parts of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and countless islands and strategic ports.
People used to say that it was the empire on which the sun never set.
Foreign Words in the Standard English Lexicon
One of the best ways to see how English formed is to look at the words it acquired from each of the above influences.
Vulgar Latin: roads, walls and kitchenware
Early Latin, as spoken by Roman soldiers, gave English words associated with material civilization and life in Italy.
Examples include street from strata (“a paved road”), wall from vallum (“a rampart”), wine from vinum, kitchen from coquina (“a place for cooking”), mile from milia passuum (“thousands of paces”), cheese from caseus, butter from butyrum, kettle from catillus (“a small vessel”), inch from uncia (“a twelfth part”), and camp and campus from campus “field” or “camp”).
West Germanic: blunt and short
The oldest core of English is still Germanic. These are the short, sturdy words that carry everyday life.
Examples include house from hūs, loaf from hlāf, bread from brēad (“a morsel”), wife from wīf (“a woman”), child from cild, friend from frēond (“one who loves”), drink from drincan, sleep from slǣpan, water from wæter, stone from stān, hand from hand, and night from niht.
Old Norse: phonetically familiar
Because Old Norse was also a Germanic language, many Norse words still sound familiar.
Examples include sky from ský (“cloud”), Thursday from Þórsdagr (“Thor’s day”), egg from egg, law from lagu, husband from húsbóndi ( “house-dweller”; this one made me laugh), knife from knífr, window from vindauga (“wind-eye”), wrong from vrangr, skill from skil, ill from illr, and even they, them, and their from þeir, þeim, and þeira.
Norman French: introducing the upper register
Now, remember that during this time, French was the language of the English imperial court and government, and co-existed with Latin in education and the Church, and with English spoken in the daily life of the general public.
The three languages eventually began to blend even in daily life, giving Old English a new personality in the form of Middle English.
To the general public, French brought a large vocabulary associated with animals and food.
Example:
The names of animals in the field stayed in English, but once they were cooked, they were given French names.
cū (a cow) – boef (beef or ox)
picga (a pig) – porc (pork)
scēap (a sheep) – moton (mutton)
French also gave English much of its public vocabulary: government from governement and Latin gubernare (“to steer” or “govern”), court from court and Latin cohors (“enclosed yard” and later “royal household”), royal from roial and Latin regalis (“of a king”), prison from prisun and Latin prehensio (“a taking” or “seizure”), parliament from parlement, ultimately tied to speaking and discussion, question from question and Latin quaestio (“inquiry” or “investigation”), assist from assister and Latin assistere (“to stand by”), fashion from façon and Latin factio (“making” or “doing”), and menu from menu and Latin minutus (“small” or “detailed”), before it had anything to do with restaurants.
Later French borrowings
English kept borrowing from French long after the Norman period.
Garage comes from garer (“to shelter, dock, or moor”), file from fil (“thread”), from the time when documents were literally threaded together, bureau from bureau (“a cloth covering a desk”), chauffeur from chauffeur (“a stoker”), and boulevard from boulevard, a fortified rampart before it became a pleasant urban tree-lined avenue.
Renaissance Latin and Classical Greek: the technical lexicon
The Renaissance and its learned culture in England promoted English into scholarship, science, and formal thought. During this era, Latin remained the language of learning, and Greek was imported through translation into Latin, commentaries and Latin mediation.
From Renaissance Latin came words such as memorandum (“something to be remembered”), species (“appearance,” “kind,” or “form”), index (“pointer” or “indicator”), radius (“ray,” “rod,” or “spoke”), data (“things given”), and maximum (“greatest”).
From Classical Greek came drama from drāma (“deed” or “action”), theatre from theatron (“place for viewing”), chorus from khoros (“dance” or “choral band”), physics from physika (“things of nature”), chaos from khaos (“void” or “chasm”), and idea from idea (“form,” “appearance,” or “that which is seen”).
English is Great for Humour
One of my favourite things about English is its broad toolkit for comic effect. Much of that comes from register contrast. English can smoothly transition from loftily proper to ridiculous, and combined with foreign accents and different tones. Its polysemy, dialectal variation, slang and flexibility in wordplay give it an enormous range for implied meaning. It can be anything from intimately punchy, pompous, to absurdly over-articulated.
Some comedians have made brilliant use of that range. George Carlin built entire routines out of semantic distinctions, euphemism, taboo vocabulary, and brilliant demonstrations in register switching. Stephen Fry and John Cleese exploited its ability to sound excessively proper, archaic, or Latin-infused when the subject matter is stupid, crude, or mundane. Eddie Izzard thrives on sudden jumps between historical English, conversational English, mock formality, and the absurdly literal. Tim Minchin uses wordplay, rhythm, and tonal shifts with almost musical precision. Robin Williams used English like a verbal rollercoaster, racing through accents, invented phrasing, wordy impersonations, and manic register-switching.
From across all of its dialectal varieties, and the fact that so many foreigners speak it with their own accents and bring their own linguistic quirks and cultural textures with it, English gives comedy an incredibly large lexical goldmine.
English Is Not Just One Language
English is an official language in more than 50 countries, but it doesn’t have a global standard. It is a family of mutually intelligible world varieties. The core group includes American English, British English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, Irish English, Scottish English, and South African English. These differ most obviously in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary, spelling preferences, rhythm, idiom, and some grammar. Even within each of them, there are strong regional dialects of their own.
Then there are the large post-colonial national varieties often described as World Englishes or New Englishes. These include Caribbean English, Indian English, Nigerian English, Singapore English, and Philippine English, all of which developed in multilingual settings and are now established varieties in their own right. In some places, English is the official language of administration and education, while local languages dominate home and community life.
English is a “cool” language. Its plainness, phonological range, enormous vocabulary, and flexibility across registers give it an unusually colourful personality. But the best part about it is that we can use it nearly anywhere in the world and be able to communicate and problem-solve.
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Santium’s work combines language, science, and measurement. Our focus is on translating words while also preserving conceptual integrity, contextual relevance, and functional equivalence across languages. Whether it’s clinical outcome assessments, scientific, technical or regulatory documentation, the goal is the same: ensure that what is being translated from one language is understood, relevant and functional in the same way in another.
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Monika Vance
Managing Director | SANTIUM
My work sits at the intersection of linguistics, scientific and medical translation, psychometric measurement, and multilingual operations, where terminology, usability, and regulatory context must align. I write about scientific and medical translations, psychometrics, languages, and the operational challenges that inevitably come with them. I also teach translators how to properly translate and validate complex psychometric instruments to hone their expertise in linguistic validation.
