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<title> Is English a Germanic or a Romance language? </title>
1 Introduction
The aim of this essay is to discuss whether English is a Germanic or a Romance language. To be able to do so, I will start with sketching out a historical background, briefly covering the main events from 410 AD to the 16th century that are of importance for the language development. Further on, I will discuss some of the main linguistic features of Old and Middle English and try to find out what influence Old Norse, French and Latin have had on the language. Of what importance they are and whether it could be argued that they have made English a more Germanic than Romance language or vice versa, I will also discuss.

2. Historical background
		

Old English Period	 Middle English Period
		-------------------------------------- | ----------------------
	 450 AD 780 AD 1066 AD 1500 AD
	| |		|	 |
	 ---------------------------------------------------------------
	| | | 
	 Anglo-Saxons Vikings Normans

The year 410 AD the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in large amounts began to settle in England and with this also driving away the Romans and Celts. Their origins were Danish and Hollandaise and with them they brought the Germanic language. This was the beginning of a new era of the English language. By 700 AD the Anglo-Saxons, as they were to be called, had occupied most of England and southern Scotland and secured their positions as rulers of the countries. From the beginning England consisted of many small kingdoms - a result of all the invasions from different Germanic tribes. In the 9th century however, the kings of Wessex finally unified the country and from now on England stayed as one kingdom. During their reign the people of England converted to Christianity and this took place during the whole of the 7th century. This also meant the ability of writing being introduced and that Latin became more widely spread, since that was the language of Christianity. 

During the later part of the Old English period, England was invaded by two groups of non-English speakers with Scandinavian origin. The languages they brought with them were Old Norse of purely Scandinavian origin and Old French. The Norwegians and Danes - the Vikings - made their first attacks at about 800 AD and settled by the end of the 9th century. They almost conquered the whole of England, would it not be for King Alfred that held the South and West against them, but in 878 AD he lost though. The West Saxon kings then re-conquered the North and the East, but then again the Vikings established kingdoms in those areas. This period of time was as can be understood, a rather violent and rapidly changing one. Old English and Old Norse were reasonably similar at this point. Henceforth many speakers used both languages, only changing pronunciation and inflections. In the end Old Norse died out in England, but before then a considerable deal of Scandinavian was mixed into the English language.

The Norman Conquest of 1066 had a profound influence on the English language. The influence from France however, had begun much earlier, for example since Edward the Confessor was half-Norman and had close relations with France (Barber 1993). On Christmas Day 1066 William the Conqueror was crowned king of England and for centuries to come French would be the language of the court and the nobility, while ordinary people and merchants spoke English (Baugh, Cable 1993). Thus the distinction between English and French speaking were not ethnic but social, which also had to do with the fact that it were these classes that were largely destroyed in England and replaced by Norman equals. The standard literary languages became Latin and French for the forthcoming three centuries, although people still also wrote in the language of their own region. Latin was the language of the church, scholarship and international communication, while Norman French - later Anglo-Norman - was the language of the court and nobility. 

However in the 13th century, when Central French began to influence the rest of France, the Anglo-Norman dialect lost some of its prestige in England. This together with the fact that English was the mother tongue of the majority of the English people, eventually meant the 'striking back' of English as the official language (Barber 1993). An observation of a late 13th century writer clearly illustrate the actual position of French among the masses (Baugh, Cable 1993):

Lewende men cune Ffrensch non,	'Common men know no French'
Among an hondryd venneŝis on	'Among a hundred scarcely one'

Another important event in favour of the English language was King John's loss of Normandy to the French crown in the early 13th century. This meant that the nobility had to take a stand for which country they should belong to and the ties to France eventually faded out. However Henry III infiltrated many French nobilities and during his reign 1216-1272 and the country was 'eaten up' by strangers. This of course caused a reaction and in the Provisions of Oxford 1258 and in the Baron's Wars against Henry III in the middle of the 13th century, there was a good deal of anti-foreigner propaganda. National feelings began to rise in England as well as in the rest of Western Europe and from the 14th century onwards the amount of people with French as a mother tongue ceased quickly and those who wanted to speak the language had to learn it. Literature written in English became more and more frequent and in 1362 an act was passed, making English the official language of the law-courts instead of French. Where French stayed important even after this was in the king's court. However when Henry IV seized the throne in 1399, England for the first time since the Norman Conquest acquired a king whose mother tongue was English. 

These changes in society also brought with them a re-establishment of an English literary language based on the East Midland dialect of Middle English. This had been standardised by the end of the 15th century, although the implementation did not take place over night, since many dialects of English co-existed for a long period of time. Modern English is mainly descended from this dialect, which itself is mainly descended from the Mercian dialect of Old English. The language of international learning - Latin, still had a great prestige from the early 16th century onwards. Though literature aimed for learned people in England and Europe, for example Thomas More's Utopia from 1516, was written in Latin. Works aimed for ordinary people however were written in the English language. Furthermore the translation of the Bible into English raised the prestige of English, together with the increased national feeling in the 15th and 16th centuries. Instead of being part of a religion, people now felt they were part of a country. The rise of social and occupational groups that had little or no knowledge of Latin, but were eager to read and learn also helped the English to become more prestigious. The introduction of the printing technique in the 15th century of course helped spreading literature in English - and other languages. However, although English became more and more important, the Renaissance period was the period of rediscovery of the classics in Europe, so English were more under its influence than ever. Up until this time, English however underwent the most important changes. Though from now on the major development were new loan words taken in.

3. Discussion about the influence of the various languages
The English language have through history, as can be understood from above, had many different influences from various language families. Of course it has had an impact of the development of the language and I will look closer at the period of Old and Middle English when the changes where the most obvious. The Anglo-Saxons, that invaded England in the beginning of this period of time, belonged to the family of Germanic languages. Since they settled all over England in a relatively short period of time and drove away the Celts and Romans, the language of England became Old English. The linguistic features of this language were much more complex than the ones of Modern English, although its origin can easily be seen when comparing other language developments. For example the system of inflections was much wider than it is today, which is also the case of many other Germanic languages except maybe Icelandic, where one have tried to preserve the old language as far as possible. The many inflection-forms made word order less important and thus we can find sentences constructed both with the present-day standard S-V-O and others for example V-S-O and S-O-V. Also the system of demonstratives were very different. They constituted of ten different forms of sé, today 'the' and 'that', and just as many of ŝes, today 'this'. Another noteworthy fact is that Old English did not have as many loan words as English later on acquired. This is because the English-speaking groups of people of this time were fairly homogenous concerning language origin. All the invaders had come from various parts of Germanic-speaking communities, where the grammar and vocabulary were quite similar. This meant a solid basis of structural features such as grammatical words, numerals and everyday lexical words, of which most have remained until present time.
 
However English of today does not sound as Old English and the spelling can sometimes seem rather confusing. The causes behind this are many. The sound-changes can generally be explained with partly the many influences from people with another mother tongue than English and partly with minimisation of effort. In Old English for example, words were pronounced as they were written, something that later changed to a great extent. The weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables and the monophthongization of diphthongs in Middle English are just some examples. The loss of English as a literary language during the reign of the Normans certainly had its impact on the writing as well as the numerous loan words from French that were to be taken into the language. The impact from the French language were however quite different from the Germanic one. While the Germanic tribes had conquered and taken over the society in all layers, the Norman invasion only meant a switch of rulers and nobility. The majority of the English people - about 90% - still had English as their mother tongue during the Norman period. However language of the governing classes tend to deeply influence the society as a whole. Many new words concerning French culture were brought to England. Also many pairs of words from Old English and French with about the same meaning has come to co-exist in the English language, creating greater possibilities for variation. This is a result of the separate mother tongues of the people of a country. On the French words brought in early, we can see that the inflection systems are assimilated like the Scandinavian borrowings. Also the later loan words have for example changed their stress-pattern though and they now carry the same pronunciation scheme as the Germanic languages, namely with the stress on the first part of the word. However the period of notable French influence in the English language was relatively short and limited to certain areas of language. Latin was taken in for a longer period of time, but here as well the areas of language usage were more limited.

4. Conclusion
From the discussion above I think it is rather obvious that the influence from Germanic and Romance languages are of two different kinds. The Germanic languages make up the framework of English, while the Romance languages have contributed with more possibilities for variation. The inflectional system, the basic grammatical features and the basic vocabulary are of Germanic origin. However many of the actual words are of French or Latin origin, but they have in most cases taken on the grammatical features of Germanic languages. I would therefore argue that English is a more Germanic than a Romance language, however with large influence from many parts of the world. 

5. References
Primary Sources:
Barber, Charles. 1993. The English Language: a Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge

Albert C. Baugh, Thomas Cable. 1993. A History of the English Language. London: Routledge

Williams, Joseph M. 1975. Origins of the English Language. New York: The Free Press.

Secondary Sources:
Gachelin, Jean-Marc. 1990. Is English a Romance Language? English Today 6:3 8-23.

Kroch, Anthony. 1996. 7 The effect of Scandinavian contact on V2 in the North. Internet. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kroch/omev2-html/node16.html 1999-09-25

Ekholm, Kerstin. Year? Is English a Germanic or a Romance language? B-essay Uppsala Universitet.
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