English is an Indo-European language (a group of languages that include most European, Indian and Iranian languages and dialects), and is part of the smaller subcategory of Germanic (a language family that includes German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Yiddish, Afrikaans, Faroese and Frisian).

English as we know it today has been through a long and complicated history, and has dramatically changed from what it was when it first began in the 5th century. From Anglo-Saxons to Norman invaders to Shakespeare, English has established a complicated relationship with both its Germanic roots and its Italic heritage.

English officially had its beginnings when the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Jutes, Frisians and Saxons sailed from Jutland (what is now modern day Denmark) and colonized the island which is now England, Wales and Scotland in 407ADhttp://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/firsteuro/invas.html. The original inhabitants of England (Celtic tribes and the last remnants of the Roman Empire) spoke a variety of Celtic languages and Latin. On the arrival of the Germanic tribes, the remains of Roman soldiers and citizens were driven back to the mainland, and the island (known as "Brittania," or "Land of the Britons" by the Romans) became known as "Anglaland" ("Land of the Angles") as the Germanic tribes settled in. Their languages mixed with the Celtic and Latin spoken there to create the first stage of the English language, known as Old English. But English as it was spoken back then did not bear almost any resemblance to what it is today. For example, this excerpt from the prologue of the epic poem "Beowulf," written in about 900AD by an unknown author, is one of the best (and few) examples of written Old English, but is almost completely unintelligible to speakers of Modern English ("æ" is like the "a" in "cat," "þ" is like the "th" in "with" and "ð" is like the "th" in "this"):

Hwæt! We gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!

Go to the video below to listen to this part of the prologue spoken by performer Stellan Olsson.

Six centuries later in 1066, English moved to its next phase, Middle English. A group of people referred to as the "North Men" (known today as the Normans) from what would be later known as the Normandy region of France, invade England. A war had erupted after the death of Edward the Confessor, who left no heir to his throne. England's Harold Godwinson was crowned king temporarily, but William of Normandy (also known as "William the Conquerer," a distant cousin of Harold) declared war on Harold on the grounds that the late King Edward had promised the crown to him. William won the war, and on Christmas Day of 1066, he was crowned King of England and the Norman rule of the Anglo-Saxon island began http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/bayeux.htm. When the Normans became the ruling class in the middle of the 11th century, their language (Old Norman, derived from Latin) took over much of the upper-class terminology of the day. For example, farm animals retain the names used originally by the Anglo-Saxon population, such as "cow" ("cu" in Old English)http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cow, "pig" ("picg")http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pig and "sheep" ("sceap")http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sheep. But as food, they have names derived from Old Norman, as the aristocracy ruled the delicacies of the kitchen; for example "beef" (from the Old Norman "buef")http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=beef, "pork" ("porc")http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pork?r=75 and "mutton" ("muton")http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mutton. To this day, words from Old Norman origin sound to English ears as being more intelligent and sophisticated (consider which would be more acceptable in a scholarly essay, "old" or "ancient"; "old" derives from the Old English "eald," while "ancient" derives from the Old Norman "ancien" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oldhttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ancient). Because of the Normans extreme influence on the language of the Anglo-Saxons, what came of the combination of these two languages is much more comprehensible to the ear of a Modern English speaker. The following is an excerpt from the Prologue of "The Canterbury Tales," by Geoffrey Chaucer:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye...

Go to the video below to listen to this part of the Canterbury Tales read aloud, as it would have been pronounced in the 14th century.

One of the curious things to notice is that the English language then was written as it was pronounced. Chaucer was among the first in England to publish his stories using the printing press, and was therefore forced into a standardized spelling system for each of his books. Before Chaucer, each English speaker wrote their words according to their own dialect of English and pronunciation, but after Chaucer's success with "The Canterbury Tales," his method of spelling spread to most of England.

However, immediately following the establishment of a unified English spelling system, there occurred in English what is called "The Great English Vowel Shift," and the era of Modern English began. Previously pronounced letters ("e"s on the ends of words, "-ough" endings, consonants like "k" in "knife") were silenced, changed or muted. "Name" in Middle English was pronounced "nah-muh" and "sweet" sounded the same as the modern word "sweat," but these words mutated into their modern pronunciation sometime between the 12th and 16th centurieshttp://courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html There are many theories as to why this occurred. Perhaps the mass mortality cause by the Black Plague allowed English speakers from the lower classes to "invade" the upper class, contributing their more Anglo-Saxon accent to an otherwise Norman class. Or perhaps because of the wars between England and France during this period, speakers of English consciously tried not to sound "too Norman"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift#History. Whatever the reason, English had made one of its last great changes into what we know today as Modern English.

Modern English effectively begins with this vowel change, and ushers in the age of Shakespeare, who wrote in the 16th century with what is categorized as "Early Modern English." Here is an excerpt from Macbeth (Act III, Scene 1):

We hear our bloody cousins are bestow'd
In England and in Ireland, not confessing
Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers
With strange invention. But of that tomorrow,
When therewithal we shall have cause of state
Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse; adieu,
Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?

Though it may take Modern English speakers a small effort to understand the different meanings of otherwise familiar words ("bestowed" means "living" and not "given," and "parricide" speaks strongly of our Norman roots, where the Latin words "parus" and "cidium" mean "relative" and "killing" respectively), and the word order was rather more fluid than it is today ("Goes Fleance with you?" rather than "Is Fleance going with you?"), it is without a doubt the English we know today.

And English continues to change today. New words are formed, older words fall into oblivion. Technology forces us to create new words for objects that never before existed ("Internet," "hybrid," "email"), and at the same time forces us to rethink what has already been established ("mouse," "friending," "cu l8r"). British English maintains its own linguistic path, while the newer dialect of American English has begun embarking on its own journey. Such is the never-ending cycle of language, and it will continue on as long as there is the need to communicate.