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Reforms in Old and Middle English

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Reforms in Old and Middle English
Reforms in Old and Middle English The English language is a Germanic based language that resides in the Indo-European family of languages. English is spoken all over the world and there are about four hundred and seventy million people who speak it. English is also the official language of many nations. It is spoken on every major continent. This language can be considered the auxiliary language of the world; it is actually becoming a global language. English has also replaced French as the language of diplomacy. The United Nations at this current time not only uses English as one of its official languages but also as one of two working languages. A working language is a language that is given a special legal status in an organization as a primary means of communication. It is the primary language in the daily correspondence in an organization where the members come from various different language backgrounds. In the present time English’s continued existence can be placed on the fifth century German conquerors of Britain. English can be divided into two periods Old English and Middle English. Old English and Middle English came about because of the influences of the languages of the invaders who came and conquered and subsequently ruled. There is documentation in the form of manuscripts that has contributed evidence of the alterations in orthography and has given insinuations of the evolving pronunciation as the ruling power made a transition from Germanic Anglo Saxon to French Norman. For this reason there was a continuously changing connection from the phonemically labeled spelling of the Old English language to a language whose spelling did not mirror the pronunciation in the Middle English language. Old English, which was also known as Anglo Saxon, was one of the first forms of the English language that was used for speech and for writing in parts of Europe that are now known as England and Southern

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