In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. If you knew how to speak French, it was a very good thing and most people were respected for it. The lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. However, later on English became dominant in England, even though many French words were added to the language. This language was called ‘Middle English’.
From the late 15th century, the language changed into Modern English, often dated from the Great Vowel Shift. After this, there was an official way of speaking English. Spelling and grammar also became fixed and so did the dialect of this country. Many people these days get confused with Modern English and modern English. The main difference is that the vocab is slightly different.
Reading books, magazines and newspapers of fine quality are good ways of improving my English. On the whole, most of them are grammatically correct. We may speak incorrect English and get away with it, however not so much when we a reading words which are meant to be read in a particular way. Through reading, I have learned how to use correct English in writing and speaking, though sometimes, my English wavers while I am at a certain place with certain people. For example, when I am in school with my friends, my idiolect is mainly Standard English; however, there are some words and phrases, which are not what we may call: the Queen’s English. Some of the words and phrases are what we call slang.
For instance, instead of me saying; ‘he’s lying’, I say; ‘he’s gassing’. I try not to say these street terms, however, since I hear these things often from the people around me, I now have the habit of saying these words. Furthermore, spoken English is mainly spontaneous, so we don’t really think about how we are going to say something. Spoken English is unplanned unlike written English. On the other hand, you can also put forward that one can speak slang when they are writing. For example, when someone is on Facebook, MSN, or is texting someone, they may use slang or abbreviations. An example of slang would be;’ Wassup?’, which is short for ‘what’s up’, meaning; How is it going? So it is a slang-abbreviation.
