Overview

Linguists, people who study language and trace its development, know that written communication came into existence well after people developed oral communication. The first type of written communication is called hieroglyphic writing, or picture writing. There are types of language that developed from these pictures, which represented objects or ideas:

• logographic writing: each character represents an entire word
• syllabary writing: each character represents a syllable
• alphabetic writing: each character represents a sound

If you trace language back through history, you will notice that languages are related to each other. English, for example, is descended from Germanic. Old English, the earliest recognized form of English, existed from about A.D. 449 to 1100. It developed in Britain as invaders converged, bringing different language influences to the same area. Middle English, which lasted from about A.D. 1100 to 1450, was grammatically simpler than Old English. By about 1590, Modern English developed. While spelling still wasn’t solidified, things like case endings and grammatical gender were gone. Contemporary English, what people speak today, continues to evolve and grow to incorporate words from other languages and technological changes.