Is English a Pure Language or Not?

When we say that a thing is pure, it would often mean as something that is authentic, something that is original. The question whether English is a pure language or not can be answered in two ways. If we will be strict with the meaning of the word pure, then I should say that English is not a pure language. Why? Being pure means that it should be free from any extraneous factor and influence, rather it should be the source, the origin.

According to A Brief History of English by Paul Roberts (2001), the English language is an evolution of many languages combined. The English language originated from German, Latin and French language through invasions of the Roman Empire, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans from Scandinavia.

There are two reasons why English has become as widespread and affluent as now - political and technological.

The major contributors to the spread of English as a language in the political aspect is mainly because of the reigns of various political powers namely Alfred the Great of the West Saxons, and the Normans. As an initiator of learning, Alfred the Great encouraged the translation of Latin books to English; thus, paving the way for English enhancement during the Old English era (Roberts, 2001). Then came the Middle English era, wherein the Norman Conquest took place. However, even if the Normans used French as their medium of communication, they never imposed the language to the whole country since their primary purpose was not really "national migration", according to Roberts (2001), but rather they came to be landlords. Nevertheless, the conquest affected the English language, in one way or another, for French was the secondary language back then. The effect was French words entered the English vocabulary and is, in fact, found in our dictionary even at present.

During the Modern English period, the Industrial Revolution simultaneously occurred. During the revolution was the creation of the printing press. Having been able to print books and letters, and pass them on to the people, made it easier to widen the scope of English as a national language.

Through time, the language interposed by the invaders to the people evolved to what we now call as English. The development of the said language were divided in three stages - the Old English period was during the Anglo-Saxon influence in which the great legend of Beowulf was created, the Middle English in which Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were published, and the Modern English whose representative is the widely-known William Shakespeare. Comparing the works produced in these particular eras shows the obvious development of the English language and at the same time the main contributors to its development. Each literary work from each era contained words that are either Latinized or Frenchified (Roberts, 2001).

However, language can also be pure function-wise. A language has many characteristics making it worthy to be called a language. One of which is its dynamism. Language is dynamic because it evolves through time. And that exactly happened to the English language. From a variety of language, English was born deliberately and gradually. If we try to define purity as something that should conform to some known bases for it to be considered as one, that is as a language, then I have to say that English could also be considered pure in the sense that it is a product of dynamism of language.

On the other hand, if we examine the history that the English language had went through, it is just right to say that English is not a pure language at all. With having undergone such developments mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, the English language is already permeated by other different languages such as French, German and Latin. If these languages have not infiltrated the original English, I am pretty sure you would not be able to read, and at the same time understand most of, if not everything, that is written in this paper.

If we ask whether these changes in the English language are beneficial or not, I suppose we could never answer it directly, but just guess. We would not know, right?