Misplaced Pages

#117882

100-591: When the mace was still in actual use as a weapon, it was deemed fit for close-protection, and hence a mace-bearer could be a bodyguard . Thus in French and Dutch , a massier (armed with a masse d'armes 'weapon-mace') could be a member of a formally so-styled guard corps, as in the court of the Dukes of Brabant . In Spain , a macero were originally an armed guard protecting the King of Castile ; they were called macero due to

200-405: A Vulgar Latin term *mattia or *mattea (cf. Italian mazza, "club, baton, mace"), probably from Latin mateola (uncertain, possibly a kind of club, hammer, or " hoe handle/stick"). Possibly influenced by Latin mattiobarbulus ("type of javelin "), mattiarius ("soldier armed with said javelin"), from mataris, matara (" Gallic javelin"), from a Gaulish or Celtic word. The mace

300-483: A ceremonial sword rather than a ceremonial mace. The duty to carry ceremonial weapons in procession or other formal occasions may either be occasional and vested in an office otherwise named, or give its name to the office, either as a sinecure or in conjunction with other duties (sometimes indeed as an alternative title, as with some university officers, e.g. at St Andrews, the Bedelis is the chief mace bearer and at Oxford

400-587: A charge on a shield or other item, or as external ornamentation. Thus, in France: English language English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , whose speakers, called Anglophones , originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain . The namesake of the language is the Angles , one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain . It

500-546: A mixed language or a creole —a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis . Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages including Dutch , German , and Swedish . These shared innovations show that

600-586: A 'masse' when taking part in formal ceremonies, rather like a staff of office, as the mace is not given the same reverence as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, indeed there may be several ones carried at the same time by staff of the same master, without any symbolism or tradition concerning the individual maces. In Spain, the macero mentioned above evolved to become the symbol of civil authority, usually associated with extra-royal institutions such as municipalities, local authorities, etc. When these institutions celebrate

700-635: A 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 percent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 percent of respondents. A working knowledge of English has become

800-460: A better fit could be made to the wooden club by giving the eye of the mace head the shape of a cone and using a tapered handle. The Shardanas or warriors from Sardinia who fought for Ramses II against the Hittites were armed with maces consisting of wooden sticks with bronze heads. Many bronze statuettes of the times show Sardinian warriors carrying swords, bows and original maces. Persians used

900-649: A club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry , the idea being that he did so to avoid either shedding blood or bearing the arms of war. In the 1893 work Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages , Paul Lacombe and Charles Boutell state that the mace was chiefly used for blows struck upon the head of an enemy. Eastern European maces often had pear shaped heads. These maces were also used by

1000-651: A distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns ( he , him , his ) and has a few verb inflections ( speak , speaks , speaking , spoke , spoken ), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings. Its closest relative

1100-484: A foreign language, make up the "expanding circle". The distinctions between English as a first language, as a second language, and as a foreign language are often debatable and may change in particular countries over time. For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it, and thus English

SECTION 10

#1732848577118

1200-494: A formal ceremony, the macero will head any parade or surround the figures of authority. Similar to the French case, albeit they always wield a 'maza' (a mace), the mace itself does not bear the ceremonial reverence it does in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Typically, the maceros are dressed in characteristic 15th century garment, and wear a tabard with the coat of arms of the institution they represent. Mace (bludgeon) A mace

1300-627: A king swinging a mace. See the articles on the Narmer Macehead and the Scorpion Macehead for examples of decorated maces inscribed with the names of kings. The problem with early maces was that their stone heads shattered easily and it was difficult to fix the head to the wooden handle reliably. The Egyptians attempted to give them a disk shape in the predynastic period (about 3850–3650 BC) in order to increase their impact and even provide some cutting capabilities, but this seems to have been

1400-507: A mace capable of penetrating armour is the flanged mace. The flanges allow it to dent or penetrate thick armour . Flange maces did not become popular until after knobbed maces. Although there are some references to flanged maces ( bardoukion ) as early as the Byzantine Empire c. 900 it is commonly accepted that the flanged mace did not become popular in Europe until the 12th century, when it

1500-520: A more standard version of English. They have many more speakers of English who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and listening to broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the medium of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners. Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in

1600-688: A number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian dialect and Yola language of Ireland. Like Icelandic and Faroese , the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, as it differs in vocabulary , syntax , and phonology . However, some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages. Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated,

1700-679: A requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine and computing. English has become so important in scientific publishing that more than 80 percent of all scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 percent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996 and 82 percent of articles in humanities publications by 1995. International communities such as international business people may use English as an auxiliary language , with an emphasis on vocabulary suitable for their domain of interest. This has led some scholars to develop

1800-407: A rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order . Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses , aspects and moods , as well as passive constructions , interrogatives , and some negation . The earliest form of English

1900-485: A role in ceremonial practices over time, including some still in use today. The ceremonial mace is a short, richly ornamented staff often made of silver, the upper part of which is furnished with a knob or other head-piece and decorated with a coat of arms. The ceremonial mace was commonly borne before eminent ecclesiastical corporations , magistrates , and academic bodies as a mark and symbol of jurisdiction. Ceremonial maces are important in many parliaments following

2000-570: A series of tests on video. Maces are rarely used today for actual combat, but many government bodies (for instance, the British House of Commons and the U.S. Congress ), universities and other institutions have ceremonial maces and continue to display them as symbols of authority. They are often paraded in academic, parliamentary or civic rituals and processions. The modern English word mace entered Middle English from Old French mace, ("large mallet / sledgehammer , mace") itself from

2100-610: A short-lived improvement. A rounded pear form of mace head known as a "piriform" replaced the disc mace in the Naqada II period of pre-dynastic Upper Egypt (3600–3250 BC) and was used throughout the Naqada III period (3250–3100 BC). Similar mace heads were also used in Mesopotamia around 2450–1900 BC. On a Sumerian Clay tablet written by the scribe Gar.Ama, the title Lord of the Mace

SECTION 20

#1732848577118

2200-744: A significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. The inner-circle countries provide

2300-501: A stabbing fashion), though auxiliaries from Syria Palestina were armed with clubs and maces at the battles of Immae and Emesa in 272 AD. They proved highly effective against the heavily armoured horsemen of Palmyra. During the Middle Ages metal armour such as mail protected against the blows of edged weapons. Though iron became increasingly common, copper and bronze were also used, especially in iron-deficient areas. One example of

2400-470: A variety of maces and fielded large numbers of heavily armoured and armed cavalry (see Cataphract ). For a heavily armed Persian knight , a mace was as effective as a sword or battle axe . In fact, Shahnameh has many references to heavily armoured knights facing each other using maces, axes, and swords. The enchanted talking mace Sharur made its first appearance in Sumerian/Akkadian mythology during

2500-447: A verb ending ( present plural): From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Old English gradually transformed through language contact with Old Norse in some regions. The waves of Norse (Viking) colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in

2600-498: Is Old Frisian , but even some centuries after the Anglo-Saxon migration, Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility with other Germanic varieties. Even in the 9th and 10th centuries, amidst the Danelaw and other Viking invasions, there is historical evidence that Old Norse and Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility, although probably the northern dialects of Old English were more similar to Old Norse than

2700-402: Is a blunt weapon , a type of club or virge that uses a heavy head on the end of a handle to deliver powerful strikes . A mace typically consists of a strong, heavy, wooden or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, bone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. The head of a mace can be shaped with flanges or knobs to increase the pressure of an impact by focusing

2800-459: Is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the United States as a world power. As of 2016 , 400 million people spoke English as their first language , and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. English is the largest language by number of speakers . English

2900-603: Is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK. However, English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in India. David Crystal claimed in 2004 that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in

3000-407: Is an official language of countries populated by few descendants of native speakers of English. It has also become by far the most important language of international communication when people who share no native language meet anywhere in the world. The Indian linguist Braj Kachru distinguished countries where English is spoken with a three circles model . In his model, Kachru based his model on

3100-480: Is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon ( c.  450–1150 ). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic , and originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia , Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes . From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as

Mace-bearer - Misplaced Pages Continue

3200-576: Is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as India , Ireland , and Canada ). In some other countries, it is the sole or dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law (such as in the United States and United Kingdom ). It is a co-official language of the United Nations , the European Union , and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become

3300-443: Is listed in the year 3100 BC. The Assyrians used maces probably about nineteenth century BC and in their campaigns; the maces were usually made of stone or marble and furnished with gold or other metals, but were rarely used in battle unless fighting heavily armoured infantry. An important, later development in mace heads was the use of metal for their composition. With the advent of copper mace heads, they no longer shattered and

3400-527: Is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1150 to 1500. With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now-Norsified Old English language was subject to another wave of intense contact, this time with Old French , in particular Old Norman French , influencing it as a superstrate. The Norman French spoken by

3500-424: Is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for government business, its widespread use puts them at the boundary between the "outer circle" and "expanding circle". English is unusual among world languages in how many of its users are not native speakers but speakers of English as a second or foreign language. Many users of English in

3600-517: Is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans. The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle" countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world. English does not belong to just one country, and it does not belong solely to descendants of English settlers. English

3700-465: Is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations ) and the United States . English is the third-most spoken native language , after Standard Chinese and Spanish ; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English

3800-777: Is the third person pronoun group beginning with th- ( they, them, their ) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- ( hie, him, hera ). Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones. Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting. Although, from

3900-943: The Anglic languages in the British Isles , and into the Frisian languages and Low German /Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages , are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the North Sea Germanic languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English , which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into

4000-594: The Anglo-Saxons . Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse , a North Germanic language . Then, Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects , which are the source of approximately 28% of Modern English words , and from Latin , which is the source of an additional 28% . As such, though most of its total vocabulary comes from Romance languages , Modern English's grammar, phonology, and most commonly used words in everyday use keep it genealogically classified under

4100-479: The Augustinian canon Orrm , which highlights the blending of both Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in English for the first time. In Wycliff'e Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis . Here the plural suffix -n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English

Mace-bearer - Misplaced Pages Continue

4200-537: The Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English . The centre of Norsified English was in the Midlands around Lindsey . After 920 CE, when Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today

4300-532: The European Free Trade Association , Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set English as their organisation's sole working language even though most members are not countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the European Union (EU) allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of

4400-559: The Inca Empire used maces with bone, stone or copper heads and wooden shafts. The quauholōlli was used in Mesoamerica. Maces in Asia were most often steel clubs with a spherical head. In Persia, the "Gorz" (spherical-head mace) served as a primary combat arm across many eras, most often being used by heavy infantry or Cataphracts. In India a form of these clubs was used by wrestlers to exercise

4500-584: The United Nations at the end of World War II , English had become pre-eminent and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee , specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations such as

4600-526: The Westminster system . They are carried in by the sergeant-at-arms or some other mace-bearers and displayed on the clerks' table while parliament is in session to show that a parliament is fully constituted. They are removed when the session ends. The mace is also removed from the table when a new speaker is being elected to show that parliament is not ready to conduct business. Maces may also be carried before clergy members in church processions, although in

4700-499: The bedels ). His main day-to-day duties may be rather that of a general assistant, like say a driver's. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, there usually is one post of mace-bearer per mace, and rarely more than one mace in use at the same time per master, or only in specific different contexts. In French, the above-mentioned title massier is nowadays used for a mere huissier (a lowly post, door-keeper or usher) who occasionally carries

4800-511: The palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization ). The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse -speaking Viking invaders and settlers , starting in

4900-558: The "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines , Jamaica , India , Pakistan , Singapore , Malaysia and Nigeria with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government. Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to

5000-596: The 8th and 9th centuries. Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when a considerable amount of Old French vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three centuries. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots, concurrent with

5100-595: The Angles. English may have a small amount of substrate influence from Common Brittonic, and a number of possible Brittonicisms in English have been proposed, but whether most of these supposed Brittonicisms are actually a direct result of Brittonic substrate influence is disputed. Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects ( Mercian and Northumbrian ) and the Saxon dialects ( Kentish and West Saxon ). Through

SECTION 50

#1732848577118

5200-512: The British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies. For example, the view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India. English

5300-537: The Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I . Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight , gnat , and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent

5400-628: The English Language , which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of

5500-543: The English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers. English has ceased to be an "English language" in

5600-676: The Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and is then most closely related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages . English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into

5700-623: The Moldavian ruler Stephen the Great in some of his wars (see Bulawa ). The mace is also the favourite weapon of Prince Marko , a hero in South Slavic epic poetry. The pernach was a type of flanged mace developed since the 12th century in the region of Kievan Rus' , and later widely used throughout the whole of Europe . The name comes from the Slavic word pero ( перо ) meaning feather , reflecting

5800-550: The Roman economy and administration collapsed . By the 7th century, this Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain , replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic , a Celtic language , and British Latin , brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. At this time, these dialects generally resisted influence from the then-local Brittonic and Latin languages. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc ) are both named after

5900-490: The Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations. Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language . In the countries of the EU, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in nineteen of the twenty-five member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta ). In

6000-585: The arms and shoulders. They have been known as gada since ancient times. During the Mughal era, the flanged mace of Persia was introduced to South Asia. The term shishpar is a Persian phrase which literally translates to "six-wings", to refer to the (often) six flanges on the mace. The shishpar mace was introduced by the Delhi Sultanate and continued to be utilized until the 18th century. Trench raiding clubs used during World War I were modern variations on

6100-407: The base from which English spreads to other countries in the world. Estimates of the numbers of second language and foreign-language English speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1 billion, depending on how proficiency is defined. Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. In Kachru's three-circles model,

SECTION 60

#1732848577118

6200-449: The basis for the required controlled natural languages Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring and aviation. English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field. It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. By the time of the foundation of

6300-400: The beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing. John Trevisa , c.  1385 Middle English

6400-458: The case of the Roman Catholic pope and cardinals, they have largely been replaced with processional crosses . Maces are also used as a parade item, rather than a tool of war, notably in military bands. Specific movements of the mace from the drum major will signal specific orders to the band they lead. The mace can signal anything from a step-off to a halt, from the commencement of playing to

6500-638: The consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation. American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world. Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers. The settlement history of

6600-409: The cut off. University maces are employed in a manner similar to parliamentary maces. They symbolize the authority and independence of a chartered university and the authority vested in the provost . They are typically carried in at the beginning of a convocation ceremony and are often less than half a meter high. Like many weapons from feudal times, maces have been used in heraldic blazons as either

6700-461: The de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science , technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet . English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of the Germanic language branch, and as of 2021 , Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.5 billion speakers worldwide. Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by

6800-476: The development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and French dialects . These left a profound mark of their own on the language, so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades —but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered

6900-467: The distinct characteristics of Early Modern English. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, "The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests." This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and

7000-401: The early period of Old English were written using a runic script . By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms . It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ ƿ ⟩ and thorn ⟨ þ ⟩ , and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ ð ⟩ , and ash ⟨ æ ⟩ . Old English is essentially

7100-539: The educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex , the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety . The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn , is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from

7200-684: The elite in England eventually developed into the Anglo-Norman language . Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking English, the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases

7300-515: The epic of Ninurta . The Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata describe the extensive use of the gada in ancient Indian warfare as gada-yuddha or 'mace combat'. The ancient Romans did not make wide use of maces, probably because of the influence of armour, and due to the nature of the Roman infantry's fighting style which involved the Pilum (spear) and the Gladius (short sword used in

7400-408: The expanding circle use it to communicate with other people from the expanding circle, so that interaction with native speakers of English plays no part in their decision to use the language. Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties. Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in

7500-532: The force on a small point. They would bind on metal instead of sliding around it, allowing them to deliver more force to an armored opponent than a traditional mace. This effect increased the potential for the mace to injure an armored opponent through weak spots in the armor, and even damage plate armor by denting it, potentially binding overlapping plates and impeding the wearer's range of motion. Medieval historian and re-enactor Todd Todeschini (AKA Todd Cutler) demonstrated this effect with period accurate equipment in

7600-508: The form of pernach that resembled a fletched arrow . Pernachs were the first form of the flanged mace to enjoy a wide usage. It was well suited to penetrate plate armour and chain mail . In the later times it was often used as a symbol of power by the military leaders in Eastern Europe . The cultures of pre-Columbian America used clubs and maces extensively. The warriors of the Moche state and

7700-710: The growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been. As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of

7800-479: The history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift , meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised , and close vowels were broken into diphthongs . For example,

7900-407: The history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time. Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where

8000-403: The inner-circle countries, and they may show grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties as well. The standard English of the inner-circle countries is often taken as a norm for use of English in the outer-circle countries. In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as

8100-524: The introduction of loanwords from French ( ayre ) and word replacements ( bird originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE fugol ). By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English

8200-467: The introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare . The printing press greatly standardised English spelling, which has remained largely unchanged since then, despite a wide variety of later sound shifts in English dialects. Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of

8300-431: The languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic . Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs , and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm's and Verner's laws . English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as

8400-640: The medieval mace. They were homemade mêlée weapons used by both the Allies and the Central Powers . Clubs were used during night time trench raiding expeditions as a quiet and effective way of killing or wounding enemy soldiers. Makeshift maces were also found in the possession of some football hooligans in the 1980s. In 2020 China–India skirmishes personnel of People's Liberation Army Ground Force were seen using makeshift maces (batons wrapped in barbed wire and clubs embedded with nails). Maces have had

8500-426: The prestige varieties among the middle classes. In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him , she and her , who and whom ), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support , have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word "do" as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it

8600-604: The reign of Henry V . Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents , and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard , developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands . In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from

8700-464: The sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English . Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons. Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries. As decolonisation proceeded throughout

8800-474: The southern dialects. Theoretically, as late as the 900s AD, a commoner from certain (northern) parts of England could hold a conversation with a commoner from certain parts of Scandinavia. Research continues into the details of the myriad tribes in peoples in England and Scandinavia and the mutual contacts between them. The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings ( nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and

8900-455: The study of English as an auxiliary language. The trademarked Globish uses a relatively small subset of English vocabulary (about 1500 words, designed to represent the highest use in international business English) in combination with the standard English grammar. Other examples include Simple English . The increased use of the English language globally has had an effect on other languages, leading to some English words being assimilated into

9000-406: The weapon they wielded, a maza (i.e., a mace). Otherwise, a normally more domestic servant could double (arming trusted household staff was not unusual) as macebearer, as in the case of the prophet Mohammed 's first muezzin , Bilal ibn Ribah A ceremonial mace symbolises the power or status of a monarch , institution or high dignitary. A swordbearer is similar to a mace-bearer but carries

9100-473: The word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages. English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during

9200-785: The world may include no native speakers of English at all, even while including speakers from several different countries. This is particularly true of the shared vocabulary of mathematics and the sciences. English is a pluricentric language , which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language. Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their accents , but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English . The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by

9300-539: The world, but the number of English speakers in India is uncertain, with most scholars concluding that the United States still has more speakers of English than India. Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca , is also regarded as the first world language . English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy. English is, by international treaty,

9400-438: The worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation , and law. Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a dependent-marking pattern typical of Indo-European with

9500-405: Was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century

9600-462: Was concurrently developed in Russia and Mid-west Asia. Maces, being simple to make, cheap, and straightforward in application, were quite common weapons. It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood ( sine effusione sanguinis ). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding

9700-733: Was developed during the Upper Paleolithic from the simple club , by adding sharp spikes of either flint or obsidian . In Europe, an elaborately carved ceremonial flint mace head was one of the artifacts discovered in excavations of the Neolithic mound of Knowth in Ireland, and Bronze Age archaeology cites numerous finds of perforated mace heads. In ancient Ukraine , stone mace heads were first used nearly eight millennia ago. The others known were disc maces with oddly formed stones mounted perpendicularly to their handle. The Narmer Palette shows

9800-511: Was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , and Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur . In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer. The next period in

9900-500: Was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession . The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. The transition from Old to Middle English can be placed during the writing of the Ormulum . The oldest Middle English texts that were written by

10000-533: Was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in -ing , appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt ), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer ). British English

#117882