Just as people undergo changes throughout their lives, languages perpetually change. Although the English language may not change much in our lifetime, it will alter considerably as generations come and go. The soundness of that prediction is borne out by centuries of evidence. The city of York in England is designated with a word-form familiar to anyone who has also heard of New York. Even so, the story of word York is like the story of the cathedral depicted at left, and just as we can try to explore the past of a building, we can try to explore the history of virtually any word in English.

English 570 will offer a close look not only at the history of some interesting words but also at patterns of grammar and pronunciation that have likewise shifted a great deal in the last fifteen centuries or so. These aims naturally call for, among other things, a look at how English came into existence as a distinct language.

Although the prehistory of English and its ancestors can be traced back about 6,000 years, the language itself has only been spoken in Britain for about the last 1,500 years. On the other hand, the British Isles have been inhabited for a much longer time. English 570 will consider the ancestry of English and also what little is known about the languages and cultures of people who built monuments in the British Isles such as Callanish, which dates back to about the time of the pyramids of Egypt.

The monuments of the distant past remain only hazily understood, and even less is known about the languages of early prehistory. However, we do know a surprising amount about the vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation of English from about the year 800 up to the present.

The words we use to designate the Tower of London are among many whose histories are fairly well understood. The word London reflects the name of a person who lived in Britain long before English speakers settled there in large numbers. The word of is among the oldest in the written records of English and reflects the speech of the first English speakers (also known as Anglo-Saxons). The tower itself was built by a speaker of French, and it happens that the word tower comes from French and Latin, these two languages being the source for the majority of words in English.

Most of the recorded history of the English language has taken place in the British Isles, but during the last 400 years, a major shift has occurred in where most of the speakers live.

American English is by far the most widely spoken variety nowadays: about four times as many speakers live in America as in the United Kingdom. Although the USA now has the greatest influence on the language, the connection with British English is evident in many ways including the names of towns such as York in Pennsylvania. One part of 570 will focus on continuities with earlier forms of the language as well as on changes that have made American English distinctive.

The spread of what is sometimes called "colonial English" has affected the language in major ways in countries as diverse as America, Australia, India, and Jamaica. Moreover, the importance of English is not confined to former colonies.

Signs such as the one at left are becoming more and more common around the world. English rubs shoulders with other languages (in this case, Hungarian) and inevitably influences the speech even of people who only know their native language. The spread of English has naturally led to concern that the language is too influential. However, as our investigation of the issues will show, there is room to wonder just how much English will transform the languages and cultures of people around the planet. In any case, the changes over the centuries suggest many questions well worth pondering.