The History of the English Language, by Owen Alun and Brendan O'Corraidhe

In the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe.  It had 
no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts 
and gestures that roughly translated to "Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon 
me, but would you happen to have any woad?"

Then the Romans invaded it and called it Britain, because the natives 
were "blue, nasty, br(u->i)tish and short."  This was the start of the 
importance of u (and its mispronounciation) to the language.  After 
building some roads, killing off some of the nasty little blue people 
and walling up the rest, the Romans left, taking the language 
instruction manual with them.

The British were bored so they invited the barbarians to come over 
(under Hengist) and "Horsa" 'round a bit. The Angles, Saxons, and 
Jutes brought slightly more refined vocal noises.

All of the vocal sounds of this primitive language were onomatapoeic, 
being derived from the sounds of battle.  Consonants were derived
from the sounds of weapons striking a foe.  "Sss" and "th" for example 
are the sounds of a draw cut, "k" is the sound of a solidly landed axe 
blow, "b", "d", are the sounds of a head dropping onto rock and sod 
respectively, and "gl" is the sound of a body splashing into a bog. 
Vowels (which were either gargles in the back of the throat or sharp 
exhalations) were derived from the sounds the foe himself made when 
struck.

The barbarians had so much fun that decided to stay for post-revel. 
The British, finding that they had lost future use of the site, moved 
into the hills to the west and called themselves Welsh.

The Irish, having heard about language from Patrick, came over to 
investigate.  When they saw the shiny vowels, they pried them loose 
and took them home.  They then raided Wales and stole both their 
cattle and their vowels, so the poor Welsh had to make do with sheep 
and consonants.  ("Old Ap Ivor hadde a farm, L Y L Y W!  And on that 
farm he hadde somme gees.  With a dd dd here and a dd dd there...")

To prevent future raids, the Welsh started calling themselves "Cymry" 
and gave even longer names to their villages.  They figured if no one 
could pronounce the name of their people or the names of their towns, 
then no one would visit them.  (The success of the tactic is 
demonstrated still today. How many travel agents have YOU heard 
suggest a visit to scenic Llyddumlmunnyddthllywddu?)

Meantime, the Irish brought all the shiny new vowels home to Erin.  
But of course they didn't know that there was once an instruction 
manual for them, so they scattered the vowels throughout the language 
purely as ornaments. Most of the new vowels were not pronounced, and 
those that were were pronounced differently depending on which kind of 
consonant they were either preceding or following.

The Danes came over and saw the pretty vowels bedecking all the Irish 
words.  "Ooooh!" they said.  They raided Ireland and brought the 
vowels back home with them.  But the Vikings couldn't keep track of 
all the Irish rules so they simply pronounced all the vowels "oouuoo."

In the meantime, the French had invaded Britain, which was populated 
by descendants of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.  After a 
generation or two, the people were speaking German with a French 
accent and calling it English.  Then the Danes invaded again, crying 
"Oouuoo! Oouuoo!," burning abbeys, and trading with the townspeople.

The Britons that the Romans hadn't killed intermarried with visiting 
Irish and became Scots.  Against the advice of their travel agents, 
they decided to visit Wales.  (The Scots couldn't read the signposts 
that said, "This way to LLyddyllwwyddymmllwylldd," but they could 
smell sheep a league away.) The Scots took the sheep home with them 
and made some of them into haggis.  What they made with the others we 
won't say, but Scots are known to this day for having hairy legs.

The former Welsh, being totally bereft, moved down out of the hills 
and into London.  Because they were the only people in the Islands who 
played flutes instead of bagpipes, they were called Tooters.  This 
made them very popular.  In short order, Henry Tooter got elected King 
and begin popularizing ornate, unflattering clothing.

Soon, everybody was wearing ornate, unflattering clothing, playing the 
flute, speaking German with a French accent, pronouncing all their 
vowels "oouuoo" (which was fairly easy given the French accent), and 
making lots of money in the wool trade.  Because they were rich, 
people smiled more (remember, at this time, "Beowulf" and "Canterbury 
Tales" were the only tabloids, and gave generally favorable reviews 
even to Danes).  And since it is next to impossible to keep your 
vowels in the back of your throat (even if you do speak German with a 
French accent) while smiling and saying "oouuoo" (try it, you'll see 
what I mean), the Great Vowel Shift came about and transformed the 
English language.

The very richest had their vowels shifted right out in front of their 
teeth.  They settled in Manchester and later in Boston.

There were a few poor souls who, cut off from the economic prosperity 
of the wool trade, continued to swallow their vowels.  They wandered 
the countryside in misery and despair until they came to the docks of 
London, where their dialect devolved into the incomprehensible 
language known as Cockney.  Later, it was taken overseas and further 
brutalized by merging it with Dutch and Italian to create Brooklynese.

Thanks to Eric Yost.

LANGUAGE TRENDS OF THE FUTURE

There are consistent trends in the past evolution of languages, and in 
all likelihood they will continue to change in the same fashion in the 
future.

In 200 years, spoken French will have only one sound, a vowel.  All 
consonants and gaps between words and sentences will disappear, 
leaving only an extended "Eauuuuuuuuuuuu..."  Meaning will be inferred 
from facial expression.  Written French will stay exactly the same.

These consonants will not be entirely forgotten; they will migrate to 
Czechoslovakia, which will by that time have no use for vowels.

In 200 years, the English vocabulary will be the union of all other 
vocabularies, but the spelling will be original.

Similarly, the Japanese alphabet will be the union of all other 
alphabets in the world.

The Cyrillic alphabet will eventually be the same as the Latin 
alphabet, only backwards.  A mirror will suffice for translating 
Russian into Polish.

Finally, in 200 years, entire books in Germany will be one word.  Plus 
a verb at the end, of course.

WHY IS ENGLISH THE LINGUA FRANCA?

Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization 
headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until 
they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, 
the verses below were 
devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at 
hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, 
busy, 
Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will 
tear. 
So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's 
written.) Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, 
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, 
aisles, 
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does.  Now 
first 
say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, 
gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, 
oath. 
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, 
chair, Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, 
cleanse and clean. 
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, 
verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and 
wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of 
Wight, 
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of 
cup. 
My advice is to give up!!!

-George Bernard Shaw