An example of the evolution of English can be seen in the spellings of words in Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English.  The following passage from the epic poem Beowulf is an example:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon

The words hwæt, dagum and cyninga translate to the Modern English words what, day and king, except that certain letters of course changed.  In fact, there are letters that disappeared entirely from English.  Two such letters in the passage above are æ (ash) and þ (thorn), but others include ð (eth) and ƿ (wynn).  Over time, these letters were replaced with other letters.  For example, “th” represents all interdental sounds in English.

Another notable change in English occurred in verb conjugations.  Until the 1600s, the second-person singular pronoun was thou, with the verb conjugation –(e)st, as in thou knowest.  Then, the pronoun and its conjugation were dropped from English and replaced by you, although it still appears in religious texts and in the works of Shakespeare.

English has evolved since it first arose.  It is classified as a Germanic language, and of course maintains a number of Germanic root words, like gold.  But the language also acquired words like happy from Norse, words like nation from Latin, words like hyperbole from Greek, and words like algebra from Arabic.  During the 20th century, the language added Bolshevik from Russian and mahatma from Sanskrit, in addition to the names of numerous kinds of foods from different cultures.

The English language spoken today is Late Modern English. Over the years English has evolved very much so in its vocabulary. Many words have been added to the language because of the Industrial Revolution and as technology has developed. Also, since the British Empire had so many colonies spread throughout the world the language adopted many words from other foreign languages.

It is particularly interesting when looking at how many different varieties of English there are. Some variations include Australian English, Canadian English, South African English and American English.

Although it may be difficult to clearly identify different variations. At the end of the day, it is all English, each with its own unique twist.

It is the time of the year when the Chinese people celebrate the full moon.  Speaking of the full moon, it plays a major role in folk tales.  It is when werewolves come to life.  A werewolf is of course a human who turns into a wolf. 

It is worth noting the origin of the word werewolf.  The first part of the word most likely derives from Old English wer, meaning “man”, thus the word plainly means “man wolf” (or “wolf man”, to match the movie title).  The translations in many other Indo-European languages agree with this root, like hombre lobo in Spanish and λυκάνθρωπος in Greek.

While most European languages are specific about the animal into which a human transforms, the Russian description of “werewolf” is more general.  For example, a Russian word used for “werewolf” is оборотень, which is closer to “shape shifter”. 

Shape shifter?  Folk tales the world over have frequently contained shape-shifting beings.  Our speculation might be that the Russians’ fear of wolves co-opted the idea of a shape-shifting being.  Could the use of this word in Russian be because of the differences between Russian culture and other cultures?

By the way, according to ethologist Valerius Geist of the University of Calgary, wolves are usually not a direct danger to humans as long as they are well fed, but if they start going hungry, they can turn aggressive.