Lecture 2. An outline of the history of english. The old english period

1. Periods of the history of the English language,

2. The Roman Conquest.

3. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest.

4. Danish raids on Britain.

5. The vocabulary of Anglo-Saxons.

6. Dialects of Old English and Old English manuscripts.

1. Though the development of English was slow, gradual and uninterrupted, there is considerable difference between the language of the 9^th, 13^th and, say, 17^th centuries in the vocabulary, grammatical organization and phonetic peculiarities. It is usual to divide the history of the English language into three periods: Old English, Middle English, and Modern (New) English. For the sake of convenience the most important historic events which had a great influence on the history of English are taken as landmarks separating the three periods.

• The Old English period (OE) began in 449 with the Germanic con­quest of Britain.

• The Middle English period (MidE) began in 1066 with the Norman conquest of Britain.

• The Modern (New) English period (MnE) began in 1475 with in­troduction of printing of books and the formation of the English national language.

But we must not suppose, however, that in 1066 or in 1475 one kind of as replaced by another. The English language has been undergoing constant change, and these dates are chosen because they mark the beginning of a considerable change in the language.

From the point of view of the grammatical system of the language, these periods are also called as:

Old English - the period of full inflections, e.g. bindan;

Middle English - the period of leveled inflections, e.g. binden;

Modern English - the period of lost inflections, e.g. bind.

During the three periods English transformed its system of the synthetic language into the analytical one.

2. The ancient inhabitants of the British Isles were the Celts, who origi­nally lived on the Continent and invaded Britain during the period from the 6^th till the 3^rd century B.C. More than one Celtic tribe invaded Britain. Celtic tribes called the Picts penetrated into the mountains in the North, the tribes of Scots crossed over to Ireland and settled there. Later the Scots returned to the larger island and settled in the North beside the Picts. So numerous were the Scots that the northern part of the country got the name of Scotland. One of the most powerful Celtic tribes - the Britons - occupied the rest of the island, and that part of the country began to be known as Britain. The Celtic tribes were pagans and lived in the primitive communal system.

In the 1^st century B.C. while the inhabitants of the British Isles lived in the primitive communal system, the Roman Empire became the strongest slave-owning state in the Mediterranean. The Romans conquered all the countries around the Mediterranean and in the year 55 B.C. they tried to subdue the British Isles but failed. Only a century later - in 43 A.D. - the Roman Emperor Claudius, leading an enormous army, invaded the Brit­ish Isles and conquered the south-eastern part of the country. The Romans never managed to become masters of the whole country, the Scottish High­lands remained unconquered. To defend themselves from the attacks of the Picts and Scots from the north, the Romans built fortified cities called castra in Latin.

As a result of the conquest, signs of Roman civilization began to spread over Britain. There had been no towns in Britain before the Roman inva­sion. The civilized Romans were city dwellers, and so they began to build towns, public baths as in Rome itself. York, Gloucester, Lincoln and London became the chief Roman towns. London which had been a small trading settlement before the conquest now became a centre for trade both by road and river. There are today many things in Britain to remind the people of the Romans: the wells dug by the Romans still give water today, the chief Roman roads made of several layers of stones, lime, mortar and gravel, still exist, some of the stone bridges across rivers and ruins of public baths can still be found in Britain today.

Through the communication with the Romans a number of new words entered the speech of the Celts. Among them are the words street which came from the Latin word strata meaning "road", port from the Latin portus, and wall from vallum. The names of many English towns are of Latin origin, too. Any English town today with a name ending in -chester, -cester or - caster used to be a Roman camp, e.g. Chester, Winchester, Manchester, Leicester, Gloucester, Doncaster, Lancaster, Colchester etc.

The Romans remained in Britain for about four centuries. In 407 the Roman legions were recalled from Britain to defend Rome against the at­tack* of the barbarian tribes of the Goths. But the independence of Britain was of short duration. From the middle of the 5^th century the country began til miller from the attacks of the Germanic tribes from the Continent.

3. In 449 first the Jutes and then the other Germanic tribes - the Saxons Mid the Angles - invaded Britain. At first they came for plunder: they used to land from their boats, drive off and slay the cattle, seize the stores of corn, and be off again to sea before the Celts could attack them and defend their property Later the Germanic tribes returned again and again in larger numbers, attracted by the fertility of the land, and began to conquer the country. The Celts fought fiercely against the invaders and it took the Germanic tribes more than one hundred and fifty years to conquer the country. The local population were either killed or had to flee to the western and northern of the country.

After the Conquest of Britain had been completed, seven kingdoms appeared on the occupied territory, namely: Kent (occupied by the Jutes), Wessex, Sussex, and Essex (set up by the Saxons), East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria (founded by the Angles). All these kingdoms fought with one another for supremacy, that is why the number of the kingdoms as well as their boundaries changed. At last at the beginning of the 9^th century Wessex became the strongest state and never again lost its predominance. In 829 Egbert, King of Wessex, was acknowledged by Kent, Mercia and Northumbria, and became the first king of England.

4. By the clone of the 8^th century the Anglo-Saxons began to suffer from the attacks of the Scandinavians, mostly Danes and Norwegians, known as the Vikings. These peoples were of the same Germanic race as the An­glo-Saxons themselves but unlike the Anglo-Saxons whose way of life had changed greatly, the Danes were still pagans and still lived in tribes. In 793 the Danes carried out their first raids on Britain and came there for plunder just as the Anglo-Saxons had done themselves four centuries earlier. On their long narrow shallow ships they could sail or row far up a river into the heart of the country in search of plunder. They used to go to different places thus plunging the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in horror. Later they settled in the country and gradually extended their territory southward from their original foothold in Northumbria until practically all the land north of the Thames was under their control. Only the kingdom of Wessex remained independent. It became the center of resistance against the invaders. Alfred, the great king of Wessex, managed to raise an army and to stop the Danes. He also built the first British Navy and made new rules for the army. The Danes were made to sign the Wedmore treaty, promising to leave Wessex and Western Mercia. But the Scandinavians remained in all the other parts of the country they had occupied before and that territory came to be known as the Danelaw (Область Датского права) for it was ruled according to the law of the Danes. Within the Danelaw the Scandinavians lived side by side with the Anglo-Saxons and a constant process of assimilation was going on. The Scandinavian influence on the English language manifested itself primary in the vocabulary. Up to 900 words were borrowed from the Scan­dinavian dialects, among them such adjectives as happy, ill, low, loose, ugly, weak, such verbs as to call, to crawl, to die, to take, to want, such nouns as sister, husband, sky, fellow, law, loan, link, root, window, wing, leg, harbour, and the forms of the personal pronoun of the 3^rd person plural Peir (MnE they), Peim (MnE them), Peirra (MnE their), which gradually ousted the respective OE forms hie, him, hira probably because they were very much alike the singular forms. One of the features of Scandinavian borrowings is the presence of the sound combination [sk]. All OE words having [sk] changed into [J] whereas in Scandinavian it remained unchanged, e.g. skill, skin, skirt, sky, ski etc. The language spoken by the Danes (which belonged to the North Germanic group) was so nearly alike OE that a Scandinavian settler would very soon learn to understand the speech of his neighbors so far as the mere word-stems were concerned. Here are a few examples to show the likeness of OE and Scandinavian vocabulary:

Old English words Old Scandinavian words Fisc (MnE fish) fiskr Stan (MnE stone) stein Trio (MnE tree) tre Heorte (MnE heart) hjarta Tlma (MnE time) timi hoerder (MnE father) fadir Modor (MnE mother) modir

The grammatical inflections, on the other hand, quite dissimilar in Dan­ish and Old English, were more puzzling both for the natives and the settlers. This certainly promoted weakening and subsequent loss of grammatical findings, which means that the language was becoming analytical.

5. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were pagans (=heathens) and believed in many gods. They worshipped the sun and the moon, the sea, some nature phenomena etc.

One of their gods was Tu, or Tuesco - the god of Darkness. Another was Woden - the great god of War. The red-bearded Thor was the god of Thunder. Freya was the goddess of Peace and Plenty. The Anglo-Saxons named the days of the week after their gods. Thus Sunday (OE Sunnadaeз) meant the Sun’s day, Monday (OE Monadaeз) - the Moon's day, Tuesday (OE Tiwesdaeз) the day of the god Tuesco, Wednesday (OE Wodnasdaeз) was Woden’s day, Thursday (OE Punresdaeз) - the day of the god Thor, Friday(OE Friзudaeз) - Freya's day, and Saturday (OE Sceterndaes) was named after Saturn, a Roman God of agriculture and trade.

With the development of feudal relations paganism became of no use to the kings and landlords, as this religion reflected the life of the tribal society where all men were equal and no oppression of man by man existed. Now they needed a religion which would teach obedience and would serve the interests of the rich. Such a religion was Christianity. In 597 the Roman Pope Gregory I sent about forty monks to Britain in order to spread this religion among the Anglo-Saxons and to include England into the sphere of his political influence. The monks landed in Kent and it became the first Anglo-Saxons kingdom to be converted. The first church was built in the town of Canterbury, the capital of Kent, that's why the Archbishop of Canterbury is now Head of the Church of England. Christianization powerfully influenced the further development of spiritual and cultural life in England. Acceptance of the Christian faith involved the acceptance of Latin - the language of Rome - as the language of Church on the island. The building of cathedrals and the foundation of monasteries and convents, having schools attached to them, greatly contributed to the cultivation of the art of writing and to the spread of literacy.

Together with the new religion quite a number of Latin words were bor­rowed by the Anglo-Saxons, e.g.

Lat. episcopus - OE biscop - MnE bishop

papa - papa - pope

magister - moejester - master

sanctus - sanct - saint

Since the ancient Germans were constantly trading with the Romans, a few words indicating measure of weight had been borrowed long before the Germanic tribes settled on the British Isles:

Lat. pondo - OE pund - MnE pound

uncia - ynce - ounce, inch

as well as the names of some fruit and vegetables, e.g.: Lat. pirum - OE pere - MnE pear

beta - bete - beet

planta - plante - plant

menta - mint - mint

These words can be referred to the first layer of Latin borrowings.

The influence of the Celtic language upon the speech of Anglo-Saxons was entirely confined to the vocabulary, and did not affect the grammati­cal structure of English. The most important Celtic words found in Modern English are names of places, especially those in Scotland and Ireland: Ab­erdeen ("aber"="mouth of a river"), Dunbar, Dundee ("dun" = "a protected place"), Kilkenny ("kilk" = "church"). Ten English rivers have the beautiful name of Avon, from the Celtic word for "river". The names of the rivers Exe, Esk and Usk originate from the Celtic noun "uisge" that means "water". It was from this word that the noun "whisky" developed. In Scottish dialects we may find the Celtic word loch, meaning "a lake", which now enters the names of most lakes in Scotland {Loch Ness, Loch Lochy etc.).

6. When the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled in Britain, there were four distinct dialects, namely: the Northumbrian, extend­ing from the Humber to the Forth; the Mercian extending from the Thames to the Humber; the West Saxon, occupying the whole district of the Thames; the Kentish in Kent. The Northumbrian and the Mercian dialects both repre­sented the Anglian people. The Kentish dialect represented the language of the Jutes, and the West Saxon was the language of the Saxons.

The ancient Germans used runic characters for writing. With the spread of Christianity the Latin language began to be widely used, as it was the language of the church and of learned men in all countries. The main Old English manuscripts written in Latin characters are Caedmons Hymn (the end of the 7^th cent.) and Beowulf' ['beiswulf], the great epic of the English times. The latter is believed to have been originally composed in the Mercian dialect but it has come to us in a 10^th century West Saxon copy. It is Valued both as a source of linguistic material and as a masterpiece of art, being (he oldest epic poem in Germanic literature. The author of The Song of Beowulf is unknown. The date of the composition of the poem is uncertain for it includes religious elements both of the Christian and the heathen character. Probably it was composed about 700 A.D. by an Anglian poet in the vicinity of Northumbria. The plot of the poem alludes to the Scan­dinavian folk tales. Beowulf is a young warrior who distinguished himself by strength and valour. He sails from home with a company of 15 warriors to the Danish land to rid it of the monster Grendel. He kills the monster's mother and becomes the king of the Goths (Geates) but perishes conquering the dragon. Like all Anglo-Saxon poems it is written with a long line and is divided into halves by a pause.

Most valuable are the survivals of Old English prose which was in the form charters and brief records of the year's happenings made at various monasteries - the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The most famous writer of that the monk named Bede [bi:d] who lived from 673 till 735. He was brought up and educated in the monasteries of Northumbria where he lived all his life. He wrote Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical history of the English People).Though written in Latin, it was the only book on Anglo-Saxon history. A copy of Bede's book can be found at the British Museum in London.

The 9^th century witnessed a flourishing of learning and literature in the kingdom of Wessex during King Alfred's reign (871-899). An erudite him­self, Alfred translated from the Latin language books on geography, history and philosophy popular at the time, as well as a book of instructions for parish priests Cura Pastoralis (Pastoral Care) by Pope Gregory I, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Orosius' [a'rousjas] History of the World in seven volumes.

By the end of the 10^th century the West Saxon dialect had firmly estab­lished itself as the written standard of the time.