Lecture 1 The Origin of the English Language

1. The origin of the English language.

2. The writing and written monuments of OE.

3. The periods in the history of the English language.

Historically English belongs to the West Germanic languages. The group of the Germans that conquered Britain in the fifth century consisted of three tribes: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. Before this Germanic invasion two groups of Celtic people lived in Britain. The Celtic people in the fifth century A.D. (anno domini) couldn’t offer any resistance to the invaders because they were almost unprepared for the battles imposed on them by the Germanic tribes.

In the year of 55 B.C. some military legions under the head of Y. Ceasar landed in Britain but they did not stay there long. They robbed the native people and went back to Gaul. In a year Ceasar repeated his invasion and again he didn’t stay in Britain long. It was only at the end of the first century A.D. that the Romans entirely conquered Britain. They turned Britain to their colony. This colonization influenced Britain greatly. The Romans built many military camps, numerous paved roads symbolized Roman civilization. The Romans stayed in Britain for almost 4 centuries. In the year of 410 the Germanic tribes besieged Rome and the Romans had to leave Britain and to defend Italy from advancing Goths (in this very year the city of Rome was captured by the Goths under king Alaric); so the Britons had to rely on their own forces in the coming struggle with Germanic tribes.

The Anglo-Saxon Conquest

It was about mid-5^th century that Britain was conquered by Germanic tribes. The Britain fought against the conquerors for about a century and a half-till about the year 600. It is the epoch when the legendary figure of the British king Arthur appeared.

The conquerors settled in Britain in the following way. The Angeles occupied most of the territory north of the Thames up to the Firth of Forth; the Saxons – the territory of the Thames and some stretches north of it; the Jutes settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight.

Since the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain the ties of their language with the continent were broken, and in its further development it went its own ways. It is at this time, the 5^th century that the history of the English language begins.

Its original territory was England except Cornwall, Wales, and Straihtclyde (a region in the north-west). These western regions the Britons succeeded in holding, and they were conquered much later: Cornwall-in the 9^th, Strathclyde- -in the 11^th, and Wales- in the 13^th century.

The Scottish Highlands, where neither Romans nor Teutons had penetrated, were inhabited by Picts and Scots. The Scottish language, belonging to the Celtic group, has survived in the Highlands up to our days.

Ireland also remained Celtic: the first attempts at conquering were made in the 12^th century.

Formation of Germanic States in Britain

The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain, formed 7 kingdoms, which during four centuries struggled with one another for supremacy: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, which consisted of two regions: Bernicia and Deira. In this prolonged struggle it was sometimes Northumbria and sometimes Mercia, that would take the upper hand.

In 828 the struggle came to an end with the decisive victory of Wessex. Ecgberht, king of Wessex, subdued Mercia and Northumbria. Since then kings of Wessex became kings of England, and the capital of Wessex, Winchester (some 100 kilometers south-west of London) became the capital of England.

Down to the end of the 6^th century Anglo-Saxon Britain was almost entirely isolated from Europe, and particularly, from Rome. In 597 Pope Gregory I sent some missionaries to Britain to spread christianity among the Germanic conquerors. It was necessary for Rome. Christianity also penetrated into England from Ireland, which hadn’t been invaded by Germanic tribes. Irish monks had great influence in Northumbria under king Oswine (642-670). In the 7^th century Christianity spread all over England. The Latin language was at the time an international language of the church and of church science in Western Europe. As a result of new ties with Rome the Latin language was introduced in England as the language of church. This development had an important consequence for the English language: many Latin words penetrated into the English language, mainly those connected with religious and church notions (bishop, cleark, devil, master).