
- •Lecture 2. Old english. General characteristics
- •1. Outer history
- •1.1. Principal written records of the Old English period
- •1.2. Dialectal classification of Old English written records
- •1.2.1. The dialects in Old English
- •1.2.2. Old English written records
- •2. Inner history During the period the language was developing very slowly.
- •2.1. Phonetics
- •2.2. Spelling
- •2.3. Grammar
- •2.4. Vocabulary
Lecture 2. Old english. General characteristics
List of principal questions:
1. Outer history
1.1. Principal written records
1.2. Dialectal classification
1.2.1. The dialects in Old English
1.2.2. Old English written records
2. Inner history
2.1. Phonetics
2.2. Spelling
2.3. Grammar
2.4. Vocabulary
1. Outer history
The English nation belonged to the western subdivision of old Germanic tribes, and the dialects they spoke later lay the foundation of the English national language.
The history of the English language begins in the fifth century AD when the ruthless and barbaric Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, who up to that time had lived in western Europe between the Elbe and the Rhine, started their invasion of the British Isles.
At the time of the invasion Britain was inhabited by the so-called "romanised Celts". It means that Celts who had lived under the Roman rule for over four centuries and who had acquired Roman culture and ways of life and whose language had undergone certain changes mainly in the form of borrowings from the Latin language.
The Celtic tribes, whose languages, the same as Germanic, also belonged to the Indo-European family, were at one time among its most numerous representatives. At the beginning of our era the Celts could be found on the territories of the present-day Spain, Great Britain, western Germany and northern Italy. Before that they had been known to reach even Greece and Asia Minor. But under the steady attacks of Italic and Germanic tribes the Celts had to retreat, so that in the areas where they were once dominant they have left but the scantiest trace of their presence.
The Celts who first came to Britain gradually spread to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Their languages are represented in modern times by Irish, Scottish Gaelic (гэйлик – гаэльский) and Manx (с острова Мэн). A later wave of Celtic tribes were in turn driven westwards by Germanic imvaders, and their modern language representatives are Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
The Romans invaded Britannia as it was then called in 55— 54 ВС when the troops of Julius Caesar and others conquered the isles. No centralised government was formed, instead there existed petty principalities under the control of local landlords. In 407 AD, with the departure of the last Roman ‘emissary (эмиссар) Constantine hos’tilities (военные действия) among the native tribes in England began anew. To normalise the situation the local chieftains appealed to influential Germanic tribes who lived on the continent inviting them to come to their assistance, and in 449 the Germanic troops led by Hengest and Horsa landed in Britain.
The Roman occupation of England left little mark on its future. The invaders, or Barbarians, as they were generally called, who came to the Isles were representatives of a by far inferior civi’lisation than the Romans. A bulk of the invaders came from the most backward and primitive of the Germanic tribes.
We have very little indirect evidence about the beginning of the Old English period — 5th—7th centuries. The first written records were dated as far back as the beginning of the 8 - th century, that is why the 5th—7th centuries are generally referred to as "the pre-written period" of the English language.