- •Lectures on history of english Lecture 1 Plan
- •1. Introduction.
- •2. The subject of the History of English.
- •3. The languages of the British isles. Historical background and their language history.
- •4. Stages in the development of the English language.
- •Lecture 2 england in the period of ancient history Plan
- •Invasions. The pre-Celtic period.
- •Invasions
- •2. The Celtic invasion
- •3. The Romans invasion
- •4. The Anglo-Saxon invasion
- •5. The influence of the invasion by the Germanic tribes on the English language
- •6. The Anglo-Saxon dialects
- •Lecture 3 medieval england Plan
- •1. The Scandinavian invasion
- •2. The Norman Conquest
- •3. Historical background from the 12th to the 14th century. The struggle between English and French
- •Lecture 4
- •Annd whase wilenn shall piss boc
- •2. The London dialect and the flourishing of Literature in the late 14th century
- •3. Changes in the alphabet and spelling
- •Lecture 5
- •The formation of the national literary
- •English language
- •1. Historical background from the 15th to the 17th century. Conditions for linguistic unity.
- •2. The formation of the national language. The spoken standard
- •4. Geographical expansion of English
- •3. English today
Lecture 2 england in the period of ancient history Plan
1. Invasions. The pre-Celtic period.
2. The Celtic invasion.
3. The Romans invasion.
4. Anglo-Saxon invasion.
5. The influence of the invasion by Germanic tribes on the English language.
6. The Anglo-Saxon dialects.
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Invasions. The pre-Celtic period.
Invasions
What makes the Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish different from each other?
About 2,000 years ago the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts who originally came from continental Europe. During 1,000 years there were many invasions. The Romans came from Italy in 43 A.D. and, in calling the country ‘Britannia’, gave Britain its name. The Angles and Saxons came from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 5th century and England got its name from this invasion (Angle-lands).
The Vikings (Scandinavians) arrived from Denmark and Norway throughout the 9th century and in 1066 the Normans invaded from France.
These invasions drove the Celts into what is now Wales and Scotland, and they remained, of course, in Ireland.
The English, on the other hand, are the descendants of all the invaders, but are more Anglo-Saxons than anything else.
The various origins explain many of the differences found between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland – differences in education, religion and the legal systems, but most obviously, in language.
The pre-Celtic period
As far as historical research could establish, the first inhabitants of the British Isles were nomadic Stone Age hunters. Those newcomers must have been a Mediterranean people. Their burial places in Cornwall, in Ireland, in the coastal regions of Wales and Scotland are found to be either long barrows that is manmade hills or huge mounds covering hutlike structures of stone slabs.
These people are thought to be settled on the chalk hills of the Cotswolds, the Sussex and Dorset downs and the Chilterns. They were joined after a few centuries by some similar southern people who settled along the whole of the western coast, so that the modern inhabitants of Western England and Wales and Ireland have good archaeological reasons to claim them for their forefathers (the time is usually given as around 2400 BC).
2. The Celtic invasion
The invasion of new tribes known as Celtic tribes went on from the 8th-7th cc. BC to the 1st c. BC. The first Celtic comers were the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall taking possession of the south and east. Thus the whole of Britain was occupied by the Celts who merged with the Picts and Scots, as well as with the Alpine part of the population: the latter predominated in the West while the rest of the British Isles became distinctly Celtic in language and the structure of society. The Gaelic form of the Celtic dialects was spoken in Caledonia (modern Scotland) and Ireland, the Brythonic form in England and Wales. The social unit of the Celts, the clan, superseded the earlier family groups; clans were united into large kinship groups, and those into tribes. The clan was the chief economic unit, the main organizational unit for basic activities of the Celts, farming.
This Celtdominated mixture of Picts, Scots and other ingredients came to be called Brythons, or Britts.
The Celts of the British Isles were heathens until later invaders, the Romans, brought Christianity to them. Their religion was a weird mixture of heathenism, that is the worship of certain Gods and Goddesses, with the worship of the Sun and Moon, and of the Serpent, the symbol of wisdom. The priests were called Druids, and their superior knowledge was taken for magic power. The Druids themselves must have been well pleased with this sort of reputation and enhanced its spell holding awe-inspiring vigils and observing terrible night rites in open air temples arranged somewhere in dark woods called Sacred Groves. The rites were associated with bloody sacrifice usually of animals but sometimes human beings, which increased the Druids’ power and authority over the masses. On the eve of the Roman conquest the Brythons were at the stage of decay corroding the primitive community structure; elements of a new, class society were appearing, with patriarchal slavery as a new feature. The rapid economic development of that time led to a weakening of the Celtic clan structure and that to a certain extent may account for the comparative ease with which the conquest was effected.
Some of the early Latin borrowings came into English through Celtic in the 5th century (e.g. street, port, wall, mill, kitchen, Chester).
LONDON is of Celtic origin. The Celts called it Llyn-dun – фортеця поблизу ріки (dun-“hill” and also “fort”). The Romans changed it for Londinium.