Landmarks in the History of English Language

 Historians of the English language distinguish three main stages or periods in its development. First is the Old English or the Anglo-Saxon period, extending from 600-1100 A.D., followed by the Middle English period, from 1100-1500 and finally Modern English from 1500 onwards.

The Old English Period

This period extends from the earliest written documents, about the close of the 7th century to about 1100 by which time the effects of the Norman Conquest became perceptible. This period begin with the arrival of the Germanic tribes around 600 A.D. The Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, the three main tribes started filtering in during the last years of the Roman rule, which ended in 410 A.D. They displaced the original Celtic inhabitants of Britain and gave it a new name, England - the land of the Angles, and a new language, English - the language of the Angles. Old English, the earliest form of English, resulted from the dialects of these three tribes rolling together into one national literary language. 

Old English Dialects

Old English had a number of dialects as the Germanic settlers in Britain belonged to three different tribes. Based on the regions of their occupation,  four distinct dialects of the period existed. They are:

  1. Northumbrian in the North comprising the district between the Firth or Forth and Humber river.
  2. Mercian, spoken between the Humber and the Thames.
  3. West Saxon, spoken in the region south of the Thames, except in Kent and Surrey.
  4. Kentish, spoken in Kent and Surrey.
Of these, Northumbrian and Mercian, spoken to the North of the Thames were dialects of the Angles and called the Anglian variety. OE poetry had its beginnings in Anglian, but it has come down to us mostly in West Saxon from. It was West Saxon, the dialect of the Saxons, which gained popularity and status as the standard language, since it was patronized by King Alfred. Moreover, Wessex was the most highly civilized of all the kingdoms and the first to attain political unity and stability. Most of the important literary works of the period like Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were written in the West-Saxon dialect. Kentish was the dialect of the Jutes, who were the earliest of the settlers. 

Old English Grammar

OE had a very complicated grammatical system, with a number of different declensions of the noun and a three gender system, and with two declensions of the adjectives. It was highly inflected, though the inflectional system was not as complicated as that of PG or PIE. This period has often been described as the period of "full inflections", since the inflections (grammatical endings) of nouns, adjectives and verbs were preserved in full. Being highly inflected, OE had a relatively free word order (syntax). Inflections make meaning less dependent on word order. 

OE Spelling

The Germanic tribes used a particular king of alphabet called the Runic Alphabet. Two of the typical Runic symbol were (ð) and (æ) which are not there in Modern English spelling, but they are used in the phonetic script. They were interchangeable in OE, used to represent the sound spelt as ð today in words like thick and then. The OE spelling was phonetic in character, each letter representing a sound and it contained no silent letters. OE has seven vowels / a, e, i, o, u, y, (æ)/ . (a+e) was the specialty of OE, the combination of two symbols. y and i later became the same i. In consonant combinations all the consonants were pronounced.

eg:                   Old English                        Modern English
                           cuppe               =                      cup
                           feallan              =                      fall
                           sevfon              =                      seven
                           seon                 =                       see /s/
                           geit                  =                       gait
                           gearu               =                        year
                           cynn                 =                       kin
                           ðancian         =                        thank                       
                           cidan               =                        chide
But for such deviations, Old English remained a phonetic language without the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation, which is conspicuous in Modern English.

OE Vocabulary

This period is characterized by a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon language, remarkable for its high degree of purity, with only a small amount of Latin loan words, followed by some Norse elements, consequent on the Norse invasion. The OE word stock was enriched by Indo-European words, Celtic element, Latin influence and the Scandinavian influence.

Indo-European words

Words relating to basic day to day transactions of life have mostly come from Indo-European. These include words denoting close family relations, cardinal numbers upto ten, the words man and tree, words associated with nature and the universe such as moon, sun, earth, fire, star etc., words relating to fundamental concepts in farming and cultivation, manes of basic weapons like the shield, and amount of basic colours such as red and yellow.

The Celtic element in OE

From the fact that the original language of Britain was Celtic, one might suppose that OE would contain a considerable amount of Celtic words. But Celtic has left few marks on the OE spoken language and the Celtic element in OE vocabulary is almost microscopic. The reason for this was that the native Britons were expelled from Central England by the foreign invaders and their language left little influence on the language of the invaders. The Anglo-Saxons, however, preserved the Celtic names of cities and towns and rivers and mountains and some words referring to natural features of landscape. Place names like Kent, London, Cornwall, York and the first syllable of Winchester, Salisbury, Worcester, river names like Thames, Avon, Wye, Dover are all traceable to a Celtic source. Words like -cumb (valley, preserved in Modern English word -Combe as in Dun combe), mattoc (mattock), dun (dark coloured) are also Celtic. One reason why the Celtic words were short-lived was that most of were popular words, existing in the spoken language and because they were transmitted orally, they tended to die out.

The Latin vocabulary in OE

Latin words entered OE two phases: (1) during the Roman occupations and (2) through the early Christian missionaries. The words of the first phase were chiefly military and administrative terms and names of essential commodities and items of food. Eg. weall (wall), mil (mile), win (wine), cheese, butter, the suffixes - chester and -caster as in Mancheter, Winchester and Lancaster. A few words like devil (deofol), night (niht) and angel (engel) came in with the Anglo-Saxons. Latin words introduced by Christian missionaries are naturally of a religious nature. Eg: priest, monk, bishop, pope, abbot, cross (cruc) saint (sanct) etc. The missionaries adopted certain native words and used them with a new connotation Eg: Easter, (in the sense of sacrament).

Anglo-Saxon elements

The Anglo-Saxon influence was mainly on the wordstock and the changes in meanings of words. The Anglo-Saxon words relate to man's daily life, most elementary occupations and natural phenomena. For instance, words for close family relationships, father, mother, brother, etc., the names of staple food items, bread, butter, milk, meat, names of flowers, trees and vegetations such as rose, daisy, names of weapons such as sword, bow, arrow, spear, natural features such as the sun, the moon and the stars, words referring to long periods of time like year, month and week, many alternative phrases like kith and kin, might and main, fair or foul, the prefixes forth- (forth with, forth-right) and with- (withstand) and the commonest suffixes -down, -ship -ness and -hood are native in origin.

Many words underwent change of meaning through the processes of (1) elevation (2) degradation and (3) association of ideas. Examples of words of elevated respectability are lord and lady (originally meant bread-keeper and bread-kneeder), steward (originally one who attended on pigs or cattle , tun (originally meant village elevated to our modern town).  Instances of words which underwent degradation in status are knave (in OE a young man), silly (OE happy), and fiend (OE enemy). Association of ideas gave rise to words like bead (OE prayer using the rosary of beads), bridal (originally an ale or drink at the wedding), thrill (OE to pierce), uncouth (OE unknown) etc.


Prepared by: 
Dr. Susan Mathew
Dept. of English

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