26
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………..2-4
CHAPTER I THE CONTACT OF ENGLISH WITH OTHER LANGUAGES………………..5-7
§ THE CELTIC INFLUENCE
§ THE APPLICATION OF NATIVE WORDS
CHAPTER II THE SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENE: THE VIKING AGE………………..….8-10
§ THE SCANDINAVIAN INVASIONS OF ENGLAND
§ THE SETTLEMENT OF THE DANES IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER III THE AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO
RACES……………………………………11-13
§ THE RELATION OF THE TWO LANGUAGES
§ THE TESTS OF BORROWED WORDS
CHAPTER IV THE SCANDINAVIAN PLACE
NAMES………………………………………………14-16
§ THE EARLIEST BORROWING
§ SCANDINAVIAN LOAN-WORDS AND THEIR CHARACTER
CHAPTER V CELTIC PLACE –NAMES…………………………….…………………..…17-19
§ CELTIC LOAN-WORDS
§ THE RELATION OF BORROWED AND NATIVE WORDS
CHAPTER VI FORM WORDS………………………………….………………….………20-22
§ SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE OUTSIDE THE STANDARD SPEECH
§ HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….……23-28
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………….…………………………..……29
INTRODUCTION
The essence of history is change taking place in time. Anything which
endures in time has a history, because in this world of flux anything
which endures in time suffers change. But if history is to be
meaningful, there must also be continuity. A people, a nation, or a
language may change over a long period so greatly as to become something
vastly different from what it was at the beginning. But this great
change is the accumulation of many small changes. At any stage in its
history, the people, nation, or language is fundamentally the same
entity that it was in the immediately preceding stage, albeit changed in
detail. It has preserved its identity.
The preservation of identity through continuity of change, then,
characterizes things which have a history. It is easier to see this in
the case of concrete objects, like the Great Pyramid or Keats’s Grecian
urn. Their continuity is physical; the actual stuff of which they are
made has endured through centuries. Their history is primarily what has
happened to them and around them; the change they have suffered has
chiefly been change of environment, rather than change of their own
nature. Indeed, what fascinated Keats about the urn was its placid
unchanging ness in the midst of changing generations of men. Its history
is entirely what can be called “outer history.”
According to the Bible: ’In the beginning was the Word’. By the Talmud:
‘God created the world by a Word, instantaneously, without toil or
pains’. But I think whatever more mystical meaning these pieces of
scripture might have, they both point to the primacy of language in the
way human beings conceive of the world.
I agree with the theory that language figures centrally in our lives. I
think we discover our identity as individuals and social beings when we
acquire it during childhood. It serves as a means of cognition and
communication: it enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate
with people in our community. It provides for present needs and future
plans, and at the same time carries with it the impression of things
past.
I want note in passing, incidentally, that it is speech that the ogre
cannot master. Whether this necessarily implies that language is also
beyond his reach is another matter, for language does not depend on
speech as the only physical medium for its expression. Auden may not
imply such a distinction in these lines, but it is one which, as we
shall see presently, it is important to recognize.
It has been suggested that language is so uniquely human, distinguishes
us so clearly from ogres and other animals, that our species might be
more appropriately named homo loquens than homo sapiens. But although
language is clearly essential to humankind and has served to extend
control over other parts of creation, it is not easy to specify what
exactly makes it distinctive. If, indeed, it is distinctive. After all,
other species communicate after a fashion, for they could not otherwise
mate, propagate, and cooperate in their colonies.
English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group within the western branch of
the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages. It
is related most closely to the Frisian language, to a lesser extent to
Netherlandic (Dutch-Flemish) and the Low German (Plattdeutsch) dialects,
and more distantly to Modern High German. Its parent,
Proto-Indo-European, was spoken around 5,000 years ago by nomads who are
thought to have roamed the _outh-east European plains. Three main stages
are usually recognized in the history of the development of the English
language. Old English, known formerly as Anglo-Saxon, dates from AD 449
to 1066 or 1100. Middle English dates from 1066 or 1100 to 1450 or 1500.
Modern English dates from about 1450 or 1500 and is subdivided into
Early Modern English, from about 1500 to 1660, and Late Modern English,
from about 1660 to the present time.
The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was
threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard
English; a large number of places in the east and north-east of England
have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian
origin. Words that entered the English language by this route include
landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman The vast
majority of loan words do not begin to appear in documents until the
early twelfth century; these include many modern words which use sk-
sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other words appearing in written
sources at this time include again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog,
freckles, gasp, law, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly,
smile, want, weak, and window. Some of the words that came into use by
this route are among the most common in English, such as both, same,
get, and give. The system of personal pronouns was affected, with they,
them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse even influenced
the verb to be; the replacement of sindon by is almost certainly
Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singular ending -s in the
present tense of verbs.
There are over 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (within the former boundaries of the
Danelaw): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for “farm” or
“town”—for example Grimsby, Naseby, and Whitby; many others end in
-thorpe (“village”), -thwaite (“clearing”), and -toft (“homestead”)
The distribution of family names showing Scandinavian influence is
still, as an analysis of names ending in -son reveals, concentrated in
the north and east, corresponding to areas of former Viking settlement.
Early medieval records indicate that over 60% of personal names in
Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire showed Scandinavian influence.
The importance of the English language is naturally very great. English
is the language not only of England but of the extensive dominions and
colonies associated in the British Empire, and it is the language of the
United States. Spoken by over 260 million people, it is in the number
who speak it the largest of the occidental languages. English-speaking
people constitute about one tenth of the world’s population. English,
however, is not the largest language in the world. The more conservative
estimates of the population of China would indicate that Chinese is
spoken by about 450 million people. But the numerical ascendancy of
English among European languages can be seen by a few comparative
figures. Russian, next in size to English, is spoken by about 140
million people;2 Spanish by 135 millions; German by 90 millions;
Portuguese by 63 millions; French by 60 millions; Italian by 50
millions. Thus at the present time English has the advantage in numbers
over all other western languages. But the importance of a language is
not alone a matter of numbers or territory; as we have said, it depends
also on the importance of the people who speak it.
CHAPTER I
The Contact of English with Other Languages
The language which has been described in the preceding chapter wasnot
merely the product of the dialects brought to England by theJutes,
Saxons, and Angles. These formed its basis, the sole basis ofits grammar
and the source of by far the largest part of itsvocabulary. But there
were other elements which entered into it.In the course of the first
seven hundred years of its existence inEngland it was brought into
contact with three other languages,the languages of the Celts, the
Romans, and the Scandinavians.From each of these contacts it shows
certain effects, more especially additions to its vocabulary. The nature
of these contactsand the changes that were effected by them will form
the subject of the present chapter.
The Celtic Influence. Nothing would seem more reasonablethan to expect
that the conquest of the Celtic population ofBritain by the Teutons and
the subsequent mixture of the tworaces should have resulted in a
corresponding mixture of theirlanguages; that consequently we should
find in the Old Englishvocabulary numerous instances of words which the
Teutons heardin the speech of the native population and adopted. For it
isapparent that the Celts were by no means exterminated except incertain
areas, and that in most of England large numbers of themwere gradually
absorbed by the new inhabitants. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports
that at Andredesceaster or Pcvensey adeadly struggle occurred between
the native population and the words too miscellaneous to admit of
profitable classification, like anchor, coulter, fan (for winnowing),
fever, place (cf. marketplace), spelter (asphalt), sponge, elephant,
phoenix, mancus (a coin) and some more or less learned or literary
words, such as calend, circle, legion, giant, consul, and talent. The
words cited in these examples are mostly nouns, but Old English borrowed
also a number of verbs and adjectives such as aspendan (to spend; L.
expcndere) bcmutian (to exchange; L. mьtdre), dihtan (to compose; L.
dictare), pinion (to torture; L. poena), pinsian (to weigh; L. pensare),
pyngan (to prick; L. pungere), scaltian (to dance; X,. saltdre),
temprian (to temper; L. temperвre), trifolian (to grind; L. tribulвre),
tyrnan (to turn; L. torndre), and crisp (L. crispus, curly). But enough
has been said to indicate the extent and variety of the borrowings from
Latin in the early days of Christianity in England and to show how
quickly the language reflected the broadened horizon which the English
people owed to the church.
The Application of Native Words The words which Old English borrowed in
this period are only a partial indication of the extent to which the
introduction of Christianity affected the lives and thoughts of the
English people. The English did not always adopt a foreign word to
express a new concept. Often an old word was applied to a new thing and
by a slight adaptation made to express a new meaning. The Anglo-Saxons,
for example, did not borrow the Latin word dens, since their own word
God was a satisfactory equivalent. Likewise heaven and hell express
conceptions not unknown to Anglo-Saxon paganism and are consequently
English words. Patriarch was rendered literally by heahfasder (high
father), prophet by witega (wise one), martyr often by the native word
browere (one who suffers pain), and saint by hdlga (holy one). While
specific members of the church organization such as pope, bishop, and
priest, or monk and abbot represented individuals for which the English
had no equivalent and therefore borrowed the Latin terms, they did not
borrow a general word for clergy but vised a native expression 8set
gвstlice jolc (the spiritual folk). The word Easter is a Teutonic word
taken over from a pagan festival, likewise in the spring, in honor of
Eostre, the goddess of dawn. Instead of borrowing the Latin word
praedicare (to preach) the English expressed the idea with words of
their own, such as Ixran (to teach) or bodian (to bring a message); to
pray (L. precвre) was rendered by biddan (to ask) and other words of
similar meaning, prayer by a word from the same root, gebed. For baptize
(L. baptizвre) the English adapted a native word fullian (to consecrate)
while its derivative fulluht renders the noun baptism. The latter word
enters into numerous compounds, such as julluht-baef) (font), fulwere
(baptist), fulluht-fseder (bap1-tizer), fulluht-hвd (baptismal vow),
fulluht-nama (Christian name), fulluht-stow (baptistry), fulluht-tid
(baptism time), and others. Even so individual a feature of the
Christian faith as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was expressed by
the Teutonic word hыsl (modern housel) while lвc, the general word for
sacrifice to the gods, was also sometimes applied to the Sacrifice of
the Mass. The term Scriptures found its exact equivalent in the English
word gewritit, and evangelium was rendered by god-spell, originally
meaning good tidings. Trinity (L. trinitas) was translated brines
(three-ness), the idea of God the Creator was expressed by scieppend
(one who shapes or forms), fruma (creator, founder), or metod
(measurer). Native words like f aider (father), dryhten (prince),
wealdend (ruler), beoden (prince), weard (ward, protector), hldford
(lord) are frequent synonyms. Most of them are also applied to Christ,
originally a Greek word and the most usual name for the Second Person of
the Trinity, but U friend (Savior) is also commonly employed. The Third
Person (Spiritus Sanctus) was translated Halig Cast (Holy Ghost). Latin
diabolus was borrowed as deofol (devil) but we find feond (fiend) as a
common synonym. Examples might be multiplied. Cross is rod (rood), treow
(tree), gcalga (gallows), etc.; resurrection is zerist, from ansan (to
arise); peccatum is synn (sin), while other words like mвn, firen,
leaJэtor, woh, and scyld, meaning ‘vice’, ‘crime’, ‘fault’, and the
like, are commonly substituted. The Judgment Day is Doomsday. Many of
these words are translations of their Latin equivalents and their
vitality is attested by the fact that in a great many cases they have
continued in use down to the present day. It is important to recognize
that the significance of a foreign influence is not to be measured
simply by the foreign word’s introduced but is revealed also by the
extent to which it stimulates the language to independent creative
effort and causes it to make full use of its native resources.
CHAPTER II
The Scandinavian Influence: The Viking Age.
The end of the Old English period English underwent a third foreign
influence, the result of contact with another important language, the
Scandinavian. In the course of history it is not unusual to witness the
spectacle of a nation or people, through causes too remote or complex
for analysis, suddenly emerging from obscurity, playing for a time a
conspicuous, often brilliant, part, and then, through causes equally
difficult to define, subsiding once more into a relatively minor sphere
of activity. Such a phenomenon is presented by the Teutonic inhabitants
of the Scandinavian Peninsula and Denmark, one-time neighbors of the
Anglo-Saxons and closely related to them in language and blood. For some
centuries the Scandinavians had remained quietly in their northern home.
But in the eighth century a change, possibly economic, possibly
political, occurred in this area and provoked among them a spirit of
unrest and adventurous enterprise. They began a series of attacks upon
all the lands adjacent to the North Sea and the Baltic. Their activities
began in plunder and ended in conquest. The Swedes established a kingdom
in Russia; Norwegians colonized parts of the British Isles, the Faroes
and Iceland, and from there pushed on to Greenland and the coast of
Labrador; the Danes founded the dukedom of Normandy and finally
conquered England. The pinnacle of their achievement was reached in the
beginning of the eleventh century when Cnut, king of Denmark, obtained
the throne of England, conquered Norway, and from his English capital
ruled the greater part of the Scandinavian world. The daring sea-rovers
to whom these unusual achievements were due are commonly known as
Vikings,1 and the period of their activity, extending from the middle of
the eighth century to the beginning of the eleventh, is popularly known
as the Viking Age. It was to their attacks upon, settle ments in, and
ultimate conquest of England that the Scandinavian influence upon Old
English was due.
The Scandinavian Invasions of England. In the Scandinavian attacks upon
England three well-marked stages can be distinguished. The first is the
period of early raids, beginning according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
in 787 and continuing with some intermissions until about 850 The raids
of this period were simply plundering attacks upon towns and monasteries
near the coast. Sacred vessels of gold and silver, jeweled shrines,
costly robes, valuables of all kinds, and slaves were carried off.
Note-Worthy instances are the sacking of Lindisfarne and Jarrow in 793
and 794. But with the plundering of these two famous monasteries the
attacks apparently ceased for forty years, until renewed in 834 along
the southern coast and in East Anglia. These early raids were apparently
the work of small isolated bands.
The second stage is the work of large armies and is marked by widespread
plundering in all parts of the country and by extensive settlements.
This new development was inaugurated by the arrival in 1850 of a Danish
fleet of 350 ships. Their pirate crews wintered in the isle of Thanet
and the following spring captured Canterbury and London and ravaged the
surrounding country. Although finally defeated by a West Saxon army they
soon renewed their attacks. In 866 a large Danish army plundered East
Anglian and in 867 captured York. In 869 the East Anglian king, Edmund,
met a cruel death in resisting the invaders. The incident made a deep
impression on all England, and the memory of his martyrdom was vividly
preserved in English tradition for nearly two centuries. The eastern
part of England was now largely in the hands of the Danes, and they
began turning their attention to Wessex. The attack upon Wessex began
shortly before the accession of King Alfred (871-99). Even the greatness
of this greatest of English kings threatened to prove insufficient to
withstand the repeated thrusts of the Northmen. After seven years of
resistance, in which temporary victories were invariably succeeded by
fresh defeats, Alfred was forced to take refuge with a small band of
personal followers in the marshes of Somerset. But in this darkest hour
for the fortunes of the English Alfred’s courage and persistence
triumphed. With a fresh levy of men from Somerset, Wiltshire, and
Hampshire, he suddenly attacked the Danish army under Guthrum at
Ethandun (now Edington, in Wiltshire). The result was an overwhelming
victory for the English and a capitulation by the Danes,_(878J.
The Treaty of Wedmore (near Glastonbury), which was signed by Alfred and
Guthrum the same year, marks the culmination of the second stage in the
Danish invasions. Wessex was saved. The Danes withdrew from Alfred’s
territory. But they were not compelled to leave England. The treaty
merely defined the line, running roughly from Chester to London, to the
east of which the foreigners were henceforth to remain. This territory
was to be subject to Danish law and is hence known as the Danelaw. In
addition the Danes agreed to accept Christianity, and Guthrum was
baptized. This last provision was important. It might secure the better
observance of the treaty, and, what was more important, it would help to
pave the way for the ultimate fusion of the two groups.
The third stage of the Scandinavian incursions covejrs__the period of
political adjustment and assimilation from 878 to 1042. The Treaty of
Wedmore did not put an end to Alfred’s troubles. Guthrum was inclined to
break faith and there were fresh invasions from outside. But the
situation slowly began to clear. Under Alfred’s son Edward the Elder
(900-25) and grandson Athelstan (925-39) the English began a series of
counterattacks that put the Danes on the defensive. One of the brilliant
victories of the English in this period was Athelstan’s triumph in 937
in the battle of Brunanburh, in Northumbria, over a combined force of
Danes and Scots, a victory celebrated in one of the finest of Old
English poems. By the middle of the century a large part of eastern
England, though still strongly Danish in blood and custom, was once more
under English rule.
Toward the end of the century, however, when England seemed at last on
the point of solving its Danish problem, a new and formidable succession
of invasions began. In 991 a fleet of ninety-three ships under Olaf
Tryggvason and his associates Suddenly entered the Thames. They were met
by Byrhtnoth, the valiant earl of the East Saxons, in a battle
celebrated in another famous Old English war poem, The Battle of Maldon.
Here the English, heroic in defeat, lost their leader, and soon the
invaders were being bribed by large sums to refrain from plunder. The
invasions now began to assume an official character. In 994 Olaf, who
shortly became king of Norway, was joined by Svein, king of Denmark, in
a new attack on London. The sums necessary to buy off the enemy became
greater and greater, rising in 1012 to the amazing figure of Ј,48,000.
In each case the truce thus bought was temporary, and Danish forces were
soon again marching over England, murdering and pillaging. Finally Svein
determined to make himself king of the country. In 1014, supported by
his son Cnut, he crowned a series of victories in different parts of
England by driving Ethelred, the English king, into exile and seizing
the throne. Upon his sudden death the same year his son succeeded him.
Three years of fighting established Cnut’s claims to the throne, and for
the next twenty-five years England was ruled by Danish kings.
The Settlement of the Danes in England. The events here rapidly
summarized had as an important consequence the settlement of large
numbers of Scandinavians in England. However temporary may have been the
stay of many of the attacking parties, especially those which in the
beginning came simply to plunder, many individuals remained behind when
their ships returned home. Often they became permanent settlers in the
island. Some indication of their number may be had from the fact that
more than 1400 places in England bear Scandinavian names. Most of these
are naturally in the north and east of England, the district of the
Danelaw, for it was here that the majority of the invaders settled. Most
of the new inhabitants were Danes, although there were considerable
Norwegian settlements in the northwest, especially in what is now
Cumberland and Westmoreland, and in a few of the northern counties. The
presence of a large Scandinavian element in the population is indicated
not merely by place-names but by peculiarities of manorial organization,
local government, legal procedure, and the like. Thus we have to do not
merely with large bands of marauders, marching and countermarching
across England, carrying hardship and devastation into all parts of the
country for upward of two centuries, but with an extensive peaceable
settlement by farmers who intermarried with the English, adopted many of
their customs, and entered into the everyday life of the community. In
the districts where such settlements took place conditions were
favorable for an extensive Scandinavian influence on the English
language.
CHAPTER III
The Amalgamation of the Two Races.
The amalgamation of the two races was greatly facilitated by the close
kinship that existed between them. The problem of the English was not
the assimilation of an alien race representing an alien culture and
speaking a wholly foreign tongue. The policy of the English kings in the
period when they were re-establishing their control over the Danelaw was
to accept as an established fact the mixed population of the district
and to devise a modus vivendi for its component elements. In this effort
they were aided by the natural adaptability of the Scandinavian.
Generations of contact with foreign communities, into which their many
enterprises had brought them, had made the Scandinavians a cosmopolitan
people. The impression derived from a study of early English
institutions is that in spite of certain native customs which the Danes
continued to observe they adapted themselves largely to the ways of
English life. That many of them early accepted Christianity is attested
by the large number of Scandinavian names found not only among monks and
abbots, priests and bishops, but also among those who gave land to
monasteries and endowed churches. It would be a great mistake to think
of the relation between Anglo-Saxon and Dane, especially in the tenth
century, as uniformly hostile. One must distinguish, as we have said,
between the predatory bands that continued to traverse the country and
the large numbers that were settled peacefully on the land. Alongside
the ruins of English towns—Symeon of Durham reports that the city of
Carlisle remained uninhabited for two hundred years after its
destruction by the Danes—there existed important communities established
by the newcomers. They seem to have grouped themselves at first in
concentrated centers, parceling out large tracts of land from which the
owners had fled, and preferring this form of settlement to too scattered
a distribution in a strange land. Among such centers the Five
Boroughs—Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham —became
important foci of Scandinavian influence. It was but a question of time
until these large centers and the multitude of smaller communities where
the Northmen gradually settled were absorbed into the general mass of
the English population.
The Relation of the Two Languages. The relation between the two
languages in the district settled by the Danes is a matter of inference
rather than exact knowledge. Doubtless the situation was similar to that
observable in numerous parts of the world today where people speaking
different languages arc found living side by side in the same region.
While in some places the Scandinavians gave up their language early1
there were certainly communities in which Danish or Norse remained for
some time the usual language. Up until the time of the Norman Conquest
the Scandinavian language in England was constantly being renewed by the
steady stream of trade and conquest. In some parts of Scotland Norse was
still spoken as late as the seventeen century. In other districts in
which the prevailing speech was English there were doubtless many of the
newcomers who continued to speak their own language at least as late as
1100 and a considerable number who were to a greater or lesser degree
bilingual. The last-named circumstance is rendered more likely by the
frequent intermarriage between the two races and by the similarity
between the two tongues. The Anglican dialect resembled the language of
the Northman in a number of particulars in which West Saxon showed
divergence. The two may even have been mutually intelligible to a
limited extent. Con temporary statements on the subject are conflicting,
and it is difficult to arrive at a conviction. But wherever the truth
lies in this debatable question, there can be no doubt that the basis
existed for an extensive interaction of the two languages upon each
other, and this conclusion is amply borne out by the large number of
Scandinavian elements subsequently found in English.
The Tests of Borrowed Words. The similarity between Old English and
the language of the Scandinavian invaders makes it at times very
difficult to decide whether a given word in Modern English is a native
or a borrowed word. Many of the commoner words of the two languages were
identical, and if we had no Old English literature from the period
before the Danish invasions, we should be unable to say that many words
were not of Scandinavian origin. In certain cases, however, we have very
reliable criteria by which we can recognize a borrowed word. These tests
are not such as the layman can generally apply, although occasionally
they are sufficiently simple. The most reliable depend upon differences
in the development of certain sounds in the North Teutonic and West
Teutonic areas. One of the simplest to recognize is the development of
the sound sk. In Old English this was early palatalized tojh (written
sc), except possibly in the combination scr, whereas in the Scandinavian
countries it retained its hard sk sound. Consequently, while native
words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed
from the Scandinavians are generally still pronounced with sk: sky,
skin, skill, scrape, scrub, bask, whisk. The O.E. ycyrlc has become
shirt, while the corresponding O.N. form skyrla gives us skirt. In the
same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of k and g in such
words as kid, dike1 (cf. ditch) get, give, gild, egg, is an indication
of Scandinavian origin. Occasionally, though not very often, the vowel
of a word gives clear proof of borrowing. For example, the Teutonic
diphthong ai became в in Old English (and has become ц in modern
English), but became ei or e in Old Scandinavian. Thus aye, nay (beside
no from the native word), hale (cf. the English form (w)lwle), reindeer,
swain are borrowed words, and many more examples can be found in Middle
English and in the modern dialects. Thus there existed in Middle English
the forms geit, gait, which are from Scandinavian, beside gat, gцt from
the O.E. word. The native word has survived in Modern English goat. In
the same way the Scandinavian word for loathsome existed in Middle
English as leip, laif) beside Id), loft. Such tests as these, based on
sound-developments in the two languages are the most reliable means of
distinguishing Scandinavian from native words. But occasionally meaning
gives a fairly reliable test. Thus our word bloom (flower) could come
equally well from O.E. blorna or Scandinavian blцm. But the O.E. word
meant an “ingot of iron’, whereas the Scandinavian word meant ‘flower,
bloom’. It happens that the Old English word has survived as a term in
metallurgy, but it is the Old Norse word that has come clown in ordinary
use. Again, if the initial g in gift did not betray the Scandinavian
origin of this word, we should be justified in suspecting it from the
fact that the cognate O.E. word gift meant the ‘price of a wife’, and
hence in the plural ‘marriage,’ while the O.N. word had the more general
sense of ‘gift, present’. The word plow in Old English meant a measure
of land, in Scandinavian the agricultural implement, which in Old
English was called a sulh. When neither the form of a word nor its
meaning proves its Scandinavian origin we can never be sure that we have
to do with a borrowed word. The fact that an original has not been
preserved in Old English is no proof that such an original did not
exist. Nevertheless when a word appears in Middle English which
cannot be traced to an Old English source but for which an entirely
satisfactory original exists in Old Norse, and when that word occurs
chiefly in texts written in districts where Danish influence was strong,
or when it has survived in dialectal use in these districts today, the
probability that we have here a borrowed word is fairly strong. In every
case final judgment must rest upon a careful consideration of all the
factors involved.
CHAPTER IV
Scandinavian Place-names.
Among the most notable evidences of the extensive Scandinavian
settlement in England is the large number of places that bear
Scandinavian names. When we find more than six hundred places like
Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, Rugby, and Thorcsby, with names ending in -by,
nearly all of them in the district occupied by the Danes, we have a
striking evidence of the number of Danes who settled in England. For
those names all contain the Danish word by, meaning ‘farm’ or ‘town’, a
word which is also seen in our word by-law (town law). Some three
hundred names like Althorp, Bishopsthorpe, Gaw-thorj)C, Linthorpe
contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village). An almost equal number
contain the word thwaite (an isolated piece of land)—Applcthwaite,
Braithwaite, Cowpcrthwaite, Langthwaite, Satlerthwalte. About a hundred
places bear names ending in toft (a piece of ground, a
messuage)—Brimtoft, Eas-toft, Langtoft, Loivestoft, Nortoft. Numerous
other Scandinavian elements enter into English place-names, which need
not be particularized here. It is apparent that these elements entered
intimately in the speech of the people of the Danelaw. It has been
remarked above that more than 1400 Scandinavian place-names have been
counted in England, and the number will undoubtedly be increased when a
more careful survey of the material has been made. These names are not
uniformly distributed over the Danelaw. The largest number are found in
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In some districts in these counties as many
as 75 per cent of the place-names are of Scandinavian origin. Cumberland
and Westmoreland contribute a large number, reflecting the extensive
Norse settlements in the northwest, while Norfolk, with a fairly large
representation, shows that the Danes were numerous in at least this part
of East Anglia. It may be remarked that a similar high percentage of
Scandinavian personal names has been found in the medieval records of
these districts. Names ending in son, like Stevenson or Johnson, conform
to a characteristic Scan dinavian custom, the equivalent Old English
patronymic being -ng, as in Browning.
The Earliest Borrowing. The extent of this influence on English
place-nomenclature would lead us to expect a large infiltration of other
words into the vocabulary. But we should not expect this infiltration to
show itself at once. The early relations of the invaders with the
English were too hostile to lead to much natural intercourse, and we
must allow time for such words as the Anglo-Saxons learned from their
enemies to find their way into literature. The number of Scandinavian
words that appear in Old English is consequently small, amounting to
only about two score. The largest single group of these is such as would
be associated with a sea-roving and predatory people. Words like barda
(beaked ship), cnearr (small warship), scegfi (vessel), lij> (fleet),
sccgpmann (pirate), dreng (warrior), ha (oarlock) and hd-sxta (rower in
a warship), bdtswegen (boatman), hofding (chief, ringleader), orrest
(battle), ran (robbery, rapine), and fylcian (to collect or marshal a
force) show in what respects the invaders chiefly impressed the English.
A little later we find a number of words relating to the law or
characteristic of the social and administrative system of the Danelaw.
The word law itself is of Scandinavian origin, as is the word outlaw.
The word mвl (action at law), hold (freeholder), wapentake (an
administrative district), hьsting (assembly), and riding (originally
thrid-ing, one of the three divisions of Yorkshire) owe their use to the
Danes. In addition to these, a number of genuine Old English words seem
to be translations of Scandinavian terms: bцtlcas (what cannot be
compensated), hdmsocn (attacking an enemy in his house), lahceap
(payment for re-entry into lost legal rights), landceap (tax paid when
land was bought) are examples of such translations.1 English legal
terminology underwent a complete reshaping after the Norman Conquest,
and most of these words have been replaced now by terms from the French.
But their temporary existence in the language is an evidence of the
extent to which Scandinavian customs entered into the life of the
districts in which the Danes were numerous.
Scandinavian Loan-words and Their Character. It was after the Danes had
begun to settle down peaceably in the island and enter into the ordinary
relations of life with the English that Scandinavian words commenced to
enter in numbers into the language. If we examine the bulk of these
words with a view to dividing them into classes and thus discovering in
what domains of thought or experience the Danes contributed especially
to English culture and therefore to the English language, we shall not
arrive at any significant result. The Danish invasions were not like the
introduction of Christianity, bringing the English into contact with a
different civilization and introducing them to many things, physical as
well as spiritual, that they had not known before. The civilization of
the invaders was very much like that of the English themselves, if
anything somewhat inferior to it. Consequently the Scandinavian elements
that entered the English language are such as would make their way into
it through the give and take of everyday life. Their character can best
be conveyed by a few examples, arranged simply in alphabetical order.
Among nouns that came in are axle-tree, band, bank, birth, boon, booth,
brink, bull, calf (of leg), crook, dirt, down (feathers), dregs, egg,
fellow, freckle, gait, gap, girth, guess, hap, keel, kid, leg, link,
loan, mire, race, reindeer, reef (of sail), rift, root, scab, scales,
score, scrap, scat, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, slaughter, snare,
stack, steak, swain, thrift, tidings, trust, want, window. The list has
been made somewhat long in order the better to illustrate the varied and
yet simple character of the borrowings. Among adjectives we find
awkward, flat, iЬ, loose, low, meek, muggy, odd, rotten, rugged, scant,
seemly, sly, tattered, tight, and weak. There is also a surprising
number of common verbs among the borrowings, verbs like to bait, bask,
batten, call, cast, clip, cow, crave, crawl, die, droop, egg (on), flit,
gape, gasp, get, give, glitter, kindle, lift, lug, nag, ransack, raise,
rake, rid, rive, scare, scout (an idea), scowl, screech, snub, sprint,
take, thrive, thrust. Lists such newcomers and that not a single Briton
was left alive. The evidence of the place-names in this region lends
support to the statement. But this was probably an exceptional case. In
the east and southeast, where the Teutonic conquest was fully
accomplished at a fairly early date, it is probable that there were
fewer survivals of. a Celtic population than elsewhere. Large numbers of
the defeated fled to the west. Here it is apparent that a considerable
Celtic-speaking population survived until fairly late times. Some such
situation is suggested by a whole cluster of Celtic place-names in the
northeastern corner of Dorsetshire.1 It is altogether likely that many
Celts were held as slaves by the conquerors and that many of the Teutons
married Celtic women. In parts at least of the island, contact between
the two races must have been constant and in some districts intimate for
several generations.
CHAPTER V
Celtic Place-names.
When we come, however, to seek the evidence for this contact in the
English language investigation yields very meager results. Such evidence
as there is survives chiefly in place-names. The kingdom of Kent, for
example, owes its name to the Celtic word Canti or Cantion, the meaning
of which is unknown, while the two ancient Northumbrian kingdoms of
Deira and Bernicia derive their designations from Celtic tribal names.
Other districts, especially in the west and southwest, preserve in their
present-day names traces of their earlier Celtic designations.
Devonshire contains in the first element the tribal name Dumnonii,
Cornwall means the ‘Cornubian Welsh’, and Cumberland is the ‘land of the
Cymry or Britons’. Moreover, a number of important centers in the Roman
period have names in which Celtic elements are embodied. The name London
itself, although the origin of the word is somewhat uncertain, most
likely goes back to a Celtic designation. The first syllable of
Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Lichfield, and a
score of other names of cities is traceable to a Celtic source, while
the earlier name of Canterbury (Durovernum) and the name fork are
originally Celtic. But it is in the names of rivers and hills and places
in proximity to these natural features that the greatest number of
Celtic names survives. Thus the Thames is a Celtic river name, and
various Celtic words for river or water are preserved in the names Avon,
Exe, Esk, Usk, Dover, and Wye. Celtic words meaning ‘hill’ are found in
place-names like Barr (cf. Welsh bar, ‘top, summit’), Bredon (cf. Welsh
bre, TэilF), Bryn Mawr (cf. Welsh bryn liill’ and mawr ‘great’), Creech,
Pendle (cf. Welsh pen ‘top’), and others. Certain other Celtic elements
occur more or less frequently such as cumb (a deep valley) in names like
Duncombe, Holcombe, Winchcombe; torr (high rock, peak) in Torr,
Torcross, Torhill; pill (a tidal creek) in Pylle, Huntspill; and brace
(badger) in Brockholes, Brockhall, etc. Besides these purely Celtic
elements a few Latin words such as castra, fantana, fossa, portus, and
vicus were used in naming places during the Roman occupation of the
island and were passed on by the Celts to the English. These will be
discussed later. It is natural that Celtic place-names should be
commoner in the west than in the east and southeast, but the evidence of
these names shows that the Celts impressed themselves upon the Teutonic
consciousness at least to the extent of causing the newcomers to adopt
many of the local names current in Celtic speech and to make them a
permanent part of their vocabulary.
Celtic Loan-words. Outside of place-names, Jiow-ever, the influence of
Celtic upon the English language js almost negligible. Not over a score
of words in Old English can be traced with reasonable probability to a
Celtic source. Within this small number it is possible to distinguish
twogroups: (1) those which the Anglo-Saxons learned through everyday
contact with the natives, and (2) those which were introduced by the
Irish missionaries in the north. The former were transmitted orally and
were of popular character; the latter were connected with religious
activities and were more or less learned. The popular words include binn
(basket, crib), bratt (cloak), and brocc as these suggest better than
any explanation the familiar, everyday character of the words which the
Scandinavian invasions and subsequent settlement brought into English.
The Relation of Borrowed and Native Words. It will be seen from the
words in the above lists that in many cases the new words could have
supplied no real need in the English vocabulary. They made their way
into English simply as the result of the mixture of the two races. The
Scandinavian and the English words were being used side by side, and the
survival of one or the other must often have been a matter of chance.
Under such circumstances a number of things might happen. Where words
in the two languages coincided more or less in form and meaning the
modern word stands at the same time for both its English and its
Scandinavian ancestors. Examples of such words are burn, cole, drag,
fast, gang, murk(y), scrape, Ilick. Where there were differences of form
the English word often survived. Beside such English words as bench,
goat, heathen, yarn, few, grey, loath, leap, flay corresponding
Scandinavian forms are found quite often in Middle English literature
and in some cases still exist in dialectal use. We find scrcdc, skcllc,
skcrc with the hard pronunciation of the initial consonant group beside
the standard English shred, shell, sheer, wae beside woe, the surviving
form except in welaway, Mgg the Old Norse equivalent of O.E, treowe
(true). Again where the same idea was expressed by different words in
the two languages it was often, as we should expect, the English word
that lived on. We must remember that the area in which the two languages
existed for a time side by side was confined to the northern and eastern
half of England. Examples are the Scandinavian words attlen beside
English think (in the sense of purpose, intend), bolnen beside swell, f
men (O.N. tyna) beside lose, site beside sorrow, roke (fog) beside
mist, reike beside path. (3) In other cases the Scandinavian word
replaced the native word, often after the two had long remained in use
concurrently. Our word awe from Scandinavian, and its cognate eye (aye)
from Old English are both found in the Ormulum (c. 1200). In the earlier
part of the Middle English period the English word is commoner, but by
1300 the Scandinavian form begins to appear with increasing frequency,
and finally replaces the Old English word. The two forms must have been
current in the everyday speech of the northeast for several centuries,
until finally the pronunciation awe prevailed. The Old English form is
not found after the fourteenth century. The same thing happened with the
two words for egg, ey (English) and egg (Scandinavian). Caxton complains
at the close of the fifteenth century (see the passage quoted below, p.
236) that it was hard even then to know which to use. In the words
sister (O.N. syster, O.E. swcostor), boon (O.N. bцn, O.E. ben), loan
(O.N. Ian, O.E. ten), weak (O.N. veikr, O.E. tvвc) the Scandinavian form
lived. Often a good Old English word was lost, since it expressed the
same idea as the foreign word. Thus the verb take replaced the O.E.
niman;1 cast superseded the O.E. weorpan, while it has itself been
largely displaced now by throw; cut took the place of O.E. snоЦan and
ceorfan. Old English had several words for anger (O.N. angr), including
torn, grama, and irre, but the Old Norse word prevailed. In the same way
the Scandinavian word bark replaced O.E. rind, wing replaced O.E. jehra,
sky took the place of iiprodor and wolccn (the latter now being
preserved only in the poetical word welkin), and window (= wind-eye)
drove out the equally appropriate English word eagjiyrcl (eye-thirl,
i.e., eye-hole; cf. nostril = nose thirl, nose hole). (4) Occasionally
both the English and the Scandinavian words were retained with a
difference of meaning or use, as in the following pairs (the English
word is given first): no—nay, whole —hale, rear—raise, from—fro,
craft—skill, hide—skin, sick—ill. (5) In certain cases a native word
which was apparently not in common use was reinforced, if not
reintroduced, from the Scandinavian. In this way we must account for
such words as till, dale, rim, blend, run, and the Scotch bairn. (6)
Finally, the English word might be modified, taking on some of the
character of the corresponding Scandinavian word. Give and get with
their hard g are examples, as are scatter beside shatter, and Thursday
instead of the O.E. Thunresdseg. Some confusion must have existed in the
Danish area between the Scandinavian and the English form of many words,
a confusion that is clearly betrayed in the survival of such hybrid
forms as shriek and screech. All this merely goes to show that in the
Scandinavian influence on the English language we have to do with the
intimate mingling of two tongues. The results are just what we should
expect when two rather similar languages are spoken for upwards of two
centuries in the same area.
CHAPTER VI
Form Words.
If further evidence were needed of the intimate relation that existed
between the two languages, it would be found in the fact that the
Scandinavian words that made their way into English were not confined to
nouns and adjectives and verbs, but extended to pronouns, prepositions,
adverbs, and even a part of the verb to be. Such parts of speech are not
often transferred from one language to another. The pronouns they,
their, and them are Scandinavian. Old English used hie, hicra, him (see
above, p. 68). Possibly the Scandinavian words were felt to be less
subject to confusion with forms of the singular. Moreover, though these
are the most important, they arc not the only Scandinavian pronouns to
be found in English. A late Old English inscription contains the Old
Norse form hamэm for him. Both and same, though not primarily pronouns,
have pronominal uses and are of Scandinavian origin. The preposition
till was at one time widely used in the sense of to, besides having its
present meaning, and fro, likewise in common use formerly as the
equivalent of from, survives in the phrase to and fro. Both words are
from the Scandinavian. From the same source comes the modern form of the
conjunction though, the Old Norse equivalent of O.E. heah. The
Scandinavian use of at as a sign of the infinitive is to be seen in the
English ado (at-do) and was more widely used in this construction in
Middle English. The adverbs aloft, athwart, aye (ever), and seemly, and
the earlier hehen (hence) and hwepen (whence) are all derived from the
Scandinavian Finally the present plural are of the verb to be is a most
significant adoption. While we aron was the Old English form in the
north, the West Saxon plural was syndon (cf. German sind) and the form
are in Modern English undoubtedly owes its extension to the influence of
the Danes. When we remember that in the expression I they are both the
pronoun and the verb are Scandinavian we/ realize once more how
intimately the language of the invaders has entered into English.
Scandinavian Influence outside the Standard Speech. We should miss the
full significance of the Scandinavian influence if we failed to
recognize the extent to which it is found outside the standard speech.
Our older literature and the modern dialects are full of words which are
not now in ordinary use. The ballads offer many examples. When the Geste
of Robin Hood begins “Lythe and listin, gcntilmen” it has for its first
word an Old Norse synonym for listen. When a little later on the Sheriff
of Nottingham says to Little John “Say me nowe, wight yonge man, what is
nowe thy name?” he uses the O.N. vigt (strong, courageous). In the
ballad of Captain Car the line “Busk and bowne, my merry men all”
contains two words from the same source meaning prepare. The word gar,
meaning to cause or make one do something, is of frequent occurrence.
Thus, in Chevy Chace we are told of Douglas’ men that “Many a doughete
the(y) garde to dy”—i.e., they made many a doughty man die. In Robin
Hood and Guy of Gisborne the Virgin Mary is addressed: “Ah, deere Lady!
sayd Robin Hoode, Thou art both mother and may!” in which may is a
Scandinavian form for »note/. Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, in the ballad
of that name, “bigget a bower on yon burn-brae”, employing in the
process another word of Norse origin, biggen (to build), a word also
used by Burns in To a Mouse: “Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! . . .
And naething now to big a new ane.” In Burns and Scott we find the
comparative worse in the form waur: “A” the warld kens that they maun
either marry or do waur” (Old Mortality), also an old word (O.N. verre)
more commonly found in the form used by Chaucer in the Boofc of the
Duchess: “Alias! how myghte I fare werre?” Examples could be (brock or
badger); a group of words for geographical features which had not played
much part in the experience of the Anglo-Saxons in their continental
home—crag, luh (lake), cumb (valley), and torr1 (outcropping or
projecting rock, peak), the two latter chiefly as elements in
place-names; possibly the words dun (dark colored), and ass (ultimately
from Latin asinus). Words of the second group, those that came into
English through Celtic Christianity, are likewise few in number. In 563
St. Columba had come with twelve monks from Ireland to preach to his
kinsmen in Britain. On the little island of lona off the west coast of
Scotland he established a monastery and made it his headquarters for the
remaining thirty-four years of his life. From this center many
missionaries went out, founded other religious houses, and did much to
spread Christian doctrine and learning. As a result of their activity
the words ancor (hermit), dry (magician), cine (a gathering of parchment
leaves), cross, chtgge (bell), gabolrind (compass), mind (diadem), and
perhaps stxr (history) and cur-sian (to curse) came into at least
partial use in Old English.
It does not appear that many of these Celtic words attained a very
permanent place in the English language. Some soon died out and others
acquired only local currency. The relation of the two races was not such
as to bring about any considerable influence on English life or on
English speech. The surviving Celts were a submerged race. Had they,
like the Romans, possessed a superior culture, something valuable to
give the Teutons, their influence might have been greater. But the
Anglo-Saxon found little occasion to adopt Celtic modes of expression
and the Celtic influence remains the least of the early influences which
affected the English language.
Historical background The Vikings that traveled to western and Eastern
Europe were essentially from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They eventually
made it into Greenland and North America.
It is believed that Denmark was largely settled by Germanic people from
present-day Sweden in the fifth and sixth centuries. Their language
became the mother-tongue of present-day Scandinavian languages. By 800,
a strong central authority appears to have been established in Jutland
and the Danes were beginning to look beyond their own territory for
land, trade and plunder.
Norway had been settled over many centuries by Germanic peoples from
Denmark and Sweden who had established farming and fishing communities
around its coasts and lakes. The mountainous terrain and the fjords
formed strong natural boundaries and the communities remained
independent of each other, unlike the situation in Denmark which is
lowland. By 800, it is known that some 30 petty kingdoms existed in
Norway.
The sea was the easiest way of communication between the Norwegian
kingdoms and the outside world. It was in the eighth century that ships
of war began to be built and sent on raiding expeditions to initiate the
Viking Age, but the northern sea rovers were traders, colonizers and
explorers as well as plunderers.
Prior to 1000, details of Swedish events are obscure. It is known that
there were two tribes in the country during Roman times: the Suiones
(Swedes) in the north Svealand; and the Gothones (Goths), in the south
(hence called Gothia).
CONCLUSION
The importance of a language is inevitably associated in the mind of the
world with the political role played by the nations using it and their
influence in international affairs; with the confidence people feel in
their financial position and the certainty with which they will meet
their obligations i.e., pay their debts to other nations, meet the
interest on their bonds, maintain the gold or other basis of their
currency, control their expenditures; with the extent of their business
enterprise and the international scope of their commerce; with the
conditions of life under which the great mass of their people live; and
with the part played by them in art and literature and music, in science
and invention, in exploration and discovery in short, with their
contribution to the material and spiritual progress of the world.
English is the mother tongue of nations whose combined political
influence, economic soundness, commercial activity, social well-being,
and scientific and cultural contributions to civilization give
impressive support to its numerical precedence.
The English speech is one of the significant world languages today in
the world, perhaps taking the first place by the number of its speakers.
It is a language of Germanic groups of languages, spoken in United
Kingdom, USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, and many other parts of the
world. Today this language is becoming a dominant means of
communication, and it is not surprising that millions of people are more
and more paying time and money to learn this language. Thus many people
go to the trouble of learning English in order to be able to communicate
with the native English speakers or in some cases, with each other.
By family group, English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group within the
western branch of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the
Indo-European languages. It is related most closely to the Frisian
language, to a lesser extent to Netherlandic (Dutch-Flemish) and the Low
German (Plattdeutsch) dialects, and more distantly to Modern High
German. Its parent, Proto-Indo-European, was spoken around 5,000 years
ago by nomads who are thought to have roamed the South-east European
plains.It is inevitable that a language like English, spoken by so many
people scattered from one end of the world to the other, should have
many varieties, differing rather widely from one another. The most
obvious varieties are regional dialects, some of which go far back in
history. Three main stages are usually recognized in the history of the
development of the English language.
We are so accustomed to think of English as an inseparable adjunct to
the English people that we are likely to forget that it has been the
language of England for a comparatively short period in the world’s
history. Since its introduction into the island about the middle of the
fifth century it has had a career extending through only fifteen hundred
years. Yet this part of the world had been inhabited by man for
thousands of years, 50,000 according to more moderate estimates, 250,000
in the opinion of some. During this long stretch of time, most of it
dimly visible through prehistoric mists, the presence of a number of
races can be detected; and each of these races had a language. Nowhere
does our knowledge of the history of mankind carry us back to a time
when man did not have a language. What can be said about the early
languages of England? Unfortunately, little enough what we know of the
earliest inhabitants of England is derived wholly from the material
remains that have been uncovered by archaeological research. The
classification of these inhabitants is consequently based upon the types
of material culture that characterized them in their successive stages.
Before the discovery of metals man was dependent upon stone for the
fabrication of such implements and weapons as he possessed. Generally
speaking, the Stone Age is thought to have lasted in England until about
2000 b.c., although the English were still using some stone weapons in
the battle of Hastings in 1066. Stone, however, gradually gave way to
bronze, as bronze was eventually displaced by iron about 500 or 600 B.C.
Since the Stone Age was of long duration, it is customary to distinguish
between an earlier and a later period, known as the Paleolithic (Old
Stone) Age and the Neolithic (New Stone) Age.
Paleolithic Man, the earliest inhabitant of England, entered at a time
when this part of the world formed a part of the continent of Europe,
when there was no English Channel and when the North Sea was not much
more than an enlarged river basin. He was short of stature, averaging
about five feet, long-armed and short-legged, with a low forehead and
poorly developed chin. He lived in the open, under rock shelters or in
later times in caves. He was dependent for food upon the vegetation that
grew wild and such animals as he could capture and kill. Fortunately an
abundance of fish and game materially lessened the problem of existence.
His weapons scarcely extended beyond a primitive sledge or ax, to which
he eventually learned to fix a handle. More than one race is likely to
be represented in this early stage of culture. The men whose remains are
found in the latest Paleolithic strata are distinguished by a high
degree of artistic skill. But representations of boar and mastodon on
pieces of bone or the walls of caves tell us nothing about the language
of their designers. Their language disappeared with the disappearance of
the race, or their absorption in the later population. We know nothing
about the language, or languages, of Paleolithic Man.
Neolithic Man is likewise a convenient rather than scientific term to
designate the races which, from about 5000 b.c., are possessed of a
superior kind of stone implement, often polished, and a higher culture
generally. The predominant type in this new population appears to have
come from the south and from its widespread distribution in the lands
bordering on the Mediterranean is known as the Mediterranean race. It
was a dark race of slightly larger stature than Paleolithic Man. The
people of this higher culture had domesticated the common domestic
animals, and developed elementary agriculture. They made crude pottery,
did a little weaving, and some lived in crannogs, structures built on
pilings driven into swamps and lakes. They buried their dead, covering
the more important
Members of society with large mounds or barrows, oval in shape, but they
did not have the artistic gifts of late Paleolithic Man. Traces of these
people are still found in the population of the British Isles,
especially in the dark-haired inhabitants of Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales. But their language has not survived among these people, and since
our hope of learning anything about the language which they spoke rests
upon our finding somewhere a remnant of the race still speaking that
language, that hope, so far as England is concerned, is dead. In a
corner of the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain, however, there survives a
small community that is believed by some to represent the last pure
remnant of the race. These people are the Basques, and their language
shows no affiliation with any other language now known. Allowing for the
changes which it has doubtless undergone in the centuries which have
brought us to modern times, the Basque language may furnish us with a
clue to the language of at least one group among Neolithic Man in
England.
The first people in England about whose language we have definite
knowledge are the Celts. It used to be assumed that the coming of the
Celts to England coincided with the introduction of bronze into the
island. But the use of bronze probably preceded the Celts by several
centuries. We have already described the Celtic languages in England and
called attention to the two divisions of them, the Gaelic or Goidelic
branch and the Cymric or Britannic branch. Celtic was the first
Indo-European tongue to be spoken in England and is still spoken by a
considerable number of people. One other language, Latin, was spoken
rather extensively for a period of about four centuries before the
coming of English. Latin was introduced when Britain became a province
of the Roman Empire. Since this was an event that has left a certain
mark upon later history, it will be well to consider it separately.
To one unfamiliar with Old English it might seem that a language which
lacked the large number of words borrowed from Latin and French which
now form so important a part of our vocabulary would be somewhat limited
in resources, and that while possessing adequate means of expression for
the affairs of simple everyday life would find itself embarrassed when
it came to making the nice distinctions which a literary language is
called upon to express. In other words, an Anglo-Saxon would be like a
man today who is learning to speak a foreign language and who can manage
in a limited way to convey his meaning without having a sufficient
command of the vocabulary to express those subtler shades of thought and
feeling, the nuances of meaning, which he is able to suggest in his
mother tongue. This, however, is not so. In language, as in other
things, necessity is the mother correspondence between the c and h was
according to rule, but that between the t and d was not. The d in the
English word should have been a voiceless spirant that is in 1875 Verner
showed that when the Indo-European accent was not on the vowel
immediately preceding, such voiceless spirants became voiced in
Germanic. In West Germanic the resulting 8 became a d, and the word
hundred is therefore quite regular in its correspondence with centum.
The explanation was of importance in accounting for the forms of the
preterit tense in many strong verbs. The formulation of this explanation
is known as Verner’s Law, and it was of great significance as
vindicating the claim of regularity for the sound-changes which Grimm’s
Law had attempted to define.
The English language has undergone such change in the course of time
that one cannot read Old English without special study. In fact a page
of Old English is likely at first to present a look of greater
strangeness than a page of French or Italian because of the employment
of certain characters that no longer form a part of our alphabet.
A second feature of Old English which would become quickly apparent to a
modern reader is the absence of those words derived from Latin and
French which form so large a part of our present vocabulary. Such words
make up more than half of the words now in common use. They are so
essential to the
Expression of our ideas; seem so familiar and natural to us, that we
miss them in the earlier stage of the language. The vocabulary of Old
English is almost purely Teutonic. A large part of this vocabulary
moreover has disappeared from the language. When the Norman Conquest
brought French into England as the language of the higher classes much
of the Old English vocabulary appropriate to literature and learning
died out and was replaced later by words borrowed from French and Latin.
An examination of the words in an Old English dictionary shows that
about 85 per cent of them are no longer in use. Those that survive, to
be sure, are basic elements of our vocabulary, and by the frequency with
which they recur make up a large part of any English sentence. Apart
from pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and the
like, they express fundamental concepts like mann (man), wif (wife), did
(child), hьs (house), benc (bench), mete (meat, food), gsers (grass),
leaf (leaf), fugol (fowl, bird), god (good), heah (high), strong
(strong), etan (eat), drincan (drink), libban (live), feohtan (fight).
But the fact remains that a considerable part of the vocabulary of Old
English is unfamiliar to the modern reader.
The third and most fundamental feature that distinguishes Old English
from the language of today is its grammar. Inflectional languages fall
into two classes: synthetic and analytic.
The language of a past time is known by the quality of its literature.
Charters and records yield their secrets to the philologist and
contribute their quota of words and inflections to our dictionaries and
grammars. But it is in literature that a language displays its full
power, its ability too much lyric and didactic poetry, and numerous
works of a scientific and philosophical character. It is still
cultivated as a learned language and formerly held a place in India
similar to that occupied by Latin in medieval Europe. At an early date
it ceased to be a spoken language.
Alongside of Sanskrit there existed a large number of local dialects in
colloquial use, known as Prakrits. A number of these eventually attained
literary form, one in particular, Pali, about the middle of the sixth
century b.c. becoming the language of Buddhism. From these various
colloquial dialects have descended the present languages of India and
Pakistan, spoken by some 350 million people. The most important of these
are Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Mahrati. A form of Hindi with a
considerable mixture of Persian and Arabic is known as Hindustani and is
widely used for intercommunication throughout northern India. The
language of the Gypsies, sometimes called Romany, represents a dialect
of northwestern India which from about the fifth century of our era was
carried through Persia and into Armenia, and from there has spread
through Europe and even into America, wherever, indeed, these nomads in
the course of their long history have wandered.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Galperin, I.R. “Stylistics”, Higher school publishing House, Moscow,
1971.
2. Lehnann P. Winfred. “Language: an Introduction”, the University of
Texas, Austin, 1916.
3. Widdowson H.G. “Linguistics”, Oxford University, 1996.
4. Chaucer Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales, Translation by David
Wright”, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
5. Maiers L.M. “Pishem po angliski: rukovodstvo po grammatike i pismu na
angliiskom yazyke”, Lany, 1997.
6. Baugh Albert C. “History of the English language”, University of
Pennsylvania, second edition, New-York,1957.
7. Nelson W. Francis. “The English Language: an Introduction”, Brown
Unviersity, New Yrok, 1963.
8. Hayakawa S.I. “Language in thought action”, New York, 1964.
9. Rozental D. E. and Telenkova M. A.. “Slovar-Spravochnik
lingvisticheskih terminov”, Moscow, 1976.
10. Kodukov V. I.. “Vvedenie v yazykoznanie”, Moscow 1970.
11. Franklin Victoria and Robert Rodman. “An Introduction to Language”,
5th edition, New York, 1915.
12. Skrebnev Yu. М. “Osnovy Stilistiki angliskogo yazyka”, Moscow, 2000.
13. Carter R. and J.McRae. “The Penguin Guide to English Literature:
Britain and Ireland”, Penguin book, New York, 1996.
14. Widdowson H.G.. “Practical Stylistics: an approach to poetry”,
Oxford introductions to language study, Oxford university press, 1998.
15. Hacker. D. “Rules for writers, A brief handbook”, 3rd edition,
Boston, 1992.
16. Lado. R. “Linguistics across cultures: applied linguistics for
language teachers”, University of Michigan, 1957.
Нашли опечатку? Выделите и нажмите CTRL+Enter
