The History of English

You know, the Old English word "weed" meant vegetation in generale.

“September”, “October”, “November” and “December” are just "seventh",

"eighth", "ninth" and "tenth" months of the year. You remember that before

the Romans changed their calendar, March was the first month.

The English had more descriptive names for these month. September was

called "Harfest-Monath", "the harvest month". October was "Win-Monath",

"the wine month". November was "Bloo-Monath", because in November the

English sacrificed cattle to their gods. December was “Mid-Winter-Monath”,

because this month was the middle month of winter.

C). Germanic tribes.

At the beginning of the 5th century the Romans left the islands, they had

tо save their own country from barbarians. If you want to know what events

followed after that, turn on the Time Machine again. So, here we are, in

the 5th century, This is the time of the birth of the English language. Тhe

Germanic tribes of Angles, Sаxоns and Jutes invaded thе misty fertile

island. Some of the native Britons were killed, mаnу others fled from the

invaders "аs from fire" into the hillу parts of the country. Anglеs, Saxons

аnd Jutes spread all over the fertile lаnds of the Isles. Gradually thеу

bесаmе one nation - English. They developed one language - English. As

historians write, "thе English language arrived in Britain on the point of

а sword"! The реорlе оf that timе of thе history аrе called Аng1о-Sахоns,

their language is оld English оr Ang1о-Saxon as well.

Тhе next destination оf оur Тimе Масhinе is the 7th century, when

Christiаnity was introducеd in Britain, monasteries with sсhools аnd

libraries were set uр all оver thе соuntry. Тhе English language was

considerably enriched bу the Latin woгds.

Now, with the help of the Тimе Масhinе we'll fly over into the 8th сеntuгу.

Аt this time the ancient Scandinavians, cаlled the Vikings, began to гаid

Britаin. Тhе Vikings continued thеir wars with the English until the timе

the Ang1о-Saxоn king Alfred thе Great made а treaty with them аnd gave them

а раrt of the country, that was саlled "Danelaw". Тhе Vikings settled

thеrе, married Еnglish wives аnd bеgan peaceful life on the territory of

Britain. Later military conflicts resumed again, but by the 11th century

they were over. The influence of these events оn the English lаnguagе was

great, indeed. А lаrge number of Scandinavian words саmе intо Еnglish from

"Danes" as thе Ang1o-Saxons called all the Vikings.

One reason why Roman Britannia disappeared so quickly is probably that its

influence was largely confined to the towns. In the countryside, where most

people lived, farming methods had remained unchanged and Celtic speech

continued to be dominant.

The Roman occupation had been a matter of colonial control rather than

large-scale settlement. But, during the fifth century, a number of tribes

from the north-western European mainland invaded and settled in large

numbers. Two of these tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. These Anglo-

Saxons soon had the south-east of the country in their grasp. In the west

of the country their advance was temporarily halted by an army of Celtic

Britons under the command of the legendary King Arthur. Nevertheless, by

the end of the sixth century, they and their way of life predominated in

nearly all of England and in parts of southern Scotland. The Celtic Britons

were either Saxonized or driven westwards, where their culture and language

survived in south-west Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns and cities. But they had a great

effect on the countryside, where they introduced new farming methods and

founded the thousands of self-sufficient villages which formed the basis of

English society for the next thousand or so years.

The Anglo-Saxons were pagan when they came to Britain. Christianity spread

throughout Britain from two different directions during the sixth and

seventh centuries. It came directly from Rome when St Augustine arrived in

597 and established his headquarters at Canterbury in the south-east of

England. It had already been introduced into Scotland and northern England

from Ireland, which had become Christian more than 150 years earlier.

Although Roman Christianity eventually took over the whole of the British

Isles, the Celtic model persisted in Scotland and Ireland for several

hundred years. It was less centrally organized, and had less need for a

strong monarchy to support it. This partly explains why both secular and

religious power in these two countries continued to be both more locally

based and less secure than it was elsewhere in Britain throughout the

medieval period.

Britain experience another wave of Germanic invasions in the 8th century.

These invaders, known as Vikings, Horsemen or Danes, came from Scandinavia.

In the ninth century they conquered and settled the extreme north and west

of Scotland, and also some coastal regions of Ireland. Their conquest of

England was halted when they were defeated by King Alfred of the Saxon

kingdom of Wessex. This resulted in an agreement which divided England

between Wessex, in the south and west, and the “Danelaw” in the north and

east.

However, the cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and Danes were

comparatively small. They led roughly the same way of life and spoke two

varieties of the same Germanic tongue (which combined to form the basis of

modern English). Moreover, the Danes soon converted to Christianity. These

similarities made political unification easier, and by the end of the 10th

century England was one kingdom with a Germanic culture throughout.

Most of modern-day Scotland was also united by this time, at least in name,

in a Gaelic kingdom.

Paopla in Anglo-Saxon times. Living uncomfortably close to the natural

world, were wall aware that though creation is inarticulate it is animate,

and that every created thing, every “with”, had its own personality.

The riddle is a sophisticated and harmless for of invocation by imitation:

the essence of it is that the poet, by an act of imaginative identification

assumes the personality of some crested thing - an animal, a plant, a

natural force.

The specialists consider that they know not enough about The Exeter Book

collection of riddles. Ridding was certainly a popular pastime among the

Anglo-Saxons, especially in the monasteries, and there are extant

collections (in Latin, of course,) from the pens of Aldhelm, Bishop of

Sherborne, Tatwin, Archbishop of Canterbury and others.

The provenance and genesis of the collection are unknown, and from internal

evidence one can only draw the modest conclusion that the ninety-five

riddles were not written by one man.

In English a student and the little black circle in the center of the eye

are both called “pupils”? And the connection between them is a doll. Both

the words came into the English language through French from the Latin. In

Latin there was a word “pupa” – “a girl”, and “pupus” – “ a boy”. When the

Latin ending “illa” was added to “pupa” or “pupus”, the word meant “ a

little girl” or “ a little boy”. Since little girls and little boys went to

school, they became “pupils”.

But “pupilla”, a little girl, also meant “a doll”. It is easy to understand

why, isn’t it? Now, if you look into the pupil of someone’s eye when the

light is just right, you can see your reflection. Your figure, by the way,

is very, very small like a tiny doll. The Romans named the black circle in

the eye “pupilla” because of the doll they could see there. And the word

came into the English as “pupil” as well. And thus, we have in the English

language two words that are spelt the same and have the same origin, but

mean different things: “pupil” – a student, and “pupil” – a black circle in

the center of your eye.

Professor casts a quick glance at the wall and noticed a map there. “This

map is made of paper. But the word itself meant cloth once. This word came

into English from Latin, the Latin mappa was cloth. First maps were drawn

on fabrics. In Latin the combination of the words appeared: mappa mundi –

“cloth of the word”. It was the first representation of the world as a

drawing on the cloth. Later maps began to be made of paper, but the word

remained.

By another route the same word came into English for the second time. In

Late Latin this word was corrupted into nappa, and later, through French,

it entered the English language with the new meaning of napkin.”

“When a teacher asks you a question. She expects you will give a correct

answer. Answer is a very strange word. Its spelling makes no sense until

you know its origin. This is a very old word. In Old English the noun was

andswaru and the verb – andswearing. So, you see, it consisted of two

parts: and and swear. The word and at that time meant against; swear meant

to give a solemn oath. In the youth of the English language andswaru was “

a solemn oath made against an accusation”. A man had to pronounce a solemn

in reply to an accusation, to prove that it is wrong. In the course of

historical development the word lost its solemnity and it means now a

reply, to reply. Any little child answer you back today.”

Professor History remarks, “ I see that some of you write with a ballpoint

pen, others with a pencil, and there are some who write with a fountain

pen. So, you can’t do without ink, after all. A simple three-letter word

ink comes from a nine-letter ancestor that meant a branding iron. And now a

few steps away from the skill of writing towards the skill of healing

wounds. When we have a wound we cauterize it, we burn it with heat or with

a chemical in order to close it and prevent it from becoming infected. The

ancient Greeks used to cauterize a wound as we do, and the grandparent word

of cauterize is kauterion, a branding iron. The Greek not only sealed

wounds with heat, but they used much the same process in art for sealing

fast the colours of their painting. It was customary then to use wax

colours fixed with heat or, as they expressed it, encauston, burned in. In

Latin this word changed to encaustum, and it became the name for a kind of

purple ink that the emperors used when they signed their official

documents. In Old French encaustum became enque. English adopted the word

as enke or inke, that is how today we have our ink, coloured liquid used

for writing or printing.”

“The start of spoken language is buried in mystery and in a tangle of

theories,” Professor History begins his lecture. “The history of written

language also disappears in the jungles, in the deserts and far fields of

unrecorded time. But at least the words that have to do with writing tell

us much about the early beginning of the art and the objects that were used

to record the written symbols.

The word write was spelled writan in Old English. It first meant to

scratch, and it is exactly what the primitives did on their birch-bark or

shingles with sharp stones and others pointed instruments. In the more

sophisticated lands that surrounded the Mediterranean the papyrus plant was

used instead of the bark of the trees; as you already know, that gave us

the word paper.

Pen with which we write now, in its Latin form penna, meant a feather and

in some ancient collections you can still see quill pens. And pencil that

we hold inherits its name from the Latin penicillum, meaning a little tail,

and this refers to the time when writing was done with a tiny brush that

looked indeed like a little tail.

The term letter designating a written symbol, a letter of the alphabet is

thought to be relative to the Latin word linere, to smear, to leave a dirty

mark on some surface. Isn’t it a good description of some of the early

writing?

But what is written should be read. In read we have an odd little word,

from the Old English raedan, which meant first to guess, to discern. And

again it is just what you had to do to interpret what was scratched on

wooden shingles. Anything that had to be interpreted was called a raedels.

Later on people began to think that the word raedels was a plural because

of the “s” on the end. A new singular, raedel was formed and here is the

ancestor of our word riddle. Finally the word read took on its modern

meaning: if you can read, you have the ability to look at and understand

what is written.

Of course the basis of all writing is language. But it is first of all, a

spoken activity, and hence this noun is derived from a word referring to

the organ of speech primarily involved. In this case it is the French word

language, which goes back to the Latin lingua, tongue. The English, though,

retained their native word to name that soft movable part inside your mouth

whish you see for tasting and licking and for speaking”, a tongue.

Sometimes you may hear the word tongue used in the meaning of language, but

it is an old-fashioned and literary use.

If you want to read what is written in a foreign language, you need a

dictionary. The term dictionary comes from the Latin word dictio, from

dico, say or speak. A dictionary is really a record of what people say, of

the pronunciation, spellings, and meanings that they give to words.”

In Old English there was a different word with which the Englishmen called

bread, it was half. But then as a result of the Vikings invasion and

Scandinavian influence on the English language a new word of the same

meaning entered the English vocabulary from Scandinavian: cake. Since the

English had already their own word (half), they started to use the word

cake for a special type of bread. First it referred to a small loaf of

bread of flat and round shape. From the 15th century it began to mean sweet

food, as it does now.

To the Scandinavians, living in Britain, called their bread by the word

brauth. The English had a similar word – bread meaning a lump, a piece of

bread. Under the influence of the Scandinavian language the word bread

widened its meaning and began to mean bread in general, while the word loaf

(from Old English half) narrowed its meaning, now it is a large lump of

bread which we slice before eating.

The Great Englishman Caxton, who introduced printing in Britain in 1476,

wrote in a preface to one of the books about a funny episode with egg. The

thing is that in Old English the word egg had a different form which

spelled as ey in Middle English; its plural form was eyren. And again the

Scandinavians brought with them to Britain their word egg. It first spread

in the northern English dialects, the southerners did not know it and used

their native word.

Caxton tells the readers that once English merchants from the northern

regions were sailing down the Thames, bound for the Netherlands. There was

no wind and they landed at a small southern village. The merchants decided

to buy some food. They came to a house and one of them asked a woman if she

could sell them eggs. The woman answered that she did not understand him

because she did not know French. The merchant became very angry and said

that he did not speak French either. Then another merchant helped. He said

they wanted eyren, the woman understood him and brought them eggs.

For rather a long period of time two words existed in Britain: a native

English word eyren was used in the South, and the Scandinavian borrow eggs

in the North. The Scandinavian word has won after, as you can see.

D). The Norman French.

I made another excursion into the past. The Time Масhinе has саrried me

into the 11th century, into the year of 1066. An аwful picture ореns before

my eyes: а great battle at Hastings, the English king Наrold is killed, the

English are defeated, the Norman invaders have won а victory. Тhe Normans

саmе frоm across the British Сhannеl, from the part of France called

Normandy. Тhеу conquered the English under the head of their leader, Duke

William, who later got the name of William the Conqueror. Тhе Normans

brought into Britain not оn1у their king, but their French language as

well. So it еxplаins why there are so many French words in the English

vocabulary.

The successful Norman invasion of England in 1066 brought Britain into the

mainstream of western European culture. Previously most links had been with

Scandinavia. Only in Scotland did this link survive; the western isles

(until the thirteenth century) and the northern islands (until the

fifteenth century) remaining under the control of Scandinavian kings.

Throughout this period the English kings also ruled over areas of land on

the continent were often at war with the French kings in disputes over

ownership.

Unlike the Germanic invasions, the Norman invasion was small-scale. There

was no such thing as a Norman area of settlement. Instead, the Norman

soldiers who had been a part of the invading army were given the ownership

of land – and of the people living on it. A strict feudal system was

imposed. Great nobles, or barons, were responsible directly to the king;

lesser lords, each owing a village, were directly responsible to a baron.

Under them were the peasants, tied by a strict system of mutual duties and

obligations to the local lord, and forbidden to travel without his

permission. The peasants were the English-speaking Saxons. The lords and

the barons were the French-speaking Normans. This was the beginning of the

English class system.

The existence of two words for the larger farm animals in modern English is

a result of the class divisions established by the Norman conquest. There

are the words for the living animals (e.g. cow, pig, sheep), which have

their origins in Anglo-Saxon, and the words for the meat from the animals

(e.g. beef, pork, mutton.), which have their origins in the French language

that the Normans brought to England. Only the Normans normally ate meat;

the poor Anglo-Saxon peasants did not!

The strong system of government which the Normans introduced meant that the

Anglo-Norman kingdom was easily the most powerful political force in

British Isles. Not surprisingly therefore, the authority of the English

monarch gradually extended to other parts of these islands in the next 250

years. But the end of the thirteenth century, a large part of eastern

Ireland was controlled by Anglo-Norman lords in the name of the English

king and the while of Wales was under his direct rule (at which time the

custom of naming the monarch’s eldest son the “Prince of Wales” began).

Scotland managed to remain politically independent in the medieval period,

but was obliged to fight occasional wars to do so.

II. Middle English. (1100-1500)

The English which was used from about 1100 to about 1500 is called Middle

English. The cultural story of this period is different. Two hundred and

fifty years after the Norman Conquest, it was a Germanic language (Middle

English) and not the Norman (French) language which had become the dominant

one in all classes of society of England. Furthermore, it was the Anglo-

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