Language Focus. Old English

The Germanic Invasions brought to the British Isles a new language of the conquerors, which later developed into Old English, then into Middle English and at last into Modern English. The long process was followed by considerable changes in the language – many new words were introduced or borrowed from other languages. Following the history of the English people it`s easy to follow the history of the English language as well.

By the end of the 4-th century the Angles, Saxons and Jutes formed seven kingdoms on the territory of present-day England. The seven kingdoms later united into four main kingdoms. Those kingdoms marked the borders of four main English dialects. Angles spoke Nothumbrian and Mercian dialects, Jutes spoke Kentish and Saxons spoke West Saxon. At the end of the 9-th century Wessex became a leading kingdom. By this time the differences between Anglo-Saxon dialects diminished. Now the word Anglecynn (“English kin”) referred to all people – the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

Christianity was brought to Britain at the end of the 6-th century, by the 7-th century Christianity spread all over the country. This fact played an important role in the development of Old English.

The alphabet of Germanic tribes was the runic alphabet, which contained 24 runes. Christian missionaries introduced Latin alphabet and added some runes to it. The structure of Old English was much different from what we see today. Old English was a synthetic language with a relatively free word order. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns had flexions. They were placed in the sentences not as strictly as in Present-Day English. New words were formed by compounding, prefixing or suffixing.

The majority of words in Modern English come from foreign, not Old English roots. In fact, only about one sixth of the unknown Old English words have descendants surviving today. But this is deceptive, Old English is much more important than these statistics would indicate. About half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. Words like “to be”, “water”, “strong” derive from Old English roots.

Old English lasted until 1100. This last date is rather arbitrary, but most scholars choose it because it is shortly after the most important even in the development of the English language, the Norman Conquest. Even the first period of language development saw significant changes, which appeared due to different language contacts and borrowings. Later the number of language contacts increased, so the number of borrowings grew. Not all borrowings were the same. Their character much depended upon the intensity of social contacts and prestige of the language. The lexical basic of Old English was constituted by the words of Indo-European origin, which were common for all Indo-European languages. The smaller part of Old English words existed in Germanic parallels, but had no Indo-European cognates.

I. Mark the true and false statements.

1. King Arthur is considered to be the founder of the English fleet.

2. The land could not be sold, inherited or used as a payment for debts in the 7 ^th -9^th centuries.

3. The Danes compiled and published a code of laws.

4. The Anglo-Saxons were pagans.

5. In the given period feudal relations were regressing within the Anglo-Saxons society.

6. The greatest monument of Anglo-Saxon folklore was created in the ninth century.

7. The Wessex kingdom united the rest of England in the fight against the Danes.

8. The Vikings, the invaders from Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula contributed much to the development of class relations in the country