Old English

Old English

The historians of The English language distinguished three main stages in the development of the English language.

1.      Old English / Anglo Saxon (600A.D. to 1100 A.D.)

2.      Middle English (1100 to 1500)

3.      Modern English (1500 onwards)

The evolution of language is continuous but there are periods when the development was more rapid than that of others. Hence for the sake of convenience the historians of language like the historians of literature had to choose a date that is said to be arbitrary based on the political institution and social life:

·         By 600 A.D. the Anglo Saxons were successful in establishing their power and implanting their language in Britain.

·         1100 A.D. the Norman had consolidated their power and their language began to influence the native Saxon tongue.

·         The establishment of the Tudor dynasty after the battle of Bosworth Field had made England a ‘nation’.

All these things had their influence on the language. Hence it can be justified that the years 600, 1100, and 1500 be marked as the great landmark in the development of the English language.

Old English:

The earliest inhabitants of the island were the Britons and their tongue was Celtic. It had similarities with the language spoken in some districts of northern France; this language was in general use throughout the whole Roman Occupation, from 55 B.C. to A.D. 410 and later became mixed with Latin elements of the Romans. The Britons came to regard the Romans not as conquerors, but rather as protectors only till a certain period. Soon afterwards the Angles, Saxons and Jutes the tribes from  North Germany, descended with their nomadic warriors and the Celtic supremacy came to an end. Therefore many of the Britons fled into the hills of Wales, Cornwall and Scotland, where the language was preserved, and henceforth the tongue of the invaders became the tongue of Britain.

Of all the dialect that was spoken during the Anglo Saxon period the dialect of the Wessex or the West- Saxon became more important for two main reasons:

1.      Wessex was the most highly civilized of all the kingdoms for they attained the political unity and had fairly ordered system of government.

2.      The literature of the period was written in the dialect of Wessex example the main works which still survive either in part or in whole are the early epic poem Beowulf , a number of translations of religious works and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the historical records started by King Alfred the Great. There are a number of historical poems, riddles and charms and one or two medical treatises.

Though the English today is descended mainly from the language of Wessex, traces of other dialects still remain not only in the varying pronunciation of the same word or the local vocabulary but also can be found in the existence of doublets i.e. two words slightly different in meaning, but originally were dialectal variants of the same word.

Example:

1.      Whole and hale (in the Biblical sense of healthy or free from disease), the former has now obsolete and the later is still currently used.

2.      Dent and dint, both are still in use

3.      Raid which is merely another form of road

4.      Tug a variant of trough

The Anglo Saxon had a very complicated grammar. There were two declension(variation) of adjectives – strong and weak and in nouns it had three gender system for girl in the face of all logic was neuter, while two words for woman one was neuter and the other masculine.

There was originally a number of different variation of nouns, but the most common of all was the nominative and accusative plural that ended in –as and the genitive singular in –es. As time passed many more nouns were formed from this type and therefore the vast majority of words in modern English form their plural by the addition of s and genitive with an apostrophe s.

Two other characteristics that bear upon the speech of the present day is gradation and mutation.

Gradation is the name given to that process in which the vowel sound in the principal verb (main verb) undergoes change according to whether they occur in a stressed or unstressed syllable. Example (text book)

In many Anglo Saxon verbs the present tense, the past tense and the past participle show change in the vowel of the root syllable

Example

1.      Drifan and ridan

2.      Draf and rad

3.      Drifen and riden

Thus it gives us our present – day forms to drive and to ride, drove and rode, driven and ridden.

4.      Writan (to write) had the past tense of wrat and the past participle written from which came our own wrote and written.

5.      Climban (to climb), past tense clamb and past participle clumben.

In the history of the Indo-European group of languages a shifting of stress caused certain vowel change in some of the verbs and these were inherited by the Anglo –Saxons ancestors still continue in the language which we speak and write today.

Mutation:

The word mutation merely means change and the process is known as i- mutation because the change was caused by the influence of the vowel i or sometimes j. It’s a slow process and did not occur uniformly and simultaneously in all words and this took place in the early Anglo-Saxon period were the vowels in the accented syllable were modified because of the influence of an i or j in the next syllable and i and j subsequently disappearing. The vowels affected were: (text book)

The result of this process may be classified under five main heads:

1.      Muted plurals: a number of nouns in the early Old English formed their plurals by the addition of the iz (modern plural in s)

Examples:

1.      The earliest plural tooiz result of mutation became teo- modern plural teeth.

2.      Mus made the plural musiz which ultimately became mys – present day mice

3.      Feet, geese , men etc.

4.      The Old English singular was cu, plural by mutation was cy; but a double plural was made by treating cy as singular and then adding an –n.

5.      Many nouns having dropped their mutated plural in the Middle English period conformed to the growing tendency to add s to the singular.

2.      Muted abstract nouns derived from adjectives: to form an abstract noun from an adjective the Anglo-Saxon added iou which later dropped the unaccented final u and became –io.

Example:

1.      The modern adjective long and lang (the quality of kongness) is derived from langiou which by i-mutation became lengo – modern word length.

2.      Halious by mutation was modified to haelo – modern word health.

3.      Fuliou by mutation was modified to fylo- modern word foul.

3.      Verbs derived, by mutation from cognate nouns: certain verbal infinitives were formed by the Anglo – Saxons by the addition of the suffix- jan to a noun.

Example:

1.      Dom was their normal word for judgement and this gives our modern word doom. Hence to make a judgement was domjan; this by i-mutation became deman so we get our verb deem.

2.      The verb to meet comes from an old noun mot (meeting)

3.      To deal comes from an old noun dole.

4.      Verbs derives from adjectives by mutation: the termination(ending) –jan was also added to certain adjectives to make verbs.

Examples :

1.      Haljan gave haelan – present verb to heal

2.      Fulljan became fyllan – modern fill

5.      Muted comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives: the early Anglo-Saxon suffixes for the two degrees were –ira(comparative) later becoming the modern –er and –ist (superlative), which developed the present- day –est. The only remaining traces of these are the words elder and eldest and the superlative degree of old, though these are limited in use.