The foregoing sections have given a somewhat technical, if rather sketchy, picture of how Old English is like and unlike the languages it is related to. Modern English is also "related" to Old English, though in a different way; for Old and Modern English are really different stages in the development of a single language. The changes that turned Old English into Middle English and Middle English into Modern English took place gradually, over the centuries, and there never was a time when people perceived their language as having broken radically with the language spoken a generation before. It is worth mentioning in this connection that the terms "Old English," "Middle English" and "Modern English" are themselves modern: speakers of these languages all would have said, if asked, that the language they spoke was English.
There is no point, on the other hand, in playing down the differences between Old and Modern English, for they are obvious at a glance. The rules for spelling Old English were different from the rules for spelling Modern English, and that accounts for some of the difference. But there are more substantial changes as well. The three vowels that appeared in the inflectional endings of Old English words were reduced to one in Middle English, and then most inflectional endings disappeared entirely. Most case distinctions were lost; so were most of the endings added to verbs, even while the verb system became more complex, adding such features as a future tense, a perfect, and a pluperfect. While the number of endings was reduced, the order of elements within clauses and sentences became more fixed, so that (for example) it came to sound archaic and awkward to place an object before the verb, as Old English had frequently done.
The vocabulary of Old English was of course Germanic, more closely related to the vocabulary of such languages as Dutch and German than to French or Latin. The Viking age, which culminated in the reign of the Danish king Cnut in England, introduced a great many Danish words into English--but these were Germanic words as well. The conquest of England by a French-speaking people in the year 1066 eventually brought about immense changes in the vocabulary of English. During the Middle English period (and especially in the years 1250-1400) English borrowed some ten thousand words from French, and at the same time it was friendly to borrowings from Latin, Dutch and Flemish. Now relatively few Modern English words come from Old English; but the words that do survive are some of the most common in the language, including almost all the "grammar words" (articles, pronouns, prepositions) and a great many words for everyday concepts. For example, the words in this paragraph that come to us from Old English (or are derived from Old English words) include those in table.
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The 17th century was a time of political and social upheaval in England, particularly the period from about 1640 to 1660. The increase in trade around the world meant that the English port towns (and their forms of speech) would have gained in influence over the old county towns. England experienced a new period of internal peace and relative stability, encouraging the arts including literature, from around the 1690s onwards. Another important episode in the development of the English language started around 1607: the English settlement of America. By 1750 a distinct American dialect of English had developed.
There are still elements of Early Modern English in some dialects. For example, thee and thou can still be heard in the Black Country, some parts of Yorkshire and Dawley, Telford. The pronunciation of book, cook, look, etc. with a long [uː] can be heard in some areas of the North and the West Country. However, these are becoming less frequent with each new generation.
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The transition from Middle English to Modern English began in the sixteenth century when several factors came together to produce a period of extraordinary vitality and progress in the development of the language. During this period-the Renaissance-a great revival of interest in learning swept over England and much of Europe, leading people to become more aware of the importance of language as they studied the writings of the past. Furthermore, many words from other languages (especially Latin and Greek) were introduced into English as a result of this growing interest in the writings of antiquity. We have already seen that the growing availability of printed books made more and more people aware of the need for clarity and consistency in spelling and usage.
Until the sixteenth century, French continued to be the prestigious literary language, and Latin remained the international language for serious scholarly work well into the seventeenth century. However, the influence of other languages gradually diminished as the English language continued to develop. A sense of literary nationalism swept over England as an increasingly large reading public came to realize that English could assume its place among the major languages of the world.
The work of the poet John Skelton (1460-1529) shows how important the English language had become and how rapidly its vocabulary was expanding in the sixteenth century. Skelton is credited with introducing about 1500 new words into the English language, many of them derived from his study of Latin.
An era of linguistic change in a language with large variations in dialect was replaced by a new era of a more standardised language with a richer lexicon and an established literature. Shakespeare´s plays are familiar and comprehensible today, 400 years after they were written, but the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, written only 200 years earlier, are considerably more difficult for the average reader.
The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the "long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r's, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations, such as "kn," that were later simplified. And the short vowels are very similar in Middle and Modern English. But the "long" vowels are regularly and strikingly different. This is due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift.
Beginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century (but with its main effects in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) the sounds of the long stressed vowels in English changed their places of articulation (i.e., how the sounds are made).
Old and Middle English were written in the Latin alphabet and the vowels were represented by the letters assigned to the sounds in Latin. For example, Middle English "long e" in Chaucer's "sheep" had the value of Latin "e" (and sounded like Modern English "shape" [/e/] in the International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA]). It had much the same value as written long e has in most modern European languages. Consequently, one can read Chaucer's long vowels with the same values as in Latin or any continental European language and come pretty close to the Middle English values.
The Great Vowels Shift changed all that; by the end of the sixteenth century the "e" in "sheep" sounded like that in Modern English "sheep" or "meet" [IPA /i/]. To many it seemed that the pronunciation of English had moved so far from its visual representation that a new alphabet was needed, and in the sixteenth century we have the first attempts to "reform" English spellings, a movement still active today. In 1569 John Hart (in his Orthographie) went so far as to devise a new phonetic alphabet to remedy what he considered a fatal flaw in our system of language. (His alphabet and the work of other language reformers provides us with our best evidence for the pronunciation of English in his time).
To understand how English changed one must first note that vowels are articulated in particular parts of the mouth; we make the sound in Modern English "deep" [/dip/] with our tongue forward and high in the mouthr, and the sound in Modern English "boat" [/bot/] with our tongue lowered and drawn toward the back of the mouth and the jaw relatively low (open). Say "ee" (or "beet") and "o" (or "boat") in succession and you may be able to feel the movement of your tongue from front to back.
The Great Vowel shift involved a regular movement of the places of articulation: The front vowels each moved up a notch, except for /i:/, which formed a dipthong. Likewise the back vowels moved up, except for /u:/, which formed another dipthong:
The orthography in Early Modern English was fairly similar to that of today, but spelling was unphonetic and unstable; for example, the word acuity could be spelled either <acuity> or <acuitie>. Further, there were a number of features of spelling that have not been retained:
- The letter <S> had two distinct lowercase forms: <s> as today, and <ſ> (long s). The former was used at the end of a word, and the latter everywhere else, except that double-lowercase-S was variously written <ſſ> or <ſs>. This is similar to the alternation between normal (σ) and final lower case sigma (ς) in Greek.
- <u> and <v> were not yet considered two distinct letters, but different forms of the same letter. Typographically, <v> was used at the start of a word and <u> elsewhere; hence vnmoued (for modern unmoved) and loue (for love).
- <i> and <j> were also not yet considered two distinct letters, but different forms of the same letter, hence "ioy" for "joy" and "iust" for "just".
- The letter <Þ (thorn(letter)) was still in use during the Early Modern English period, though increasingly limited to hand-written texts. In print, <Þ> was often represented by <Y>.
- A silent <e> was often appended to words. The last consonant sometimes was doubled when adding this <e>; hence ſpeake, cowarde, manne (for man), runne (for run).
- The sound /ʌ/ was often written <o> (as in son); hence ſommer, plombe (for modern summer, plumb)
Nothing was standard, however. For example, "Julius Caesar" could be spelled "Julius Cæſar", "Ivlivs Cæſar", "Jvlivs Cæſar", or "Iulius Cæſar" and the word "he" could be found being spelled "he" or "hee" in the same sentence in Shakespeare's plays.
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The Middle English are separate in three periods, like following:
- Norman invasion (1066), French conquest and unification of England; Norman = North-man, descendants of Danes, spoke French influenced by Germanic dialect
- William in full control of England within ten years
- death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles
- end of internal conflicts and Viking invasions; control of the Welsh
- Frenchmen in all high offices
- Anglo Saxon Chronicle written until 1154
- imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land
- increase in dialectal differences
- kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France, French-speaking court
- Henry II Plantagenet (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, father of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland
- assassination of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket in 1170
- lack of prestige of English; Latin was written language of the Church and secular documents; Scandinavian still spoken in the Danelaw, Celtic languages prevailed in Wales and Scotland
- development of bilingualism among Norman officials, supervisors, some marriages of French and English, bilingual children
- examples of French words: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity
- very little written English from this period
- King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216), loss of Normandy in 1204
- many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect
- barons revolt against John, Magna Carta (1215), origins and development of Parliament
- Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions
- Edward I (r. 1272-1307), son of Henry III, conquered Wales and waged war with Scotland
- decline of French cultural dominance in England
- rise in use of English, smoothing out of dialectal differences, beginning of standard English based on London dialect; crusades, pilgrimages contributed to increase in communication and formation of common language.
- French remained official language of England until second half of 14th c.; by mid to late 14th c. English was normal medium of instruction; in 1362 English became official language of legal proceedings, everyone in England spoke English by end of 14th c., displacing of French, Norse, and Celtic languages
- persistence of dialectal differences, increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c.
- emergence of London/East Midland dialect as standard spoken and written language, compromise dialect, London as commercial center, seaport, proximity to Westminster court
- printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy
- Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377), his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), English victories at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), role of Joan of Arc (1429), eventual French victory, loss of all English continental holdings, French no longer significant to the English
- Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes
- Richard II (1377-1399) (grandson of Edward III), John of Gaunt (1340-1399) (son of Edward III), Richard II deposed by Henry IV (Bolingbroke)
- War of the Roses (1455-1485), York vs. Lancaster, Richard Duke of York vs. Henry VI
- Henry VI executed 1471
- Edward II's brother Richard III (1483-85) killed by Lancastrian Henry VII (Tudor), Henry marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII;
- 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII, end of Middle English period
The dialects of Middle English are usually divided into three large groups: Southern (subdivided into Southeastern, or Kentish, and Southwestern), chiefly in the counties south of the River Thames; Midland (corresponding roughly to the Mercian dialect area of Old English times) in the area from the Thames to southern South Yorkshire and northern Lancashire; and Northern, in the Scottish Lowlands, Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, northern Lancashire, and most of Yorkshire.
During the Norman occupation, about 10,000 French words were adopted into English, some three-fourths of which are still in use today. This French vocabulary is found in every domain, from government and law to art and literature – learn some. More than a third of all English words are derived directly or indirectly from French, and it's estimated that English speakers who have never studied French already know 15,000 French words.
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Old English is often erroneously used to refer to any form of English other than Modern English. The term Old English does not refer to varieties of Early Modern English such as are found in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, nor does it refer to Middle English, the language of Chaucer and his contemporaries. Language change is gradual; and cannot be as easily demarcated as historical or political events are.
- 450-1100 Old English (Anglo- Saxon) - The language of Beowulf
- 1100-1500 Middle English - The language of Chaucer.
- 1500-1650 Early Modern English (or Renaissance English) - The language of Shakespeare.
- 1650-present Modern English (or Present-Day English) - The language as spoken today
The language we now call English is actually a blend of many languages. Even the original Anglo-Saxon was already a blend of the dialects of west Germanic tribes living along the North Sea coast: The Saxons in Germany and eastern Holland, the Jutes, possibly from northern Denmark (the area now called Jutland), and the Angles, probably living along the coast and on islands between Denmark and Holland. It is also likely that the invaders included Frisians from northern Holland and northern Franks from southern Holland (whose relatives gave their name to France). The dialects were close enough for each to understand the other.
Later, in the 800s, the Northmen (Vikings) came to England, mostly from Denmark, and settled in with the Anglo-Saxons from Yorkshire to Norfolk, an area that became known as the Danelaw. Others from Norway ruled over the people in the northwest, from Strathclyde to the north of Wales. The Norse language they spoke resembled Anglo-Saxon in many ways, but was different enough for two things to happen: One, there were many Old Norse words that entered into English, including even such basic ones as they and them; And two, the complex conjugations and declensions began to wither away as people disagreed about which to use.
If the influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight, it was doubtless so because the relation of the Celt to the Anglo-Saxon was that of a submerged race and, as suggested above, because the Celt was not in a position to make any notable contribution to Anglo-Saxon civilization. It was quite otherwise with the second great influence exerted upon English—that of Latin—and the circumstances under which they met. Latin was not the language of a conquered people. It was the language of a higher civilization, a civilization from which the Anglo-Saxons had much to learn. Contact with that civilization, at first commercial and military, later religious and intellectual, extended over many centuries and was constantly renewed. It began long before the Anglo-Saxons came to England and continued throughout the Old English period. For several hundred years, while the Germanic tribes who later became the English were still occupying their continental homes, they had various relations with the Romans through which they acquired a considerable number of Latin words. Later when they came to England they saw the evidences of the long Roman rule in the island and learned from the Celts a few additional Latin words which had been acquired by them. And a century and a half later still, when Roman missionaries reintroduced Christianity into the island, this new cultural influence resulted in a really extensive adoption of Latin elements into the language. There were thus three distinct occasions on which borrowing from Latin occurred before the end of the Old English period.
While most of the loanwords from Latin are of a technical nature, or express new concepts (like Christianity), the Scandinavian loanwords that survive into Modern English are mostly everyday words. These must have been borrowed as a result of the Scandinavian settlements in the North and East of the country. However, identification of these is quite difficult (they are from NorthGermanic languages which are closely related).
Old English is largely known through the work of tenth and eleventh century scribes, working in the South and West of the country. These scribes would be unlikely to use loanwords that were in use in the Scandinavian settlement area, thus of the 900 attested North Germanic loans into English, only 150 appear in Old English sources. The rest only manifest themselves in the 12th and 13th centuries in Middle English texts even though they must have been around earlier.
The words that do appear -- mostly in late texts -- are mostly concerned with the administrative and social systems of the Danelaw, for example:
There are about 12 secure Celtic loans in OE; most of these are from Brythonic Celtic - the dialect group spoken by the larger number of British inhabitants.
They are: binn "bin", bannoc "bit", dunn "dun, grey", broc "badger", bratt "cloak", carr "rock", luh "lake", torr "rock", cumb "deep valley".
A very small number came from Goidelic Celtic, and are associated with the church (apparently borrowed from Irish missionaries):
The Anglo-Saxons adopted the styles of script employed by the Irish missionaries who had been instrumental in the conversion of the northern kingdoms. These styles included Insular half-uncial, used for fine books in Latin, and the less formal minuscule, used for both Latin and the vernacular. Beginning in the tenth century Anglo-Saxon scribes began to use caroline minuscule (developed in France during the reign of Charlemagne) for Latin while continuing to write Old English in Insular minuscule. Thereafter Old English script was increasingly influenced by caroline minuscule even as it retained certain distinctively Insular letter-forms. Once you have learned these letter-forms you will be able to read Old English manuscripts of all periods without difficulty.
Here are the basic letter-forms of Old English script, illustrated in a late Old English style:
Take particular note of these features:
- the rounded shape of d;
- the f that extends below the baseline instead of sitting on top of it;
- the distinctive Insular g;
- the dotless i;
- the r that extends below the baseline;
- the three shapes of s, of which the first two (the Insular long s and the high s,) are most common;
- the t that does not extend above the cross-stroke;
- the ƿ ("wynn"), usually transliterated as w but sometimes retained in print, derived from the runic letter ᚹ;
- the y, usually dotted, which comes in several different shapes.
Old English has no use for q or z. J and v do not have the status of separate letters but are occasional variant shapes of i and u (more common in roman numbers than elsewhere). Old English scribes used k rarely, and only to represent the [k] sound, never the [ʧ] (ċ).
Hwæt! Wē Gār-Dena | in geārdagum, |
þēodcyninga, | þrym gefrūnon, |
hū ðā æþelingas | ellen fremedon. |
Oft Scyld Scēfing | sceaþena þrēatum, |
monegum mǣgþum, | meodosetla oftēah, |
egsode eorlas. | Syððan ǣrest wearð |
fēasceaft funden, | hē þæs frōfre gebād, |
wēox under wolcnum, | weorðmyndum þāh, |
oðþæt him ǣghwylc | þāra ymbsittendra |
ofer hronrāde | hȳran scolde, |
gomban gyldan. | Þæt wæs gōd cyning! |
The first page of Beowulf and Beowulf lines 1 to 11, approximately AD 900 respectively
The most famous Old English manuscript is the Beowulf manuscript, Cotton Vitellius A.xv. Like the Vercelli and Exeter books, the Beowulf ms. is unique, surviving in one copy now in the British Library. The Junius Manuscript, another unique manuscript of Old English poetry, includes the sacred poems Genesis and Exodus and others. The Junius ms. is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Because of the attraction of unique and rare things, and because of the secularization of modern culture, the surviving poetic texts in Old English are the most heavily studied. We draw a disproportionate amount of our knowledge of the language from these texts, which would not have been as familiar to English people a thousand years ago as they are to students of Old English today.
Old English poetry is based on principles quite unlike that of modern English poetry. Old English poets did not use rhyme; they did not count the number of syllables in a line. But they did not write "free verse" either.
Old English poems are based on alliteration. Each line of poetry is divided into two halves or "hemistichs." Each hemistich has two stressed syllables. The first stress in the second hemistich must alliterate with one or both of the stresses in the first hemistich. (The second stress in the second hemistich does not alliterate.) It doesn't matter how many unstressed syllables there are.
The effect is a bit like hip-hop, except that hip-hop rhymes and carries its rhyme across more than one line.
The language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons at the time of their migration to Britain was probably more or less uniform. Over time, however, Old English developed into four major dialects: Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent (in the far southeastern part of the island); and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest.
All of these dialects have direct descendants in modern England, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the dialects of Old English. "Standard" Modern English (if there is such a thing), or at least Modern English spelling, owes most to the Mercian dialect, since that was the dialect of London.
Most Old English literature is not in the Mercian dialect, however, but in West-Saxon, for from the time of King Alfred (reigned 871-899) until the Conquest Wessex dominated the rest of Anglo-Saxon England politically and culturally. Nearly all Old English poetry is in West Saxon, though it often contains spellings and vocabulary more typical of Mercian and Northumbrian--a fact that has led some scholars to speculate that much of the poetry was first composed in Mercian or Northumbian and later "translated" into West Saxon. Whatever the truth of the matter, West Saxon was the dominant language during the period in which most of our surviving literature was recorded. It is therefore the dialect that this book will teach you.
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