OLD-WORDS-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: History of English - Part 1
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 19:11:04 EDT

I received the following from my brother, forwarded from someone else. It
reportedly comes from the Merriam-Webster website. I have not had a chance
to look at it myself, but look forward to seeing what else they have! This
message is the first of three parts I will forward under "History of
English" - Hope you find it of interest.

Ann McReynolds, St. Louis

A Brief Look at the History of English (Part One--Old English)

The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided
into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle
English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of
certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A.
D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh
century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit
later.

By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and
especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman
Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and
the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old
English had begun to break down.

The following brief sample of Old English prose illustrates several of the
significant ways in which change has so transformed English that we must look
carefully to find points of resemblance between the language of the tenth
century and our own. It is taken from Aelfric's "Homily on St. Gregory the
Great" and concerns the famous story of how that pope came to send
missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing
Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves in Rome:

Eft he axode, hu ðære ðeode nama wære þe hi of comon. Him wæs geandwyrd, þæt
hi Angle genemnode wæron. Þa cwæð he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for
ðan ðe hi engla wlite habbað, and swilcum gedafenað þæt hi on heofonum engla
geferan beon."

A few of these words will be recognized as identical in spelling with their
modern equivalents -- he, of, him, for, and, on -- and the resemblance of a
few others to familiar words may be guessed -- nama to name, comon to come,
wære to were, wæs to was -- but only those who have made a special study of
Old English will be able to read the
passage with understanding. The sense of it is as follows: "Again he [St.
Gregory] asked what might be the name of the people from which they came. It
was answered to him that they were named Angles. Then he said, 'Rightly are
they called Angles because they have the beauty of angels, and it is fitting
that such as they should be angels' companions in heaven.' "

Some of the words in the original have survived in altered form, including
axode (asked), hu (how), rihtlice (rightly), engla (angels), habbað (have),
swilcum (such), heofonum (heaven), and beon (be).

Others, however, have vanished from our lexicon, mostly without a trace,
including several that were quite common words in Old English: eft "again,"
ðeode "people, nation," cwæð "said, spoke," gehatene "called, named," wlite
"appearance, beauty," and geferan "companions."

Recognition of some words is naturally hindered by the presence of two
special characters, þ, called "thorn," and ð, called "edh," which served in
Old English to represent the sounds now spelled with th. Other points worth
noting include the fact that the pronoun system did not yet, in the late
tenth century, include the third person plural forms beginning with th-: hi
appears where we would use they.

Several aspects of word order will also strike the reader as oddly unlike
ours. Subject and verb are inverted after an adverb -- þa cwæð he "Then said
he" -- a phenomenon not unknown in Modern English but now restricted to a few
adverbs such as never and requiring the presence of an auxiliary verb like do
or have. In subordinate clauses
the main verb must be last, and so an object or a preposition may precede it
in a way no longer natural: þe hi of comon "which they from came," for ðan ðe
hi engla wlite habbað "because they angels' beauty have."

Perhaps the most distinctive difference between Old and Modern English
reflected in Aelfric's sentences is the elaborate system of inflections, of
which we now have only remnants. Nouns, adjectives, and even the definite
article are inflected for gender, case, and number: ðære ðeode "(of) the
people" is feminine, genitive, and singular, Angle
"Angles" is masculine, accusative, and plural, and swilcum "such" is
masculine, dative, and plural.

The system of inflections for verbs was also more elaborate than ours: for
example, habbað "have" ends with the -að suffix characteristic of plural
present indicative verbs. In addition, there were two imperative forms, four
subjunctive forms (two for the present tense and two for the preterit, or
past, tense), and several others which we no longer have.

Even where Modern English retains a particular category of inflection, the
form has often changed. Old English present participles ended in -ende not
-ing, and past participles bore a prefix ge- (as geandwyrd "answered" above).

This thread:

• History of English - Part 1 by <>

  • History of English - Part 2 by <>