VI. Scandinavian conquerors

At the end of the 9^th cent. (871) Scandinavian Vikings (the Danes) be­gan to attack England. They invaded the country several times. Finally, the king Alfred (who reigned from 871-899) won several victories over the Danes. But in 886, he had to conclude a treaty with the Danes. Ac­cording to the treaty the Danes were allowed to settle in the north-east­ern part of England. This part of the territory was called ‘Danelagh’ meaning – ‘ The land of the Danes’. This kingdom “Danelagh’ existed till the 11^th century. At the end of the 10^th cent. the Danish invasions were resumed. The Anglo-Saxon kings were unable to organize any ef­fective resistance. And at the beginning of the 11^th cent. The Danish king Canute became the king of Denmark, Norway and England. The Danish dynasty governed England till 1042 (30 years), when the Danish kingdom disintegrated and the descendent of Anglo-Saxon dynasty – Adward became the king of England. The line of Danish kings came to an end. The result of close neighbourhood of the Anglo-Saxons was the fact that a lot of words which are used in everyday life were borrowed from the Danes.

The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders belonged to the North Germanic languages and their phonetic and grammatical structure was simi­lar to that of English. Close relation between English and Scandinavian dia­lects made mutual understanding without translation quite possible. A consid­erable part of the vocabulary was common to English and to Scandinavian dialects. In many words the root was the same, while endings were different. In the following list you can see the OE words and their counterparts:

OE Scandinavian OE Scandinavian

dom (judgement) domr sunu (son) sunr

fisc (fish) fiskr heorte (heart) hiarta

cyninz (king) konongr tima (time) time

wind (wind) vindr modor(mother) moder

dxz (day) dagr fot (foot) fotr

treo (tree) tre bitan (bite) bita

zod (good) godr faran (go) fara

ic (I) ek standan(stand) standa

VII. Norman conquest of England

In 1065 the king Adward (who was the descendant of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty) died. As he had no children the King’s Council of wise men offered the crown to Harold (he was a relative to the dead king). But William, the Duke of Normandy, also had claims to the English throne, as he was related to the Edward dynasty. These two pretenders to the throne began preparations to a war to fight for the Crown. The battle between these two pretenders was at the town Hasting (south of Eng­land). During the battle Harold was killed. William’s victory made him the king of England. Later, he was called William the Conqueror. He ruled England for 21 years (1066-1087).

Normandy – was dukedom of France, in the north of it. The Normans were Scandinavian Vikings who settled in France. They lived among the French people. They learned to speak French and became like the French themselves. They adopted the manners, the customs and the way of life of the French people. So the Normans brought French lan­guage (Northern dialect of French) to England. After the Norman con­quering the church power and the temporal power was in hands of the Normans.

Anglo-Saxon military nobility perished or left England for France. The population of villages was enslaved. They were the Anglo-Saxons. Town-dwellers were the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans.

During several centuries the state language in England was French one. It was the language of the government, the courts of law, the church. The English language was reduced to a lower social sphere: the main mass of peasantry and townspeople. The relation between French and English was, thus_, different from that between Scandinavian and English: French was the language of the ruling class.

The Norman Conquest put an end to the dominating position of the West Saxon literary language. In the 12th and 13th centuries all English dia­lects were on an equal footing and independent of each other. In some of them, especially in the North, Scandinavian influence on the vocabulary became more pronounced. Under such circumstances, with two languages spoken in the country, they were bound to struggle with each other and also to influence each other. This process lasted three centuries - the 12th, 13th, 14th. Its results were twofold:

1) the struggle ended in favors of English;

2) the English language emerged from this struggle in a considerably changed conditions; its vocabulary was enriched by a great number of French words.

Many words adopted at the time denoted things and notions connected with the life of the Norman aristocracy. Alongside these, many everyday words penetrated into English, which denoted ideas already having names in English. As a result of borrowing, pairs of synonyms appeared in English, and a struggle between the synonyms would ensue. The outcome of the struggle would be different in different cases. We may state three main possibilities:

1. The struggle ends in favor of the French word; its native English synonym disappears.

2. It is the native word that gets the upper hand; the French word, after existing in English for some time, is ousted again.

3. Both words survive, but a difference in meaning develops between them, which may be either purely semantic or stylistic.

Many French words, as was stated above, were connected with the life of the ruling class, the French nobility. We can state here several main semantic spheres of French words:

(1) Government, the court, and jurisdiction: prince, boron, noble, governen, government royal₇ court, justice, judge, сопdетneп, аcquinten (MnE acquit), sentence. However, the words king and queen survived and were re­placed by their French synonyms.

(2) Army and military fife: werre (MnE war),army, bataille (MnE battle}, regiment ,lance, mail, castle, banner, harness, siege, victory, defeat.

(3) Religion and church: Religion, saint, frere.(MnE friar), preyen (MnE pray), sermon, conscience, cloistre, chapel.

(4) Town professions: bocher (MnE butcher), peintre (MnE painter) tailor. However, words of OE origin are used to denote country professions: miller, shoemaker, shepherd, smith.

(5) Art notions: art,colour, figure, image, column, ornament.

(6) Amusements: plesir (MnE pleasure), leysir (MnE leisure), ese (MnE ease) soper (MnE supper), resten (MnE roast), deintee (MnE dainty).

Many other words were also taken over, which were not connected with any specific semantic sphere, such as: air, place, coverer, river, large, change, and a number of others.

When both the native and the French word were preserved in English, there arose a differentiation of their meanings. A well known example of such differentiation is quoted in the first chapter of Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe.

This concerns names of animals. The native word is used to denote the living animal while the French word denotes the dish made of its flesh: ox – beef, calf – veal, sheep – mutton_, pig - pork. The living animal was denoted by a term from the Anglo-Saxon shepherd who took care of it, while the dish was denoted by a word from the language of the French nobility who used it at their dinners.

Another type of differentiation may be found in the pair of synonyms: beginnen- cemmecen. The native verb beginnen has stayed on as a colloquial word, while the French cemmencen is an official term and is mainly used in documents, and the like. In a number of cases the native word has acquired a more concrete character, while the French one is more abstract; compare: work - labor, life - existence.