3. Old english. General characteristics.

We’ve left the I-E peoples and we are moving now to the beginnings of the English language, the Germanic language group on the British Isles. In this lecture we are going to explore the ways in which OE emerged, and to try to give the sense of exactly where OE was spoken, how it works and what the sound of the language is.

When we use the phrase like OE, we have to be clear about what we are talking about. And here let’s go back to the terms that I developed in the previous lectures: geography, history, genetics and typology.

The language known as Old English can be defined in four ways:

A. Geographically – OE is a language spoken by the Germanic settlers in the British Isles.

B. Historically — it’s a language spoken from the time of the Germanic settlement in the 5^th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066.

C. Genetically — it’s a Lowlands branch of the West Germanic group of languages. (In other words, it is a branch of the Germanic languages that emerged from languages spoken in what are now Holland, northern Germany, and Denmark.)

D. Typologically (or in other words - what’s the actual shape and structure of OE?) — it’s a language with a particular sound system (phonology), with certain kinds of grammatical endings (morphology), with certain word order patterns (syntax or syntactic organization ) and with a very special vocabulary (lexis).

Now let’s take some of these in order.

What is the geography of oe?

The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles, as far as we can tell, were a group of Paleolithic peoples who built such magnificent structures as Stonehenge and other stone-circle monuments. However, we have no linguistic, literary or verbal remnants of their lives.

The earliest inhabitants whose language we can reconstruct were Celtic speakers who migrated from Europe to the British Isles sometime in the second half of the 1^st millennium B.C.

The Celtic tribes, whose languages, the same as Germanic, also belonged to the Indo-European family, were at one time among its most numerous representatives. At the beginning of our era the Celts could be found on the territories of the present-day Spain, Great Britain, western Germany and northern Italy. Before that they had been known to reach even Greece and Asia Minor. But under the steady attacks of Italic and Germanic tribes the Celts had to retreat, so that in the areas where they were once dominant they have left but the scantiest trace of their presence.

The Celts who first came to Britain gradually spread to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Their languages are represented in modern times by Irish, Scottish Gaelic ['geɪlɪk] (гэльский, гаэльский язык (язык шотландских кельтов) and Manx [mæŋks] (the language of the Isle of Man мэнкский язык, язык жителей Мэн, относится к кельтским языкам; ныне почти не используется). A later wave of Celtic tribes, having occupied for some centuries the central part of England, were in turn driven westwards by Germanic invaders, and their modern language representatives are Welsh, Cornish ['kɔːnɪʃ] (корнский язык коренных жителей-кельтов Корнуолла [Cornwall ]; последние носители языка жили в конце 18 ) and Breton ['bretɔn] (бретонский язык (относится к кельтской группе языков, носителей 1 млн. чел.). It should be noted that nowadays the remnants of the Celtic group of languages face the threat of complete disappearance, unable to survive in the competition with English. Cornish became extinct already in the 18th century, Manx — after the Second World War. Scottish Gaelic is spoken only in the Highlands by about 75 thousand people, Irish — by half a million, the figures showing a steady declining tendency, and the absolute majority of those speaking these languages are bilingual, English being no less familiar to them than their former native tongue. Although in recent years a certain revival of nationalist sentiments helped to somewhat arrest the decline, many linguists fear the inevitable disappearance of the whole branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

These Celts were displaced (forced out вытеснять) in two moves: first – by the Latin-speaking Romans; second – by the Germanic tribes.

The Romans colonized England under Julius Caesar in 55 – 54 B.C. and kept it as a colony until the middle of the 5^th century A.D.

Latin became the prestige language of administration, education, and social life. Celts and Romans intermarried, towns were romanized. But yet there are still some bits and pieces of Celtic in English. A great example of this is the word “Avon”. The fact that England has three rivers named Avon, for example, can be traced back to the Celtic word for “river”. So we see that some Celtic words entered Roman Latin during the occupation, especially words for geographical places.

During the last decades of Roman colonial rule in the 5^th century A.D., groups of Germanic-speaking tribes and raiders began their invasion of the British Isles. These were the ruthless and barbaric Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, who up to that time had lived in western Europe between the Elbe [elb ], ['elbə] and the Rhine.

The invaders were representatives of a far inferior civilization than the Romans. A bulk of the invaders came from the most backward and primitive of the Germanic tribes. They were an agricultural rather than a pastoral ['pɑːst(ə)r(ə)l] people. Their tribal organisation was rapidly disintegrating (breaking up into small parts, typically as the result of impact or decay - разрушающийся, распадающийся).

The invaders came to Britain in hosts [həusts] consisting not only of warriors, but also including labourers ['leɪb(ə)rə], women and children. They plundered (разграблять, разорять, опустошать (особенно на войне) - loot, ravage, sack) the country, took possession of almost all the fertile land there and partly exterminated (истреблять – destroy), and partly drove away the native population to the less inhabited mountainous parts of the country — Cornwall, Wales, Scotland. The rest of the natives became slaves to the conquerors.

In view of the historical facts mentioned above it is quite clear why the language of the invaders underwent so few changes under the influence of the Celtic tongue as almost no normal intercourse between the invaded and the invaders was possible, as the invaded were very few and far below socially.

By the year 547, the first kingdom was established in the north of England, north of the Humber River (Northumbria), by groups descended from the Angles.

By the middle of the 7^th century, small kingdoms were being established throughout England. Some of these were minor outposts, little more than extended farmsteads or small villages. Others were areas with great power and wealth, they were established on the site of older Roman fortified camps. The word “camp”, in fact, comes from the Latin “campos”, meaning “a fortified enclosure”.

But what starts to emerge in the 8^th century in England is the recognition that these people are no longer just Germanic-speaking people, but English. Old English emerged as a distinctive language. In order to understand this sense of Englishness, we have to dwell on the idea of a dialect. OE developed four major dialects. Each dialect had both natural and manmade borders.

North of the Humber River in England was Northumbria. In the central part of England between the Humber River in the north and the Thames in the south were the kingdoms of Mercia and Anglia; in the southeast was Kent; and in the southwest was Wessex. Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia were formed by the Angles; Wessex, Sussex and Essex were formed by the Saxons; Kent was formed by the Jutes. Only the Frisians did not form a separate kingdom, but intermarried with the population belonging to different tribes.

The prevailing importance of these seven kingdoms gave to the next two centuries the title of Heptarchy ['heptɑːkɪ] (Гептархия, Семь королевств, Семь царств англосаксонские королевства, существовавшие с конца 6 по конец 8). Gradually three of the seven — Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria — began to estab­lish some sort of domination over their smaller neighbours. It was an important step towards the achieving the eventual unity of England. Another vital factor contributing to the unity was the appearance of Christianity in England in 597 AD.

The Old English dialects are generally named after the names of the kingdoms on the territory of which the given dialect was spoken — the Northumbrian dialect, the Mercian dialect, the Wessex dialect, etc.

Though the differences between the three types of dialects were later to assume considerable importance, they were at first slight, and records of the 8th and 9th centuries reveal that English, as it was collectively called, had emerged by that time as an independent language. The virtually complete geographical separation of England from the Continent was a factor favouring the further development of those characteristic features that already distinguished English from its parent Germanic language.

Why are these dialects important? They are important for several reasons. First, because they correspond to some important historical moments in the history of OE.

Northumbria was the first area of efflorescence (blossoming, culmination - вершина, кульминация, расцвет) of Anglo-Saxon culture. The historian and ecclesiastic [ɪˌklizɪ'æstɪk] (clergyman духовное лицо, священнослужитель), and grammarian (грамматист) of Northumbria known as the Venerahle Bede wrote many works, his most famous work is Ecclesiastical (духовный, церковный relating to the Christian Church or its clergy) History of the English Church and Peoples in 731. And he epitomises [ɪ'pɪtəmaɪz] (summarize, outline - конспектировать, кратко излагать, резюмировать) the flowering of Nothumbria culture at the end of the 7^th and the beginning of the 8^th centuries. The Nothumbrian dialect is quite distinctive. And the earliest piece of OE poetry – the Hymn – attributed to the poet Caedmon, is in Nothumbrian dialect. The great Bibles and Gospels of early English life were also produced in Northumbrian, they were enormous hand-made manuscripts, rich with illumination (украшение рукописи миниатюрами, украшение яркими красками, золотом и серебром) and colour. The earliest written records we have in Old English are interlinear [ɪntə'lɪnɪə] (written or printed between the lines of a text - межстрочный, подстрочный) glosses (an alphabetical list of terms or words found in or relating to a specific subject, text, or dialect, with explanations; a brief dictionary - глоссарий, толковый словарь к тексту, книге) or translations of these Latin texts written in the Northumbrian dialect.

Mercian and Kentish have several literary and cultural documents, but it is really the language of the West Saxons that is important for us. West Saxon is the dialect spoken and written in the southwestern part of the country And West Saxon is important for many reasons.

This was the dialect of King Alfred who unified the Anglo-Saxons and in fact became the first English king. The most famous of all English kings, Alfred of Wessex, Alfred the Great, came to the throne in 871 and is reputed to have been one of the best kings ever to rule mankind. He successfully fought with the Danes who in the second half of the 8^th century began their devastating raids on the isles. Alfred managed to stop the Danes, although temporarily, and in 878 signed a treaty with the Danish king dividing England between them.

But Alfred's true greatness lay not in his military, but peace­time activity. He set aside a half of the revenue (income) to be spent on educational needs, established schools where the sons of the nobility could be taught to read and write, brought in foreign scholars and craftsmen, restored monasteries and convents, published a collection of laws and enforced them. He also mastered Latin and translated many books into Anglo-Saxon and ordered the compilation (сбор данных, собирание (материала, фактов) of the first history book, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was continued for more than two centuries after his death. King Alfred formulated his aims as follows: “Desire for and possession of earthly power never pleased me overmuch, and I did not unduly desire this earthly rule. I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to people who should come after me, the memory of me in good works”.

King Alfred established an intellectual community around him – a group of scholars, translators and poets who were commissioned (orderd) to translate the major works of classical and Christian antiquity into OE. And they translated them into the West Saxon dialect. By doing so King Alfred established West Saxon as the literary and prestige dialect of OE, in fact he establish the literary standard. So king Alfred encouraged any later reader to take any piece of OE regardless of its dialect and to translate it or rewrite it into the West Saxon dialect. For example, Caedmon’s Hymn was translated from Northumbrian into West Saxon. The influence of King Alfred was so great that both Latin texts and Old English works in other dialects were translated into West Saxon. In publishing works on Old English, scholars of the 19^th and 20^th centuries edited them into West Saxon forms even if those forms were not the original.

Just as the Old English language may be divided into geographically bounded dialects, so the Old English period may be divided into historically demarcated ['dimɑːkeɪt] (разграничивать, разделять – separate) stages.

We have very little indirect evidence about the beginning of the Old English period — 5^th —7^th centuries, these centuries are generally referred to as “the pre-written period” of the English language.

The principal written records that came to us date back to the 8^th century. They were written with the help of the so-called “Runic Alphabet”. This was an alphabet of 26 letters, the shape of which is quite peculiar. We have already said that it is assumed the Runic alphabet was composed by Germanic scribes in the II—III centuries A.D. and their angular shape is due to the material those inscriptions were made on — wood, stone, bone — and the technique of writing — the letters were not written but carved on those hard materials. The word "rune" meant "mystery", and those letters were originally considered to be magic signs known to very few people, mainly monks [mʌŋk], and were not understood by the vast majority of the illiterate population. Among the first Old English runic inscriptions we generally mention two: 1) the inscription on the so-called "Franks' casket" ['kɑːskɪt] (шкатулка для хранения бумаг, драгоценностей) — a small ornamental box or chest for holding jewels, letters, or other valuable objects made of whalebone, the panels of the casket depict scenes from classical legend, Germanic mythology and the Bible; a runic inscription describes each panel; 2) the inscription on the "Ruthwell cross" — a religious poem engraved on a stone cross found in Scotland.