II. Problem of division into periods.
II.Lectures
Lecture 1
HISTORY OF FORMIGN ENGLISH.
EARLY HISTORY OF BRITANNIA.
Contents
I. Origin of English.
II. Problem of division into periods.
III. The Early History of British Isles.
IV. Traces of the Roman rule in Britain.
V . The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Britain.
VI . Scandinavian Conquerors.
VII . The Norman Conquest of Britain.
VIII . Chronological list.
I. Origin of English
English belongs, in a rather complicated way, to the Indo-European family, which includes most of the European languages and a few Asiatic ones. We do not know where the original speakers of the parent Indo-European language lived. Guesses about their homeland range all the way from northwestern Europe to central Asia. According to all the early records they were a tall, blond, and warlike people, with a good deal of energy and intelligence. In their native land they had developed neither writing nor cities, so there is not much evidence about how they lived when they were at home. But when they left home and went out in search of new lands – which they did in various waves from about 2500 B.C. to about 1000 B.C. – the Indo-Europeans seemed to have been generally successful in conquering the countries they came to.
When a wave of them settled on a territory already crowded, they mixed with the original population. In the time they lost their distinctive appearance by intermarrying with the earlier inhabitants, and sometimes they also gave up most of the features of their language. When a wave went to a more thinly settled territory, they naturally preserved their physical characteristics comparatively unchanged for a much longer time: and they were likely to preserve the distinctive features of their language also, though the two things did not always go together.
The Slavic and Celtic languages, as well as Indian, Persian, and some others, are of Indo-European origin, but the three brunches with which English is most concerned are the Greek, Latin and Germanic, particularly the last. All languages are changing to some extent all the time: before the invention of writing they seem to have changed faster. Since the various waves left at different times, they were speaking noticeably different varieties of Indo-European at the times of their departures: and the further changes that took place after they left the invaded countries and this fact made their languages more and more unlike. As they split up and settled (more or less) in different regions, the differences become so great that the Greeks, for instance, could not possibly understand the Germans: and a little later some of the Germans could not understand the others.
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Old Germanic split into North, East, and West Germanic. West Germanic split into High and Low German. And Low German split into further dialects, including those of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. There were differences in pronunciation, and even in word endings, between these last three; but most of the root words were enough alike to be recognizable, and the three tribes seem to have had no great difficulty in understanding each other. About 450 A.D. members of three tribes moved into what is know called England (from Angle-land), and began to take it over. It is at this time that we usually say the English language, as such, began.
It is worth noticing that even at the very beginning of English as a separate language there was no one simple standard. The Jutes undoubtedly thought that the Angles “talked funny”, and vice versa. Efforts have been made for centuries to develop a set of standard practices, and there is much to be said in their favor, but they can never be quite successful, and they never will be. There is just no way to make millions of people talk exactly alike.
These early English settlers do not seem to have made much of an effort to understand the language of the Britons who lived in England (then called Britain) before they came. The Britons also spoke an Indo-European language, but it belonged to the Celtic rather then the Germanic branch, and was by now completely unrecognizable to the newcomers. The English added only a handful of Celtic words to their origin – not nearly as many as the Americans later picted up from the Indians.
We can only guess about how the language would have developed if the descendants of these three tribes had been left to themselves. The fact is that two great invasions and a missionary movement changed the language enormously. The total result of these and other influences was that the English vocabulary became the largest and the most complex in the world, and the grammar changed its emphasis from inflections (changes in the forms of words) to word order.
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II. Problem of division into periods.
The history of E.I. is traditionally divided into 3 periods.
I – Old English period – (from the beginning of old relics and monuments – of the VII-th century – till the end of the XI-th century).
II – Middle English period (среднеангл.) – from the beginning of the XII-th cent. till the XV-th cent. Some scientists include the 15-th cent. – as a transitional period (переходный) between Middle English period and New English period.
III – New English period (from the XVI-th cent. – till our days).
The period from 16-th cent. till 17-th cent. is called (XVI-XVII) Early New English Period. The division into periods is based on extra-linguistic phenomena that is on the external events of British history. These external events were very important when economic and political systems of the country were changed.
For example: the middle of the 11-th cent.- it is the period of the Norman conquest (нормандское завоевание), the result of this conquest was the completion of feudalism in Britain. The 15-th cent. – the period of Wars of Roses,- White Rose and Red Rose – disintegration of feudalism, transition to absolute monarchy, development of bourgeoisie. All these events are very important for the history of Britain, but they can’t be very decisive when we find out the stages of the development of English language. So the stages or the periods of the language development are relative. But above mentioned division is common for all linguistic schools.
English belongs to the group of Germanic languages (or Teutonic) which is one of the largest subgroups of Indo-European group. The earliest information about Teutons was in “Commentaries on the Gallic War” (Записи о Галльской войне) written by Julius Caesar (a Roman general, statesman and writer who lived from about 100 B.C. till 44 B.C.
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