English – a Germanic language

1. English – a Germanic language

Although the earliest inhabitants of Britain were not of Germanic origin, English belongs to the Germanic languages which, in their turn, belong to the larger group of languages known as Indo-European¹.

The Indo-European family is composed of the following main branches of languages: Indian, Iranian, Albanian, Armenian, Hellenic / Greek, Italic, Baltic, Slavic / Slavonic, Germanic, Celtic, Tocharian, Hittite.

The Indo-European languages have two main characteristics:

a) An inflectional structure, i.e. a grammatical system based on changes in the forms of words by means of endings (inflections) and vowel modifications to indicate various grammatical categories: case, number, mood, tense;

b) All Indo-European languages share a common word stock, i.e. words that resemble one another in form and meaning (‘cognate’ words). This common word stock includes the names of parts of the body, family relations, natural phenomena, plants, animals, the numerals from one to ten, etc. We shall illustrate the common Indo-European vocabulary with two cognate words from five Indo-European languages.

e.g. (night) OE niht, G. Nacht, L. noctis, Gk. nuktós, Sl. нoчъ (noch)

(brother) OE bro or, G. Bruder, L. frater, Gk. Phrater, Sl. браmь (brat)

The Germanic languages fall into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic. These Germanic languages must have originated in a language generally called Common or Primitive Germanic which is not preserved in any document.

1.1. East Germanic

The chief representative of the East Germanic languages is Gothic. For a time, the Goths played a prominent part in European history: thus, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths conquered Italy and Spain.

The Gothic language has been preserved in a translation of the Bible made by the bishop of the Visigoths called Wulfila, in the second half of the 4^th century. The translation is the oldest Germanic document, three centuries older than any old English document, thus forming the nearest approach one can have to Common (or Primitive) German. Besides Gothic, to this branch also belonged Burgundian and Vandalic which disappeared a long time ago, leaving no traces except a few proper names. All these languages are extinct now.

1. North Germanic

This branch, also known as Norse (or Scandinavian) includes Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. The oldest North Germanic documents – some runic² inscriptions (in Old Norse) date from the 4^th or 5 ^th century.

West Germanic

The West Germanic languages were divided into two branches: High German and Low German, according to their geographic position:

i. High German is now represented solely by German – the literary language of Germany, also spoken in Austria and a large part of Switzerland.

p → f pater father Vater

pisces ish Fisch

pes / pedem foot Fuβ

k→ h centum hundred Hundert

d → t duo two Zwei

dens / dentem tooth Zahn

f → b frater brother Bruder

ii. From the grammatical point of view there are some similarities between English and the other Germanic languages:

a) In English, as well as in other Germanic languages, there are two large groups of verbs: strong verbs, which form the Past Tense by internal vowel changes within its stem; and weak verbs, which form the Past Tense by the addition of a suffix containing a dental consonant -ed in English, -t(e) in German.

strong Vs: trinken– trank-getrunken (drink - drank –drunk)

weak verbs: fragen – fragte - gefragt (ask – asked– asked)

The pattern of the strong verbs (with internal vowel change) was inherited from Indo-European, but that of the weak verbs was new and distinctly Germanic. Jacob Grimm called them ‘weak’ because, being unable to change the internal vowel, they had to resort to external means, namely to suffixes.

b) There are grammatical similarities between English and other Germanic languages (in particular German):

- in the conjugation of verbs:

Present Tense I hear Ich höre

Past Tense I heard Ich hörte

Present Perfect I have heard Ich habe gehört

(Present Tense of aux. haben – have + Past Participle)

Past Perfect I had heard Ich hatte gehört

(Past Tense of aux. haben - have+ Past Participle) 

- there were two types of adjective declension in Old English as well as in other Germanic languages: the weak declension (when the adjective was preceded by a determiner) and the strong declension (when the adjective was not). In the Nominative case there were two forms:

weak decl. se goda mann (Germ. der gute Mann ‘the good man’ )

strong decl. god mann (Germ. guter Mann ‘good man’)

- There are grammatical similarities between English and German in the inflections for comparing adjectives:

e.g. Engl. loud – louder – the loudest

Germ. laut – lauter – der (die, das) lauteste

the synthetic genitive in ‘s:

e.g. Engl. the man’s name

Germ. Der Name des Mannes; des Mannes Name (formal, obsolete)

iii. There are similarities in the vocabulary, especially in simple, everyday words between English and other Germanic languages:

e.g. E. father/ G. Vater; brother / Bruder; sing / singen; good / gut; here / hier

The languages that preceded English in Britain

We are so accustomed to thinking of English as the language of the British Isles that we are likely to forget that English has been the language of the British Isles for a comparatively short period.

The English language was introduced into the British Isles comparatively recently – about the middle of the 5^th century. Yet, the British Isles have been lived by man for about 50,000 years. During this long stretch of time the presence of a number of races can be detected and each of the races had a language. Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about the early languages of Britain.

1. Celtic

The earliest inhabitants of Britain about whose language we have reliable information are the Celts. There were two main branches of Celts:

i. The Britannic Celts who lived in Britain;

ii. The Goidelic (Gaelic) Celts who lived at first in Ireland and then spread to the East and South East.

Celtic was the first Indo-European language to be spoken in the British Isles and it is still spoken in some parts of the island:

a) The language of the Britannic Celts is now represented in Britain by Welsh which is spoken in Wales. Welsh is spoken by about one million people, most of whom are bilingual: according to a census made in 1951 only 3% of the population in Wales did not know English.

Cornish, which had the same origin as Welsh, died out as a spoken language in Cornwall towards the close of the 18^th century.

b) The language of the Goidelic (Gaelic) Celts is now represented by Irish (spoken in Ireland by about half a million people, most of whom are bilingual); Scots Gaelic (spoken in the highlands of Scotland) and Manx (spoken in the Isle of Man).

Latin

The second language to be spoken in Britain was Latin which was introduced after the Roman conquest of 43 AD when Britain became a province of the Roman Empire.

In fact, the attempt at conquering the island had started much earlier. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar, having completed the conquest of Gaul, decided upon an invasion of Britain, but the attack failed. The following year, 54 BC, he again invaded the island and this time he succeeded in establishing himself in the south - east. Julius Caesar exacted tribute from the Celts, which was never paid, so he again returned to Gaul, and Britain was not troubled by the Roman armies for nearly a hundred years. In 43 AD, the emperor Claudius decided to undertake the conquest of the island. Within 3 years he subjugated the tribes of the south - eastern and central regions. Subsequent campaigns brought almost the entire island under Roman rule with the exception of some parts in Wales and Scotland where most of the Celts had fled to.

The military conquest was followed by the Romanization of the province: highways, roads, well-planned towns with public buildings, amphitheatres, baths, etc., testify to the introduction of the Roman way of life.

Latin was spoken for about four centuries, but it did not replace Celtic as it did in Gaul. Latin was known to the upper classes and it was the language of civil administration, the army, trade and, to a large extent, it was known by the inhabitants of the cities and towns. However, its use began to decrease after the Roman troops were withdrawn at the beginning of the 5^th century and did not survive the Germanic invasion, leaving comparatively few traces.

3. The Germanic Conquest

After the year 449 an event occurred which profoundly affected the course of history. In that year began the invasion of Britain by certain Germanic tribes that settled in Britain in the 5^th and 6^th centuries and who are considered the founders of the English nation.

A detailed account of the Germanic invasion is given by a monk and scholar, called the Venerable Bede. In his chronicle Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in Latin (Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum) and completed in 731, he tells us that the Germanic tribes who conquered the island were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

In fact, Britain had been exposed to attacks from the Saxons much earlier than 449, from as early as the 4^th century, even while the island was under Roman rule. Two other Celtic tribes, the Picts and the Scots had been attacking Britain from as early as 350. All these tribes were kept out only at the price of constant vigilance. Against both of these sources of attack the Roman military organization seems to have proved adequate. But the Celts who were not warriors, had come to depend on the Roman army for their protection. Under Roman rule they had settled down to a more peaceful way of life and had lost some of thew military skill. Consequently, when the Romans withdrew in 407, the Celts found themselves unprotected and were no longer able to keep out the Germanic bands.

The Angles occupied some parts of Britain north of the Thames and lowland Scotland.

The Saxons, who were closely akin to the Angles in speech and customs, occupied the whole part of Britain south of the Thames; they also settled in some regions north of the Thames such as Essex and Middlesex.

The Jutes had come to Britain to assist the Celts to drive away the invading Picts and Scots. But they liked the country, so they decided to stay and began to settle down. They settled in Kent, Southern Hampshire, the Isle of Wight.

Though the Saxons were numerically superior to the Angles, the latter were influential enough to impose their name on the whole; after the year 1000 the country began to be called Anglaland (>England), i.e. the land of the Angles and the language was called Anglisc (>English).

The linguistic consequences of the Germanic Conquest were extremely important, for a new language superseded Celtic and Latin – a Germanic language (except in Scottish Highlands, in Wales and Cornwall). This new language resulted from the fusion of the dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who had come from the continent. The speech of the Angles cannot have differed very much from that of the Saxons or that of the Jutes, but those differences that existed must account for the various English dialects.

3. The periods in the history of the English language

The history of the English language in England begins with the settlement of the Germanic tribes - the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes – in Britain in 449. The evolution of English in the fifteen hundred years of its existence in England has been an unbroken one. Within this steady development, however, it is possible to distinguish three main periods, each of them having certain broad characteristics:

Old English lasted from 449 to about 1050 (1066 / 1100).

The English language spoken in Britain from the Germanic invasions of the 5^th century (449) up to about the end of the 11^th century (1050) is now usually called Old English, though the term Anglo-Saxon is also in use. The name Anglo-Saxon was meant to distinguish the Saxons who had come to Britain, from those who remained on the continent. The term is often used now to refer to people of English descent. The term Old English has the advantage, when used together with Middle English and Modern English, of pointing out the continuous historical development of the English language.

Middle English lasted from about 1050 (1066 / 1100) to about 1500.

Modern English: from 1500 to the present time.

Like all divisions in history, these periods of the English language are matters of convenience, and the dividing line between them is purely arbitrary, being marked by the dates of events in English history, but each period has certain broad characteristics and certain special developments that took place.

An examination of the changes that have occurred in English during the past 1,000 years shows changes in the lexicon as well as the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic components of the grammar.

Old English is generally referred to as the period of full endings or full inflections; Middle English as the period of levelled endings or levelled inflections and Modern English as the period of lost endings or lost inflections.

As far as the inflectional system is concerned, Old English was a synthetic language, i.e. one in which the relations between words are expressed by inflections, whereas Modern English is an analytical language i.e. one in which such relations are expressed by form words³ and fixed word order. In the course of its development, English has simplified its inflectional system to a larger extent than all the other Germanic languages. Nevertheless, it has not become poorer in means of expression, because the relations between words were rendered by other means than inflections, viz. by form words and a fixed word order.

NOTES:

¹ The Indo-European family of languages must have been spoken by a people or peoples living in a relatively limited geographical area. For a long time this area was believed to have been in Asia, but in the 20^th century, archaeological and anthropological research proved that the place is the south – eastern part of Europe. Thus, Lithuanian has preserved many features of the Indo-European grammar; it is highly inflected: the noun has 7 case forms, the verb has four moods and four tenses, etc.

Rune(s): the characters of the alphabet used especially in carved inscriptions by the Germanic peoples from the 3^rd to the 13^th century

³ Form words are also known as function words or grammatical words; The term is used for a word whose role is largely or wholly grammatical, e.g. articles, prepositions, conjunctions; they contrast with lexical words, which carry the main semantic content.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:

1. What linguistic features are shared by all Indo-European languages; that is, how are all Indo-European languages alike?

What kinds of words are shared by all Indo-European languages?

3. What peoples inhabited the British Isles before the coming of the English?

4. According to Bede, what circumstances brought the Germanic tribesmen to Britain, and which tribes participated in the settlement of the island?

5. Into how many periods is the history of the English language customarily divided? Give the dates assigned to the periods.