The history of the English language and its development.

In 409 AD the last Roman legion left British shores, and in fifty years the

Islands became a victim of invaders. Germanic tribes from Southern Scandinavia

and Northern Germany, pushed from their densely populated homelands, looked

for a new land to settle. At that time the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts

and remaining Roman colonists, who failed to organize any resistance against

Germanic intruders, and so had to let them settle here. This is how the Old English

language was born.

Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and starting to settle in Britain already in

the 7th century BC. The very word "Britain" seems to be the name given by the

pre-Celtic inhabitants of the island, accepted by first Indo-Europeans. The Celts

quickly spread over the island, and only in the north still existed non-Indo-

European peoples which are sometimes called "Picts" (the name given by

Romans). Picts lived in Scotland and on Shetland Islands and represented the most

ancient population of the Isles, the origin of which is unknown. Picts do not seem

to leave any features of their language to Indo-European population of Britain - the

famous Irish and Welsh initial mutations of consonants can be the only sign of the

substratum left by unknown nations of Britain. At the time the Celts reached

Britain they spoke the common language, close to Gaulish in France. But later,

when Celtic tribes occupied Ireland, Northern England, Wales, their tongues were

divided according to tribal divisions. These languages will later become Welsh,

Irish Gaelic, Cornish, but from that time no signs remained, because the Celts did

not invent writing yet. Not much is left from Celtic languages in English. Though

many place names and names for rivers are surely Celtic (like Usk - from Celtic

*usce "water", or Avon - from *awin "river"), the morphology and phonetics are

untouched by the Celtic influence. Some linguists state that the word down comes

from Celtic *dún "down"; other examples of Celtic influence in place names are

tne following:

cothair (a fortress) - Carnarvon

uisge (water) - Exe, Usk, Esk

dun, dum (a hill) - Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dunedin

llan (church) - Llandaff, Llandovery, Llandudno

coil (forest) - Kilbrook, Killiemore

kil (church) - Kilbride, Kilmacolm

ceann (cape) - Kebadre, Kingussie

inis (island) - Innisfail

inver (mountain) - Inverness, Inverurie

bail (house) - Ballantrae, Ballyshannon,

and, certainly, the word whiskey which means the same as Irish uisge "water". But this

borrowing took place much later.

In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain;

Roman legions built roads, camps, founded towns and castles. But still they did not

manage to assimilate the Celts, maybe because they lived apart from each other

and did not mix. Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places

and hills named by Romans make up the Roman heritage in the Old English. Such

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The history of the English language and its development.

In 409 AD the last Roman legion left British shores, and in fifty years the

Islands became a victim of invaders. Germanic tribes from Southern Scandinavia

and Northern Germany, pushed from their densely populated homelands, looked

for a new land to settle. At that time the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts

and remaining Roman colonists, who failed to organize any resistance against

Germanic intruders, and so had to let them settle here. This is how the Old English

language was born.

Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and starting to settle in Britain already in

the 7th century BC. The very word "Britain" seems to be the name given by the

pre-Celtic inhabitants of the island, accepted by first Indo-Europeans. The Celts

quickly spread over the island, and only in the north still existed non-Indo-

European peoples which are sometimes called "Picts" (the name given by

Romans). Picts lived in Scotland and on Shetland Islands and represented the most

ancient population of the Isles, the origin of which is unknown. Picts do not seem

to leave any features of their language to Indo-European population of Britain - the

famous Irish and Welsh initial mutations of consonants can be the only sign of the

substratum left by unknown nations of Britain. At the time the Celts reached

Britain they spoke the common language, close to Gaulish in France. But later,

when Celtic tribes occupied Ireland, Northern England, Wales, their tongues were

divided according to tribal divisions. These languages will later become Welsh,

Irish Gaelic, Cornish, but from that time no signs remained, because the Celts did

not invent writing yet. Not much is left from Celtic languages in English. Though

many place names and names for rivers are surely Celtic (like Usk - from Celtic

*usce "water", or Avon - from *awin "river"), the morphology and phonetics are

untouched by the Celtic influence. Some linguists state that the word down comes

from Celtic *dún "down"; other examples of Celtic influence in place names are

tne following:

In the 1st century AD first Roman colonists begin to penetrate in Britain;

Roman legions built roads, camps, founded towns and castles. But still they did not

manage to assimilate the Celts, maybe because they lived apart from each other

and did not mix. Tens of Latin words in Britain together with many towns, places

and hills named by Romans make up the Roman heritage in the Old English. Such

cities as Dorchester, Winchester, Lancaster, words like camp, castra, many terms

of the Christian religion and several words denoting armaments were borrowed at

that time by Britons, and automatically were transferred into the Old English, or

Anglo-Saxon language already when there was no Romans in the country.

In 449 the legendary leaders of two Germanic tribes, Hengist and Horsa,

achieved British shores on their ships. The Anglo-Saxon conquest, however, lasted

for several centuries, and all this period Celtic aborigines moved farther and farther

to the west of the island until they manage to fortify in mountainous Wales, in

Corwall, and preserved their kingdoms in Scotland. Germanic tribes killed Celtic

population, destroyed Celtic and former Roman towns and roads. In the 5th

century such cities as Durovern in Kent, Virocon, Trimontii, Camulodunum, were

abandoned by the population.

Angles settled around the present-day Noridge, and in Northern England;

Saxons, the most numerous of the tribes, occupied all Central England, the south of

the island and settled in London (Londinii at that time). Jutes and Frises, who

probably came to Britain a bit later, settled on the island of White and in what is

now Kent - the word Kent derives from the name of the Celtic tribe Cantii. Soon

all these tribes founded their separate kingdoms, which was united after centuries

of struggle only in 878 by Alfred, king of Wessex. Before that each of the tribes

spoke its language, they were similar to each other but had differences which later

became the dialectal peculiarities of Old English.

Now a little bit about the foreign influence in Old English. From the 6th

century Christianity start activities in Britain, the Bible is translated into Old

English, and quite a lot of terms are borrowed from Latin at that time: many

bishops, missionaries and Pope's officials come from Rome. The next group of

foreign loanwords were taken from Scandinavian dialects, after the Vikings

occupied much of the country in the 9th - 11th centuries. Scandinavian languages

were close relatives with Old English, so the mutual influence was strong enough

to develop also the Old English morphology, strengthening its analytic processes.

Many words in the language were either changed to sound more Scandinavian, or

borrowed.

The Old English language, which has quite a lot of literature monuments,

came to the end after the Norman conquest in 1066. The new period was called

Middle English.

The Old English Substantive.

The substantive in Indo-European has always three main categories which

change its forms: the number, the case, the gender. It ias known that the general

trend of the Indo-European family is to decrease the number of numbers, cases and

genders from the Proto-Indo-European stage to modern languages. Some groups

are more conservative and therefore keep many forms, preserving archaic language

traits; some are more progressive and lose forms or transform them very quickly.

The Old English language, as well as practically all Germanic tongues, is not

conservative at all: it generated quite a lot of analytic forms instead of older

usce "water", or Avon - from awin "river"), the morphology and phonetics are