Source Material for The Facts About English, continued Hogg, Richard M., The Cambridge History of the English Language, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). The author writes: "The very earliest scraps of English which we have today are runic inscriptions. Of these, the earliest is an astragalus (ankle-bone) from Caistor-by-Norwich...The shape of the letters suggests a Scandinavian rather than North Sea Germanic origin..." Concerning one thousand year old Northumbrian texts, the author writes: "The interest of these texts lies in the fact that they were produced in an area which had been under Danish domination for over a century, and thus they are not merely unusually lengthy specimens of a non-West Saxon dialect, they also serve as indicators of what had happened to English in an area of Danish-English bilingualism. Already in Aldred's texts we see forms of the type he lufes 'he loves', alongside he lufath 'he loveth', a change which was not firmly established in southern dialects of English until about the time of Shakespeare." Concerning runes: "The Anglo-Saxon knowledge of runes probably stemmed from Scandinavia, but the tradition seems to have traveled south-west through Frisia and thence with the Anglo-Saxon settlements into England....Runes can be found from part of the Old English period, the earliest inscription, at Caister-by-Norwich, being remarkably, of the fourth or early fifth century, and runes continued to be written up until the eleventh century.......The earliest runes are to be found in East Anglia, then comes a group in Kent, but after about 650 almost all the runic inscriptions we have are from north of a line from Angelsey to the Wash. Northumbria, indeed, seems to have been the principle centre of rune-making in the country." Nastovsky, Dieter, "Semantics and Vocabulary" in The Cambridge History of the English Language, ed. by Richard M. Hogg. Nastovsky writes: "When we talk about the Danelaw and its impact on the history of English, we are necessarily talking about a 'language-in-contact' situation. This has always been recognized, since terms such as 'amalgamation of Scandinavian and English dialects' (Bjorkman 1900-2:5), 'Sprachmischung' (Hofman 1955:175, although with a caveat), 'fusion' (Geipel 1971:14) or 'intimate mingling' (Baugh & Cable 1978:101) are usually employed to describe the relationship of OE and Scandinavian......Intermarriage, which certainly was common enough, probably produced a lot of bilingualism in the second and any following generation."...(after the initial Viking colonization)..."But it must not be forgotten that, if the hypothesis of peaceful Scandinavian immigration is correct, there was a constant flow of monolingual Scandinavian speakers until the middle of the eleventh century coming to England. The type of loans found in the OE period corroborates this assumption: they are mainly technical terms that would be adopted from a speech community that is socially more prestigious. This situation was of course consolidated when Canute became King of England." The author also states that compared to Old Norse, Old Saxon "contributed to the OE vocabulary, although on a much more limited scale." He continues: "There is no doubt that the Danelaw area, and notably Northumbria...was much more progressive linguistically than the rest of the country, and that the changes that had started there were gradually radiating into the rest of the country......A certain amount of mutual intelligibility existed, given that the Scandinavian and the OE dialects are part of the Germanic language family and that 'at the time of the early Scandinavian settlements in England the period of separation had only been slightly longer than between British and American English today, and the communities had been in touch with one another for much of the time' (Strang 1970:282)......Strang obviously believes in a fairly high degree" (of mutual intelligibility) "although perhaps not as high as is implied in the Saga of Gunnlaugr Serpent's Tongue, where we read 'The language in Norway and England was one and the same when William the Bastard won England'..." Crossley-Holland, Kevin, The Anglo-Saxon World, (The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982). The author comments on how mutually comprehensible that Old English and Old Norse were by relating the story of King Alfred's conversations with two Norwegian travelers. These traveler's tales "seem to have been written down and reproduced just as Alfred himself heard them." On Beowulf: "That this poem should have a Scandinavian cast and background is a reminder of the shared historical and legendary inheritance that once bound the Germanic people's together." The poet "recreates for us a whole culture, the roots from which we ultimately derive." Clark, John W., Early English, An Introduction to Old and Middle English, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1957). The author writes: "It is easy to forget that England has not always been 'England'. From the dawn of history till c. A.D. 450 it was Britain. There was indeed an 'England' for centuries before 450, but it was on the Continent, not Britain, and it was probably not always the same place, but was rather whatever district was inhabited for the time being by the Germanic tribes that sooner or later came to call themselves by various early forms of the name English or Angle......(and very certainly the Saxons did not come from what is now called Saxony). All we can say with much assurance is this: Britain was invaded and largely settled, over about a century from c. 450, by successive parties and troops of Germanic tribesmen living at the time along or near the coast of the North Sea from what is now (nearly or quite northern) Denmark, nearly or quite to what is now northern Belgium; these tribes spoke dialects mutually intelligible and probably regarded (rightly) by their speakers as mere regional varieties of a single language; groups whose dominant members, at least, called themselves English or Angles occupied the central and largest part of (southern) Britain;" Previous Page......Next Page |