Mrs. Varnell

Where it all beganIt is believed that the earliest

settlements began in the Tigris-Euphrates region (Iran & Iraq) and what is now known as China and Africa.

As these people immigrated into Europe, they took their language with them.

(emigrate)The earliest language of Europe and

Southeast Asia has been called Indo-European (only theory). We will probably never be certain what the first language actually was.

Where it all beganThe following chart shows the languages which developed from the Indo-European language.

Similarities of LanguagesAs people

emigrated (with their language), their language developed differently from their neighbors; however, many share language characteristics.

Similarities of LanguagesMuch of the vocabulary of the Germanic languages is similar; certain words in German, English and Dutch, are simply variations of the old Germanic words.

Similarities of LanguagesThe “Romance” languages, those that

developed from Latin (of Roman, hence the word “romance”).

Example: Spanish – Donde esta la estacion?Italian – Dov’e las starzione?English – Where is the station?

The Beginnings of Language in Britain

The Romano-Celtic Period:Britain was originally inhabited by the Celts

Lived peacefullyLeft little influence on the English language

The Romano – Celtic PeriodIn 54 B.C., Julius

Caesar invaded Britain and brought it under jurisdiction of Rome.

The Romans called it Britannia and influenced the language with their Latin.

The Romano – Celtic PeriodThe Romans and Celts learned to live peacefully with each other.

However, they lived in constant threat of invasion from the Picts and Scots who inhabited what is now Scotland.

The Anglo – Saxon InvasionAfter the Romans left Britain, the Celts sought help from the Teutonic tribes on the European continent, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

Anglo – Saxon InvasionThe Celts were forced into Wales, Cornwall and northern France; the Celtic language survives today in these areas.

Anglo – Saxon InvasionIn the fifth century AD, the Angles called their new land Angle-land or Engle-land, hence England.

Anglo – Saxon InvasionThe Saxons named areas in their country West Saxony or Wessex. East Saxony or Essex and South Saxony or Sussex.

Anglo-Saxon InvasionIn the ninth century, King Alfred

the Great unified the separate kingdoms and established the language of Wessex as the official language of England.

Alfred introduced an educational system.

Anglo-Saxon InvasionThe following map shows the various Anglo-

Saxon and Romano –Celtic places established in Britain.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodBecause Britain is an island

open to invasion, it saw three other major invasions after the Angles Saxons and Jutes with their essentially Germanic language, settled the country.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodOne of these invasions came from the men from the North – the Northmen, later called Norsemen or Vikings from Scandinavia.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodThey began to invade England in the late eighth century and they persisted into the eleventh century.

They even had a Viking king on the throne of England (Canute).

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodAs the Scandinavians settled England,

their language began to create changes in the English language. They introduced the th sound.

They contributed many new words such as sister, they and sk and sc words such as sky, ski, and scrape.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodCanute and his descendants lasted only until 1045, when the Anglo-Saxon rulers were restored to power.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodSome of the religious words brought with them were angel, mass and candle. Other words included cook, cap and radish.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodBoth the Danes (Scandinavians) and the Christian missionaries had a moderate influence on the development of the English language.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodThe Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 (Battle of

Hastings) was a cataclysmic event that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and linguistic influences to the British Isles. The Norman French ruling minority dominated the church, government, legal, and educational systems for three centuries. The Norman establishment used French and Latin, leaving English as the language of the illiterate and powerless majority. During this period English adopted thousands of words from Norman French and from Latin, and its grammar changed rather radically. By the end of that time, however, the aristocracy had adopted English as their language and the use and importance of French gradually faded.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodA main symbol of success was the warrior who fought valiantly in battle.

However, these men also wrote poetry, some of which survives today.

Other Influences during the Anglo – Saxon PeriodThe most famous Anglo-Saxon poem is Beowulf, a great warrior, a Dane, who fights for the survival of the land even killing a terrible dragon to ensure safety of his people.

Middle EnglishThe period from the

Conquest to the reemergence of English as a full-fledged literary language is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late 1300s.

Caxton’s Printing PressWilliam Caxton set up the first printing press in

Britain at the end of the 15th century. The arrival of printing marks the point at which the language began to take the first steps toward standardization and its eventual role as a national language. The period from 1500 to about 1650 is called Early Modern English, a period during which notable sound changes, syntactic changes and lexical enrichment took place. The Great English Vowel Shift, which systematically shifted the phonetic values of all the long vowels in English, occurred during this period. Word order became more fixed in a subject-verb-object pattern, and English developed a complex auxiliary verb system. A rush of new vocabulary from the classical languages, the modern European languages, and more distant trading partners such as the countries of Asian minor and the Middle East entered the language as the renaissance influences of culture and trade and the emerging scientific community of Europe took root in England.

Shakespeare: Why he is required reading

Shakespeare wrote prolifically during the late 1500s and early 1600s and, like Chaucer, took the language into new and creative literary territory. His influence on English drama and poetry continued to grow after his death in 1616 and he has never been surpassed as the best known and most read poet/playwright of modern English. He actually “invented” many words.

Religious Influence and ImplicationsThe King James Bible was published in

1611, the culmination of at least a century of efforts to bring a Bible written in the native language of the people into the Church establishment and into people's homes. Among the common people, whose contact with literature often did not go far past the Bible, the language of the scriptures as presented in this version commissioned by King James I was deeply influential, due in part to its religious significance, but also to its literary quality.

OED: Oxford English DictionaryThe OED's official policy was to attempt to record a word's

most-known usages and variants in all varieties of English past and present, worldwide. Per the 1933 "Preface":

The aim of this Dictionary is to present in alphabetical series the words that have formed the English vocabulary from the time of the earliest records [ca. AD740] down to the present day, with all the relevant facts concerning their form, sense-history, pronunciation, and etymology. It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang.

It continues:Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by

1150 [the end of the Old English era]  ... Dialectal words and forms which occur since 1500 are not admitted, except when they continue the history of the word or sense once in general use, illustrate the history of a word, or have themselves a certain literary currency.

Ever Changing… Internet users have

developed many slang terms over the years. Most of these are not actually acronyms as they cannot be pronounced, but that is what they are called nonetheless. Many of these terms originated for saving keystrokes and are often written in lower case:

ASAP — "as soon as possible"

BBL — "be back later"OMG — Exclamation, "Oh

my God!!" thx — shorthand spelling

of "thanks" troll — a person who deliberately stirs up trouble (see article).

lurker — one who reads an email list or a message board but does not participate in the discussion.

newbie — a new user.

Ex. Of Old English to Middle ENGLISHFæder ure

ðu ðe eart on heofenumsi ðin nama gehalgodto-becume ðin ricegeweorþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofenum.Urne ge dæghwamlican hlaf syle us to-deagand forgyf us ure gyltasswa swa we forgifaþ urum gyltendumane ne gelæde ðu us on costnungeac alys us of yfle.

(The Lord's Prayer in Old English)

The Lourdes Preyere

Oure fadir that art in heuenes,halewid be thi name;thi kyngdoom come to;be thi wille don, in erthe as in heuene.Yyue to vs this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce,and foryyue to vs oure dettis, as we foryyuen to oure dettouris;and lede vs not in to temptacioun, but delyuere vs fro yuel.Amen.

Assignment: •On your own, or with a partner, get a computer and log on to www.blabberize.com•Choose a period of the history that we just discussed and create a blurb explaining what it is and why it was so important.•I will be grading using the following rubric:•Accuracy : 75%•Creativity/Originality: 25%