The English Language During the Anglo-Saxon Period
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Transcript of The English Language During the Anglo-Saxon Period
The English Language during The Anglo-Saxon Period
The Antecestor of English
Proto-Indo-European
Language:
Common ancestor of the
Indo-European languages
It was discovered by Sir
William Jones.
It is estimated that PIE may
have been spoken as a single
language around 3700 BC.
Origin:
Near the Caspian Sea.
It began spreading through
Turkey, Iran, India and most of
Europe.
Old English:
Britons Anglo-Saxons
There is little early Celtic influence on English language.
Otherwise, Latin was very influential.
The language spoken by the Germanic peoples who migrated to
Britain was the same as that spoken by the people they left behind
on the continent.
But between the time of the migration and the appearance of the
earliest written records in the first years of the eighth century, the
language of the Anglo-Saxons came to differ from that of the people
they had left behind.
Old English: Characteristics The vocabulary of Old English
consisted mainly of Anglo-Saxon words.
Pronunciation:stān (Old English) stone (Modern
English)fōt (Old English ) foot (Modern
English)cēne (Old English ) keen (Modern
English)hū (Old English ) how (Modern
English) Old English was fully inflected with
five grammatical cases: the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and instrumental
Old English: Characteristics It assigned gender to all nouns:
sēo sunne : the Sun was femininese mōna : the Moon was masculin
It used endings:Example, bat ("boat") (a masculine, strong a-stem noun):
•SingularNominative: batAccusative: batGenitive: batesDative: bate•Plural
Nominative: batasAccusative: batasGenitive: bataDative: batum
Old English was spelled essentially as it was pronounced. It had four forms in present tense:
Ic ride I rideū ridest you rideHē ride he ridesWē ridon we ride
The Anchor Riddle: 8th century Often I must war against the
wave and fight against the wind. I strive against them together when, shrouded by the sea, I go to seek the earth.
My homeland is strange to me. If I become still, I am mighty in the conflict.
If I do not succeed in that, because they are stronger than me, at once with rending they will put me to flight.
They want to carry off what I must keep safe.
I defeat them in that, if my tail endures and the stones are able to hold fast against me in my strength. Ask what is my name.
END