History Of The English Language: Exam Through Old English

1. What do we know about the people(s) who spoke *Indo-European? (Back up your answer through examples. Use at least 5 sentences for your answer.)

Indo-Europeans had a complex system of family relationships. They were small farmers and they were able to count gold and silver. The cow and horses were the best sources for their wealth, and they used wheeled vehicles and plows to travel. Also, they used to drink honey-made alcohol called mead. They believed in polytheism which means worshiping more than one god.

2. In two well-written paragraphs explain the ways in which Latin influenced the “Anglo-Saxon” language.

England also became a Christian area when Romans adopted Christianity. The English took the Latin alphabet and joined the Latin Church and became Europe’s only living intellectual community. English collects Latin patterns and words. The official language that affected the Anglo – Saxon language became Latin at that time. English started to keep the vernacular at that time, and Latin is still the official language. A lot of new Latin loan words appear in English. Latin has greatly affected the old English language, and King Alfred has translated Latin texts into English to raise English.

Because the language of the church at that time was Latin, which brought many English loanwords related to religion such as ‘ha ̄lig,’ which means holy. Christianity brought administrative staff to English also, monastic life, and various secular concepts and products in England that were previously unfamiliar. Consequently, many secular Latin terms and religious terms were borrowed from OE. Old English had a particularly large number of plant life borrowings – trees, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. For instance, ceder ‘cedar’, cerfelle ‘chervil’, peru ‘pear’, be¯te ‘beet’, rædic ‘radish’, pollegie ‘pennyroyal’, lilie ‘lily’, latuce ‘lettuce’, senep ‘mustard’, and peonie ‘peony”. Other Latin loans are too miscellaneous to be classified: lamprede ‘lamprey eel’, fann ‘fan’, cancer ‘cancer’, gı¯gant ‘giant’, mu¯l ‘mule’, fals ‘false’, pyngan ‘to prick’, and ostre ‘oyster’. It also affected the old English vocabulary, which reflected the translation of calques or loanwords, in which the semantic elements of a foreign language are translated into the borrowing language by the elements. The Latin word unicorn, for example, was translated as ̄nhorn by the loan. Latin has greatly affected and been part of the Anglo – Saxon language. In Old English, the Latin syntax had a small permanent influence. The occasional use of dative absolute in Old English is borrowed from the ablative absolute in Latin.

3. In at least three well-written, supported paragraphs explain how, why, and in what ways King Alfred was important to England and to the English Language?

King Alfred was a warrior for protecting Wessex and beating the Danes at Ashdown in 871 and Edington in 878. When he knew he could not get the Vikings out of England, he forced the Danes to retreat to Danelaw. In return for a cessation of the incursion into the other parts of England, he gave the Danes part of the northeast of England. He did not want people to die, he let his friend be the enemy. He built the first English navy and fortified towns. He was a warrior and thinker because he knew how to manage English, he created peace among people and spread Christianity.

King Alfred translated English texts into Latin, which promoted and spread English at that time. England had a decline in learning caused by the Vikings ‘ attachment to monasteries, he promoted learning. He ordered the production of the Anglo – Saxon Chronicle, which is a record of important events that were kept continuously in some areas of England until well after the Norman conquest. When he translated the Latin texts, he raised English as a language. He used English to bring people together by promoting English literacy and spreading the language. King Alfred also, built many schools to develop education.

King Alfred was responsible for the start of the Anglo – Saxon Chronicle, which was very important for the history of the Anglo – Saxon and Old English. He kept many important proses, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English, Soliloquies of Saint Augustine of Hippo, Orosius’s Universal History and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. He also had attributed to him some part of the Psalms. He had a great impact on keeping Old English history and in religious writing. He was a writer and he wrote books and poems like Boethius’s Lays. By translating and writing important texts, he changed Old English history.

4. In at least three well-written, supported paragraphs, describe, providing examples of each, the six essential concepts of Old English.

Latin became the official language when England was Romanized, and the Romans adopted Christianity. That has created old English. Then Roman could not defend England and left. The island was invaded in approximately 449 by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians. Pope Gregory re – Christianized England in 597 when he sent missionaries. Although Germanic impacted Old English as the names for four days of the week are still Germanic gods, Twin, Wodan, Thor, and Frig. Christianization affected English due to the Latin church, English adopted the Latin alphabet, and English took Latin loanwords. The Anglo – Saxon church and culture declined due to the invasion of the Vikings. King Alfred defeated them and forced them to go back to Danelaw. Old English grew up and became more important at the time of King Alfred.

Old English phonology was similar to PDE, but with some changes. There was a consonant in PDE and at least allophones were appearing in OE is ‘ž.’ The main difference between OE’s and PDE’s consonant phonemes was the absence of phonemic fricatives. Voiced fricatives are voiceless fricatives (v, ð, z). Double fricatives were also voiceless, as ‘missan’ is ‘missing.’ There was no phonemic ‘n’ in old English. The Old English consonant system was different from PDE because it had long consonants. OE ‘bed’ is ‘prayer,’ for example, and ‘bedd’ is PDE bed.

Old English morphology, which had been heavily inflected. PDE had eight inflectional endings, but there were three distinct endings in old English. There were three sexes, two numbers, and five cases. The unique nominative masculine shape for the boat, for example, is ‘ba t.’ The OE system was weak because it had many inflections that make it useless to distinguish the function in the phrase. OE’s syntax was similar to PDE’s word order, but it was freer and more varied than PDE. OE was not freer than Latin, though. For example, Alfred King was the order of titles used to address proper names and adjectives that modify the noun such as ‘lfre ̄d cyning.’ There’s no regular progressive ‘I’m traveling’ in OE, and the perfect ‘I’ve traveled’.

Also, one of the concepts of Old English was the thousands of lexical terms in OE, which survived. OE had a rich vocabulary and extensive resources for forming new words. One of the reasons was the OE poetry, they used many synonyms. The basis of OE poetry is an alliterative line of four – stress, unrhymed. It was submerged in an epic verse and a shorter verse. Beowulf is the only secular epic on biblical topics that survived others like Judith. Prose collections include biblical translation, chronicles, homilies and life stories of saints, which show that the OE survives many prose religious writings. The word ‘messenger,’ for example, has many synonyms such as spellboda, wilboda, yfelberende, and others, but ‘wilboda’ means the messenger who brought good news, and ‘yfelberende’ means the messenger who brought bad news. OE had a lot of Germanic, Latin and other loanwords like the Germanic word in OE ‘bæc’ is back. However, OE relied primarily on new words to be compounded and applied. Finally, OE’s sixth concept is often religious because it was primarily confined to the clergy. The clergy restricted the content of the books.

Summary: When the Romans could not defend their far-flung outpost in England, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians invaded the island in about 449. Pope Gregory sent missionaries, England was re – Christianized in 597. It endured several centuries of invasions by the Norse, with the Vikings settling in Danelaw in 878 permanently. The consonant system was phonologically similar to PDE but included phonemically long consonants and lacked phonemic / I / and phonemically expressed fricatives. For vowels, too, length was phonemic. Morphologically, OE was still a highly inflected language, including four cases, three genders and two noun and adjective numbers. OE word order syntactically resembled PDE, but it was freer and more varied. Lexically, OE had a rich vocabulary and extensive resources to create new words; loanwords were an insignificant part of the lexicon. Old literature in English is often religious. Old English poetry is characterized by an alliterated line of four stresses. The collection of prose includes biblical translations, chronicles, homilies and life stories of saints.

5. As you reflect on the language changes in English from IE through the end of OE, what interests or surprises you the most? Provide at least one well-written paragraph.

What I really found interesting is how old English came from the Indo – European language and how that affected the language. I like to read about the cultures and know the strong relationship between heritage and language. It might be confusing for me to distinguish between old English and the changes that came from Indo-European languages. OE has created a huge number of new words which I think would be very interesting to know. Also, I liked how the accents have been fixed through time which has been being changing on the stress and syllabus. I found that some events might affect the language like the wars in England and when it Christianized where Latin was spoken at that time. English borrowed many words from Latin which is a clear example of the changes in the language over the long periods and how the language has a root to refer to. Now, I can believe that many factors would affect any language in the world such as immigration, wars and religion.