INTRODUCTORY.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES

1. The aim of the study of the subject

Old English (5th – 11th century), Middle English (11th – 15th century) and New
English (15th century – till now).
2. Inner and outer history of the language
The outer history of the language is the events in the life (history) of the people
speaking this language affecting the language, i.e. the history of the people reflected
in their language. The inner history of the language is the description of the changes
in the language itself, its grammar, phonetics, vocabulary or spelling.

East Germanic group of dialects – mainly spoken in central Europe – Gothic,

Vandalic, Burgundian; North Germanic group of dialects – Old Norwegian, Old
Danish, Old Swedish, Old Icelandic; and the West Germanic group of dialects – the
dialects of Angels, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and others, originally spoken in Western
Europe.

The principal East Germanic language is Gothic

Gothic survived longest in the Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted down in the
sixteenth century.

North Germanic is found in Scandinavia and Denmark.

Scandinavian languages fall into two groups: an eastern group including Swedish and
Danish and a western group including Norwegian and Icelandic.

West Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It is

subdivided into two branches, High and Low German

by the operation of a Second (or High German) Sound Shift analogues to that
described below as Grimm’s Law. This change, by which West Germanic p, t, k, d,
etc. were changed into other sounds, occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or
mountainous part of Germanic area, but did not take place in the lowlands to the north

Accordingly in early times we distinguish as Low German tongues Old Saxon, Old
Low Franconian, Old Frisian, and Old English. The last two are closely related and
constitute a special or Anglo-Frisian subgroup
. High German comprises a number of dialects and is divided chronically into Old
High German (before 1100), Middle High German (1100 – 1500), and Modern High
German (since 1500).

3. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages

The barbarian tribes – Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks,

Frisians, Teutons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Scandinavians – lived on
the fringes of the Roman Empire. All these spoke Germanic languages,
which had distinctive characteristics of structure and pronunciation
which are reflected in its descendents.

OE Phonetics

Ablaut- positionally independent alteration of vowels inhabited by

the Germanic languages from the Common Indo-European period.
This ancient phenomenon consisted in alteration of vowels in the root,
suffix or ending depending on the grammatical form or meaning of the
word.

There are two types of Ablaut: quantitative and qualitative.

The qualitative Ablaut is the alteration of different vowels, mainly
the vowels [e]/ [a] or [e]/ [o]
Old Icelandic bera (to give birth) – barn (baby)
Old High German stelan (to steal) – stal (stole)
Cf.: Russian бреду (I stroll, I wade) – брод (ford, wade)
Latin tego (to cover, to close) – toga (clothes)
Qualitative Ablaut means the change in length of qualitatively
one and the same vowel: normal lengthened and reduced. A classic
example of the Indo-European Ablaut is the declension of the Greek
word “pater” (father):
[e:] [e] [-]
patēr patěr patros
(nominative case, (vocative case, (genitive case,
Lengthed stage) normal stage) reduced stage)

Ablaut in Germanic languages is a further development of Indo-

European alterations. Here we often find cases with both the
quantitative and qualitative ablaut. It should be also mentioned that
in the zero stage before sonorants an extra-short vowel [u] was added:
Quantitative ablaut
 Goth qiman (to come) – qums (the arrival)
Qualitative ablaut
OHG stelan (to steal) – stal (stole)
Quantitative + qualitative ablaut
OE fīndan (to find) – fand (found, past tense) – fundan (past
participle)

Another phenomenon common for all Germanic languages was the

tendency of phonetic assimilation of the root vowel to the vowel of the
ending, the so-called Umlaut, or mutation. There were several types of
mutation, but the most important one was palatal mutation, or i-
Umlaut, when under the influence of the sounds [i] or [j] in the suffix
or ending the root vowels became more front and more closed. This
process must have taken place in the 5 th – 6th centuries and can be
illustrated by comparing words from the language of the Gothic Bible
(4th century) showing no palatal mutation with corresponding words in
other Germanic languages of a later period:

Goth harjis OE here (army)

Goth dōmjan OE dēman (deem)
Goth kuni OE cynn (kin)

Grimm*s and Verner*s laws.

Speaking about Germanic consonants, we should first of all speak

of the correspondence between Indo-European and Germanic
languages which was presented as a system of interconnected facts by
the German linguists Jacob Grimm in 1822. This phenomenon is
called the first Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s law.
However, there are some instances where Grimm’s law seems not
to apply. These cases were explained by a Dutch linguist Karl Verner,
and the seeming exceptions from Grimm’s law have come to be known
as Verner’s law.

Indo-European Germanic
 1 Act voiceless stops p t k voiceless fricatives f þ h

Lat. pater O.E. fæder (father)

Lat. tres Goth. þreis (three)
Greek kardia OHG herza (heart)

2 Act voiced stops b d g voiceless stops p t k

Rus. болото O.E. pōl (pool)

Lat. duo Goth. twai (two)
Greek. egon O.Icl. ek (I)

3 Act voiced aspirated stops voiced non-aspirated stops

bh dh gh bdg

Snsk. bhratar O.E. brōþor (brother)

Lat. frater
Snsk. madhu O.E. medu (mead)
Snsk. songha O.Icl. syngva (sing)

Verner’s law explains the changes in the Germanic voiceless

fricatives f þ h resulting from the first consonant shift and the
voiceless fricatives depending upon the position of the stress in the
original Indo-European word, namely:

Indo-European Germanic
ptks b ð/d g z/r

Gk. hepta Goth. sibun (seven)

Gk. pater OSc. Faðir O.E. fæder
Gk. dekas Goth. Tigus (ten, a dozen)
Snsk. ayas Goth. aiz, OHG ēr (bronze)

According to Verner’s Law, the above change occurred if the

consonant in question was found after an unstressed vowel. It is
especially evident in the forms of Germanic strong verbs, except the
Gothic ones, which allows concluding that at some time the stress in
the first two verbal stems fell on the root, and in the last two – on the
suffix:

O.E. tēon tēah tuзon toзen (to tug)

 OSx. tiohan tōh tugun gitogan
Goth. tiuhan tauh tauhum tauhans

O.E. cēosan cēas curon coren (to choose)

OIcl. kiósa kaus kørom kørenn
Coth. kiusan kaus kusum kusan

3.2. Grammar
The common Indo-European notional word consisted of the three
elements: the root, expressing the lexical meaning, the inflexion or
ending, showing the grammatical form, and the so-called stem-
forming suffix, a formal indicator of the stem type.

The Germanic nouns had a well-developed case system with four

cases (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative); some languages
had elements of the instrumental and vocative cases and two number
forms (singular and plural). They also had the category of gender
(feminine, masculine and neuter) the means of form-building were the
endings added to the root/stem of the noun.

The Germanic adjectives had two types of declension,

conventionally called strong and weak. Most adjectives could be
declined both in accordance with the strong and weak type. Agreeing
with the noun in gender, case and noun, the adjective by its type of
declension expressed the idea of definiteness (weak declension) or
indefiniteness (strong declension), the meaning which was later to
become expressed by a grammatical class of words unknown in the
Common Germanic – the article.
The adjective also had degrees of comparison, the forms of which
were in most instances formed with the help of suffixes –iz/ōz and –
ist/-ōst, but there were also instances of suppletivism, i.e. use of
different roots for different forms – a means common for many Indo-
European languages:

Goth leitils – minniza – minnists (little – less – least)

Rus. Хороший – лучше – лучший
 The Germanic verbs are divided into two principal groups: strong
and weak verbs, depending on the way they formed their past tense
forms.
The past tense (or preterit) of strong verbs was formed with the
help of Ablaut, quantitative and qualitative. Depending upon the
phonetic root structure, the exact manifestation of Ablaut could be
somewhat different, and accordingly strong verbs were further
subdivided into classes.
Weak verbs expressed pretirite with the help of the dental suffix –
d/t. they also had stem-forming suffixes, depending on which they fell
into separate classes.
There were also a small group of highly frequent suppletive verbs
forming their forms from different roots, the same as in other Indo-
European languages:
Goth am (I/am) Rus. есть
was (I / was) был

The Germanic verb had a well-developed system of categories,

including the category of person (first, second, third), number
(singular and plural), tense (past, present, the latter also used for
expressing future actions). Mood (indicative, imperative and optative)
and voice (only in gothic – active and mediopassive). The categorical
forms employed synthetic means of form-building.

3.3. Alphabet

some of the Germanic nations had their own mode of writing, with a
distinctive alphabet called runic, each letter of which was called a
rune.

We know that runes were used to record early stages of Gothic,

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, Frisian, Frankish and various
tribal tongues of central Germania and they may also have supplied
other Germanic languages without leaving any evidence surviving till
today.

On archeological grounds the earliest runes are dated to the second

century AD.
The early runes were not written, but incised – runic script was
designed for inscribing, at first on wood, which explains many of its
characteristics.

In early times texts could be written not only from left to right, but
from right to left equally well. Some texts could be even being written
with alternate lines in opposite directions. Even in left-to-right texts
an individual letter could be reversed at whim, and occasionally a
letter might be inverted. There was no distinction between capital and
lower-case letters.

Early finds of rune-inscribed objects in Eastern Europe (Pietroassa in

Rumania, Dahrmsdorf in central Germany and Kowel in the Ukraine)
suggested that runes may have been invented by Goths on the
Danube or beside the Vistula.

Runes spread over the Germanic world and by 500 AD they are
found not only in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England but also in
Poland, Russia and Hungary, recording different Germanic languages
and being cut, stamped, inlaid or impressed on metal, bone, wood and
stone.

OLD ENGLISH. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

1. Outer history
1.1. Pre-Germanic history of Britain
The Celts

Before Germanic invasion, Celtic tribes inhabited British Isles. The

first Celtic comers were the Gaels, but the Brythons arrived some two
centuries later and pushed the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and
Cornwall taking possession of the south and east.

The Celtic tribes started to populate Britain in about 500 B.C.

The Main wave of Celtic immigration began in about 300 B.C., from
France and Brittany;
A third wave of Celtic people came into southeast of Britain after 100
B.C. and they were Belgае who moved to Britain before the advancing
Romans of Gaul.

Cornish became extinct already in the 18 th century, Manx – after the

Second World War. Scottish Gaelic is spoken only in the Highlands by
about 75 thousand people, Irish – by half a million.

We have very little indirect evidence about the beginning of the

Old English period – 5th – 7th centuries. The first written records were
dated as far back as the beginning of the 8 th century that is why the
5th – 7th centuries are generally referred to as “pre-written period”.

The Latin Language in Britain

Among the other evidences of Romanization must be included the
rules of the Latin language. A great number of inscriptions have been
found, all of them in Latin.

. Its use by native Britons was probably confined to members of the

upper classes and the inhabitants of the cities and towns.

Britain’s Roman villas

The first villa was built here around A.D. 80 – 90. it was a house
of flint and mortar with, beneath ground level, a deep room, used as
grain store. The type of owner was a native farmer. Around A.D. 180,
however, the villa became the home of a Roman of Mediterranean
origin, a man of wealth who greatly extended the house, adding
kitchens and baths and turning the deep room into a place of worship,
decorated with a fresco painting of water goddesses, part of which
survived.

The eventual fate of most of the Roman villas of Britain remains

uncertain. But it is known that Lullingstone was destroyed by fire
early in the fifth century. Afterwards the hill-wash crept in form the
downs and covered the ruins, keeping them hidden for hundreds of
years until the middle of the 18th century, when excavations for a deer
fence revealed part of a mosaic floor. No further investigation took
place at the time, and it was not until 1949 that systematic excavation
of the site began.
 In a similarly accidental way clues to the presence of the villas at
Rudston, Yorkshire, at Bignor, Sussex, and at Chedworth in
Gloucestershire were discovered.

The Roman Twilight

. At first these Germanic tribes were allowed and even encouraged
to enter the Empire, where they were absorbed and partially
Romanized. Gradually the hold of the central government on outlying
provinces was relinquished and one by one they were overrun by
barbarian tribes who set up independent kingdoms of varying
character – some largely Roman in culture and language, others
almost wholly barbarian.

In 407 two events ended the long period of Roman occupation.

One was the departure of Constantine, with the bulk of the troops
stationed in Britain, in an attempt to secure the Imperial purple. The
other was the crossing of the Rhine into Gaul of a host of Germanic
tribesmen who cut Britain off from the Roman world and prevented
the return or replacement of the departed legions.

The Names “England” and “English”

The Celts called their Germanic conquerors “Saxons”

indiscriminately, probably because they had had their contact with
the Teutons through the Saxon raids on the coast. Early Latin writers,
following Celtic usage, generally call the Teutons in England “Saxones”
and the land “Saxonia”. But soon the terms “Angli” and “Anglia” occur
beside “Saxones” and refer not only to the Angles individually but to
the Teutons generally. Æthelbert , king of Kent, is styled “rex
Anglorum” by Pope Gregory in 601, and a century later Bede called
his history the “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum” . in time
“Anglia” became the usual terms in Latin texts. From the beginning,
however writers in the vernacular never call their language anything
but Englisc (English). The word is derived from the name of the Angles
( O.E.Ængles) but is used without distinction for the language of all
the invading tribes. In the like manner the land and its people are
early called “Anglekynn” (Angle kin or race of the Angles), and this is
the common name until after Danish period. From about the year
1000 “Englaland” (Land of Angles) begins to take its place. The name
“English” is thus older than the name “England”. It is not easy to say
why England should have taken its name from the Angles. Possibly a
desire to avoid confusion with the Saxons who remained on the
Continent and the early supremacy of the Anglian kingdoms were the
predominant factors in determining usage.

1.2. Anglo-Saxon Civilization

The religious beliefs of the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and
Jutes) had reflected the primitive man’s fear of the incomprehensible
forces of nature. Their highest heathen deity was Woden, the war god,
since wars were so important things in those Dark Times of European
history.

The elements were commanded by Thor the god of thunder, Freia

was the god of love and fertility, Tiu commanded the darkness. The
names they gave to the week showed which day was sacred to the
Sun, the Moon and the Night, and then it followed the day which
devoted to the war god, then came the thunder god and after this the
love goddess – appeared on the scene to restore the ravages of
darkness and war and thunder, followed by Saturn the god of
agriculture and merry-making, and then Sunday came again
celebrating the life-giving Sun.

The Anglo-Saxons had no big cities, only scattered villages and

townships that is the Lord’s house surrounded with the wattle-and-
mud huts of the villages. The huts of the Anglo-Saxons were very
primitive made of wood and clay, with no chimney over the open
hearth but a hole in the roof to let the smoke out and to let the light
in. The hearth was usually nothing more complicated than just a large
flat stone in the middle of the earthen floor.
The lord’s house had a large yard with a lot of household
buildings. It was protected by a stout fence supplemented by a sort of
circular fortifications, or mound.
The interior of the lord’s house was that, a spacious hall where
the lord had his meal with his family and did a lot of entertaining,
received guests and spent a social life. The light came through the
small holes in the walls covered with oiled linen. The walls were hung
with bright patterned curtains, it was only a part of the hall where the
lord received the honoured guests, but other walls were bare.
The hearth was nothing but a broad flat stone and the blackened
roofbeams were just as much the feature of the lord’s hall. The food
was very simple: salt meat, beef, pork or mutton, eaten off big dishes
with no forks, but knives were used to help the fingers. Drinking was
not mentioned at the early stage but it started at a much advanced
society. The drinking table manners were that the Anglo-Saxons used
drinking cups with rounded bottoms, to be held in the drinker’s hands
until quite empty. Their drinks were mead, fermented honey, malt
brewed ale. The Anglo-Saxons had learned to make wine from Romans
but it was sweetening with honey because on the mainland the wine
was too sour to have it.
The ladies did not stay too long at table but withdrew to their part
of the hall or to their room and the men stayed to drink more until
there nothing left to drink. The ladies welcomed all sorts of wandering
minstrels who would sing, play or tell stories.
After feast the guests stayed to sleep in the hall on the floor
keeping their weapons close by for emergencies. The family went to
their chambers.

1.3. Introduction of Christianity

The introduction of Christianity played a great role in the history of
English. The first attempt to introduce the Roman Christian religion to
Anglo-Saxon Britain was made in the 6th century.

The new faith was supported from Ireland; they brought the Celtic
variety of Christianity to Northumbria.

1.4. Principal written records of the Old English period

The principal written records that came to us through the
centuries date from as far back as the 8th century.
They were written with the help of the so-called “Runic Alphabet”.
This was an alphabet of some 26 letters, the shape of which is quite
peculiar:

[fuθark] or [fuθork]

those inscriptions were made on – wood, stone, bone – and the

technique of “writing” – the letters were not written but carved on
those hard materials.

In 7th century the Christian faith was introduced and with it there
came many Latin-speaking monks who brought with them their own
Latin alphabet.
 The Latin alphabet was used by the majority of the population
who could read and write. It ousted the runic alphabet. Latin alphabet
could not denote all the sounds in the English language, for example,
the sounds [w], [θ]. For that purpose some runes were preserved – w,
þ, or some Latin letters were slightly altered – ð to denote the sounds
[θ], [ð] together with the rune þ.

2. Dialectal classification of Old English written records

2.1. The dialects in Old English

- Those formed by the Angles: Northumbria (north of the river
Humber), Mercia (in the center of England) and east Anglia –
central eastern part of England;
- Those formed by the Saxons – mainly to the south of the
river Thames: Wessex, Sussex and Essex;
- The one formed by the Jutes – Kent.

Only the Frisians did not form a separate kingdom, but

intermarried with the population belonging to different tribes.

The Old English dialects are generally named after the names of
kingdoms on the territory of which the given dialect was spoken – the
Northumbrian dialect, the Mercian dialect, the Wessex dialect, the
Sussex dialect, the Kentish dialect.

The most famous of all English kings, Alfred of Wessex, who would
later come to be called Alfred the Great, came to the throne in 871 and
is reputed to have been one of the best kings ever to rule mankind.

He set aside a half of the revenue to be spent on educational

needs, established schools where the sons of the nobility could be
taught to read and write, brought in foreign scholars and craftsmen,
restored monasteries and convents, published a collection of laws and
enforced them.

He also mastered Latin and translated many books into Anglo-Saxon

and ordered the compilation of the first history book, the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, which was continued for more than two centuries after his
death.

However, after the death of Alfred the Great in 901 the supremacy
of Wessex gradually began to decline, and for a time, from 1017 till
1042, the throne was occupied by Danish kings.

2.2. Old English written records

Runic inscriptions
The first runes were found in Scandinavia.

The runes were used as letters; each symbol indicated a separate

sound.
The two best known runic inscriptions in England are “Franks
Casket”, and “Ruth well Cross”. Both records are in Northumbrian
dialect.

The first English manuscripts were written in Latin letters

The first official documents were written in Latin, but later they were
written in local dialects, because not many people knew Latin. Among
the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of poetry. Bede’s
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum written in Latin in the 8 th c.
contains an English fragment of five lines known as “Bede’s Death
Song” and a religious poem of nine lines, “Cadmon’s Hymn” Old
English poetry is mainly restricted to three subjects: heroic, religious
and lyrical.

The greatest poem of the Old English period was Beowulf, an epic of
the 7th c.

Beowulf consists of several songs arranged in three chapters (over

3 000 lines in all). It is based on old legends about the ancient
Teutons. It depicts the life and fight of the legendary hero Beowulf,
some extracts of the epic describes the real historical events.

In the 10th c. when the old heroic versus began to decline, some
new poems were composed which were the picture of the real
historical events. Among them were the chronicles: the battle of
Brunanburh, the Battle of Maldon. They depicted the wars with the
Scots, the Picts and the invaders from Scandinavia.
 3.1. Phonetics

The phonetics of the Old English period was characterized by a

system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the first root
syllable.
agāne (gone); зesēon (see); зaderian (gather)

The vowels had the following characteristic features:

a) the quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its
position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in
unstressed position there were no diphthongs or long monophthongs,
but only short vowels [a], [e], [i], [o], [u].
b) The length of the stressed vowels (monophthongs and
diphthongs) was phonemic, which means that there could be two
words differing only in the length of the vowel:

metan (to meet, to measure) – mētan (to meet)

pin (pin) – pīn (pain)
God (god) – gōd (good)
ful (full) – fūl (foul)
c) There was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels:

Short: a o e u i æ y ea eo
Long: ā ō ē ū ī ǽ ý ēo ēa

The consonants were few. Some of the modern sounds were non-
existent ([∫], [з], [t∫], [dз]).
The quality of the consonant very much depended on its position
in the word, especially the resonance (voiced and voiceless sounds:
hlāf [f] (loaf) – hālord [v] (lord, “bread-keeper”) and articulation (palatal
and velar sounds: climban [k] (to climb) – cild [k’] (child)), etc.

3.2. Spelling

The Old English spelling was mainly phonetic, i.e. each letter as a
rule denoted one sound in every environment. Note should be taken
that the letters f, s, þ, ð could denote voiced consonants in intervocalic
positions or voicless otherwise; the letter c was used to denote the
sound [k] (palatal or velar); the letter y denoted the sound [ÿ] (similar
to German [ü in the word Gemüt or in Russian [ю] in the word
“бюро”).
The letter з could denote three different sounds:
[j] – before or after front vowels [æ], [e], [i]:
Зiefan (give), Зēar (year), dæз (year)
[γ] – after back vowels [a], [o], [u] and consonants [l] and [r]:
Dæзas (days), folзian (follow)
[g] – before consonants and before back vowels [a], [o], [u]:
Зōd (good), зlēo (glee)

3.3. Grammar

Old English was a synthetic language (the lexical and grammatical

notions of the word were contained in one unit). It was highly
inflected, with many various affixes. The principal grammatical means
were suffixation, vowel interchange and supplition.

Suffixation:
Ic cēpe (I keep) – þu cēpst (you keep) – he cēpð (he keeps)

Vowel interchange:
wrītan (to write) – Ic wrāt (I wrote)

Supplition:

зān (to go) – ēode (went)

bēon (to be) – Ic eom (I am)

þu eart (you are)
he is (he is)

3.4. Vocabulary

Almost all of it was composed of native words, there were very

borrowings.
Borrowings were mainly from Latin:
 a) The forefathers of English, when on the Continent, had contacts
with the Roman Empire and borrowed words connected mainly with
trade:
cīese (cheese), wīn (wine), æpple (apple)
b) They borrowed Latin words from the Romanized Celts:
stræt (street), weall (wall), myln (mill)
c) Some borrowings were due to the introduction of Christianity:
biscop (bishop), deoful (devil), munic (monk)
New words appeared as a result of two processes:
a) word derivation:
fisc+ere = fiscere (fish – fisher)
wulle+en = wyllen (wool – woolen)
clæne+s+ian = clæsian (clean – to cleanse)
b) word composition:
sunne+dæз = Sunnandæз (sun + day = Sunday)
Mōna+dæз = Mōnandæз (moon + day = Monday)

MIDDLE ENGLISH. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

1. Outer history

1.1. The Scandinavian Invasions in England

th
By the 8 c. Norwegian Vikings made their first attacks on England.

In the 9th century Wessex succeeded in consolidating all the kingdoms

into a unified country, which broke up the tribal structure and
advanced the feudalism society.

The invaders who in 793 started their predatory expeditions with

the ruthless destruction of the Lindisfarne abbey and wholesale
slaughter of the people who lived there. It was two Scandinavian tribes
Danes and Norwegians. Danes became the invaders of England and
the Norwegians invaded Scotland and Ireland.

The traditional date of the Germanic invasion on the British Isles

is 449-450 A.D.

The Vikings’ armed forces attacked London and burned it up in

842 and in the year 850 they stayed to winter in England instead of
withdrawing. And in the sixties of the 9 th century they founded their
first permanent settlements. Having founded the military settlements
and camps they started to invade the country, moving to the depth of
the island. In 871 they founded a fortified camp in Reading that
served them as a base for their further push.

The struggle of the English against the Scandinavians lasted over

300 years; during this period the invaders occupied more than half of
England. At first there were small raids but by the 9 th century. The
raids increased and the Danes subdued Northumbria and East Anglia,
ravaged the eastern part of Mercia, and advanced on Wessex. The
Scandinavians came to England in large numbers to settle in the new
areas. They began to mix up with the English people because they
were of the came Germanic group. The communication between the
newcomers and the local population was easy one because their
languages were of the same group too.

The kingdom of Wessex resisted stubbornly. The King of Wessex,

Alfred (871-899) was at the head of that resistance. The year 871 was
called “Alfred’s great years of battles”. The Danes encountered
staunch resistance and finally they had to make a truce with young
king. After that period Scandinavians changed their tactics they
found new forms of invasion – such as settling down to found
kingdoms. That was done in Northumbria and East Anglia. In 872 the
Scandinavian attacks increased in strength and number, so that in
878 Alfred with his armed forces were driven into the Somerset
marshes where they took refuge in the island of Athelney

In 878, the English concluded the peace treaty with the

Scandinavians. England was divided into two halves: the northeastern
half under Danish controls Dane lag and the southeastern under the
leadership of Wessex.

The reconquest of the areas under the Danish control began in the
early 10th century but the Danish raids were renewed again and in the
early 11 th century the Scandinavians at the head of Sweyn and
Canute achieved the success. The English kingdoms had to pay
regularly large sums of money (Danegeld “Danish money”).

1.4. Early Middle English dialects

The Southern group included the Kentish and the Southwestern
dialects.
The South Western group was a continuation of the OE Saxon
dialects, not only West Saxon, but also East Saxon.

The group of Midland (“Central”) dialects – corresponding to the OE

Mercian dialect – is divided into West Midland and East Midland as
two main areas, with further subdivisions within: South – East
Midland and North – East Midland and North – West Midland.

ME Phonetics
The stress is dynamic and fixed in the native words. But in the
borrowed French words the stress was on the last syllable:
Licour [li′ku:r], nature [na′tu:r], etc.

New consonant sounds developed in native words:

ME [∫] ship [∫t] child [dЗ] bridge

OE scip cild brycз

Vowels in the unstressed position were reduced:

Old English Middle English

a
o e [ә]
e
u

These sounds were in the end of the word, and it neutralized the
difference between the suffixes – the main grammar means.
Compare:

Old English Middle English

Genitive Singular fisces fishes
 Nominative Plural fiscas fishes

Vowels under stress underwent mainly quantitative changes. In

Middle English we observe a rhythmic tendency, the aim of which to
obliterate overlong and over short sequences. The tendency is to have
in the word one long vowel + one consonant or one short vowel + two
consonants.

ME Grammar
. At the end of Middle English the analytical means, which began
to develop in Middle English, are predominant. They are:

1. Analytical verb-forms (Chaucer: perfect – hath holpen (has

helped); passive – engendered is (is born) ;
2. The use of prepositions for grammatical purposes (Chaucer;
drought of March);
3. A fixed word-order began to develop.