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THE LANGUAGE OF OLD ENGLISH (449 1100)

The Anglo-Saxons

The earliest form of English is known as Old English (OE). Old English was derived from the
Germanic languages of the Anglo-Saxons who settled in Britain, and most linguists agree that OE
emerged in the fifth century, around 449AD. The language in this form was used for over 600
years, but during those 600 years, of course it was constantly changing. By 1100, it looked and
sounded very different to the language it had been in its earliest stages.

Before the arrival of the Germanic invaders to Britain, the lands we now call Britain were mostly
home to Celts who spoke various Celtic languages such as Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Cornish
and Manx. The invaders were made up of different groups: Saxons, Jutes and Angles. The
Saxons came from north-west Germany, the Jutes were from northern Denmark and the
Angles were from the Danish mainland and islands. Collectively, these groups are known as the
Anglo-Saxons. These groups spoke a number of closely related varieties of Germanic languages
and collectively they came to think of their speech as English, with dialects reflecting the heritage
of each group.

In 597AD, a group of Christian missionaries arrived in Britain from Rome, bringing the influence
of the Latin language with them, including the Roman alphabets. Christianity soon took hold in
Britain, adding new words from religious contexts into English such as monk, nun, pope, candle
and priest. Christianity was largely confined to the educated classes, who were able to access the
Latin language in which much of the texts were written, and in which sermons were spoken.

The Vikings

Between 787 and 850, Britain was the victim of a series of raids by the so-called Scandinavian
aggressors. When these groups settled in England, they exerted their own influence on the
development of English. The Scandinavian invaders were commonly known as the Vikings,
though the Anglo-Saxons called them the Danes. The Vikings were from Denmark, Norway and
Sweden.
An agreement known as the Danelaw had divided Britain into two parts, with the Vikings ruling
the North and the East, and the Anglo-Saxons ruling the South and West, marked by a road
between London and Chester.

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a north Germanic language which gradually became part of the
English language as the interaction between speech communities increased. Most Norse words
that were ‘borrowed’ into English during this time were related to administration, law, and the
military. Many now common lexical items also came originally from Old Norse such as the words
take, die, wrong, call and law. Additionally, the _s inflection on third-person present simple
singular form of the verb is a result of Scandinavian influence.

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Figure 1.1: Map of the current Great Britain Figure 1.2: Map showing the division
and United Kingdom of Britain under Danelaw

Writing System and Pronunciation

Old English (OE) scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes or runic system (an alphabetic
system used for carving in wood or stone and widely used throughout the Germanic world), and
the letters of the Latin alphabet. The bulk of the OE materials or OE manuscripts was written
in the Latin script. The use of Latin letters in English differed in some points from their use in
Latin, for the scribes made certain modifications and additions in order to indicate OE sounds
which did not exist in Latin.

The spelling system of OE was not yet standardised and was written down phonetically. Basically,
OE had no ‘silent’ letters and the initial consonants of words in OE were pronounced, as were
initial consonant clusters /hwǣr/ for where and /hw / for white. The Present Day English (PDE)
IPA transcription for the words where and white are /we / and
/wa t/.

The underlined words below are all examples of Old English. We still use these words today,
though we say and write them differently. Can you
guess the words in PDE?

When I was young, I lived in a small hus with my

little sweostor and my older brodor.
My faeder was called Legolas and my modor was
called Arwen.

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 Figure 1.3: Example of a series of Runes called Franks Casket (a box dating from the early 8th century)

Figure 1.4: The first folio of the heroic epic poem Beowulf, written primarily in the West Saxon dialect of
Old English (displayed in the British Library).

Grammar and Syntax

Old English was a synthetic or inflectional language. In PDE, the relationships between words are
largely expressed by word order (as in subject-verb-object) but in OE, these relationships are
expressed by the ending of words, known as inflections. Take a look at the following examples/
comparison of sentence structures between OE and PDE:

PDE Sentence 1: Saruman killed Gandalf

In this sentence, it is clear that Saruman is the subject as he was the one who did the action of
killing and the object who was killed was Gandalf. So, the structure of this sentence follows the
subject-verb-object order.

PDE Sentence 2: Gandalf killed Saruman

In this sentence, the change in word order has changed the meaning of the sentence. Gandalf
was the one who did the action of killing (the subject) and Saruman was the one being killed
(object).

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OE Sentence 1: Killed Sarumanx Gandalfz

In this sentence, Saruman is the person who did the killing because the word Saruman has the
inflection <x>, which indicates the subject of the sentence. Gandalf is the person who was killed
because the word Gandalf has the inflection <z>, which marks the object of the sentence.

OE Sentence 2: Killed Gandalfz Sarumanx

The meaning of sentence 2 is similar to sentence 1 although the position of the subject and the
object has changed. The inflections indicate which word is the subject of the verb and which word
is the object.

THE LANGUAGE OF MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100 1500)

The Norman Invasion

Before the King of Wessex, Edward the Confessor died in 1060, he appointed his son Harold
Godwinson as his successor. However, the Duke of Normandy, a nobleman from a region of
northern France contested his claim to the throne. This dispute led to the Norman invasion of
Britain and in 1066, William of Normandy or known as William the Conqueror was crowned the
first Norman King of England.

The Normans spoke Old-Norman which gradually changed to Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French
which itself is a Romance language derived from Latin. Thus, the OE or the language spoken by
the English at that particular time began to lose prestige and being replaced by Anglo-Norman.
High status roles were taken by the Normans and English remained the language of the lower
classes such as the peasants, farmers and the ‘uneducated’ groups of people.

Figure 1.5: Image of William the Conqueror Figure 1.6: A page of Canterbury Tales
written by a famous ME poet,
Geoffrey Chaucer (displayed in the
British Library).

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Diglossia and Variation

The sociolinguistic shift of language can be described as diglossia, where one or more languages
(in this case, Anglo-Norman, French and Latin) assumes the role of high-status variety and being
used for state and religious purposes. The other language which is English fulfils the role of low-
status, used largely in informal speech circumstances.

Middle English or ME is usually said to refer to English from around 1100 to 1500. The reason
ME is not dated from the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066 is because change is never
immediate and it would have taken several years for French to start having an influence on
English. Regional variation of ME was high and there was no standard variety at that particular
time. However, English language survived, primarily because of the huge numbers of native
speakers who only spoke English. Over time, the English and Norman languages merged as
natives and Normans married and became socially closer.

Writing System, Pronunciation and Lexicon

In ME, spelling was still not standardized and there remained a high amount of variation. The
writing sound system remained phonetic with all letters being pronounced and the word-initial
/hw/ became /wh/. There was a significant change that happened in ME whereby the word order
of Subject-Verb-Object was established. Besides that, ME is characterized by language contact
and acquired a high number of borrowing words. The main sources were French and Latin.

Most of French-borrowed words were nouns and these words were borrowed from categories as
follows:
Government/administration – chancellor, crown, treason, royal, rebel
Religion – saviour, abbey, adore, divine, solemn
Law – justice, attorney, sue, felony, judge, property
Food – bacon, beef, appetite, tart, toast

The Latin-Borrowed words tended to be more formal. Some examples of these words are allegory,
testimony, laureate, zenith and mediation. Many of Latin-borrowed words also had introduced
new affixes into English:
Suffixes: -able, -ible, -al
Prefixes: dis-, im-, in-

This heavy borrowing from French had several effects on English:

1. Native words were replaced:

OE aeðele – French: noble

OE aeðeling – French: nobleman

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 OE here – French: army
OE campa – French: warrior
OE sibb – French: peace

2. English and French words were retained with a differentiation in meaning:

Hearty – cordial
ox – beef
sheep – mutton
swine – pork
calf – veal
house – mansion

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1500 1800)

The Beginning

The era of early Modern English was said to begin upon the introductory of printing technology
that happened in England in 1476, and the publication of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the
English Language in 1755. Both of these changed the way that English was written and the
language underwent an increased process of standardisation, where it became more uniform.
Literacy rates had increased and as a result, it triggered huge social changes and greater access
to culture, international trade activities, literature/literary work, and other significant changes.
The Act of Union in 1707 took place in this era and because of that, the formation of what is now
known as Great Britain happened – the state of Britain between England, Scotland and Wales.
This Act had triggered the beginning of British Empire and elevated the supremacy of the
language and its people and by the end of twentieth century, English was one of the dominant
languages of the world.

Printing and Dictionaries

The printing technology was introduced in England by William Caxton in 1476. He published a
range of literary works from his London printing press. His publications used the dialect, grammar
and spelling system of the capital city and thus, promoted the idea of a ‘Standard English’ – a
kind of benchmark or reference point to which all other varieties of English were compared.

In the 1460s, Caxton settled in Bruges, or now known as Belgium. He was a respected pillar of
the community and was elected the ‘governor of the English nation’ in Bruges and was the leader
of all the English people living in the city. In 1471, he moved to Cologne and began to trade in
textiles and books. In this period, he acquired first-hand knowledge of how printed books were
produced. It was around this time that he seems to have had the idea of setting up a printing

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business of his own. Caxton moved back to Bruges in 1472 and set up a printing press which he
used to print the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (History of Troy). Translated from the French
by Caxton himself, this work was the first book printed in the English language.

Three or four years later, Caxton brought his printing press to England. The earliest book he
printed in England was the first printed edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Two
decades after, Caxton built a successful business of printing and selling books. Of more than 100
editions attributed to him, the majority were in English and many were his own translations.
Although these printed books were a luxury aimed at wealthy people, Caxton’s innovations in
printing soon led to books becoming available at a cheaper price, kick-starting the beginning of
major technological, cultural and social changes. Without Caxton, the history of English literature,
as well as our own lives would look very different.

As a result of the vast printing technology in England, dictionaries were written and introduced
to the public. Two of the most influential dictionaries were produced by two influential figures,
Cawdrey and Johnson.

In 1604, Robert Cawdrey published the first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall. The
dictionary consisted of around 3000 short stories and it was produced with the intention of helping
the people, particularly the ‘unskillful persons’ to better understand many hard English words.
Cawdrey's word definitions were uncomplicated. Unlike later dictionary makers, he did not refer to the
great writers of the day, or to the origins of words. Instead, the book's simplicity provided help for those
who wanted either to have a better understanding of sermons and books, or to learn the 'correct' way
to spell.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, consisting of
40,000 detailed entries. It is one of the most famous dictionaries in history and it took nearly
eight years to compile, required six helpers and listed 40,000 words. Each word was defined in
detail, the definitions illustrated with quotations covering every branch of learning. It was a huge
scholarly achievement, a more extensive and complex dictionary than any of its predecessors –
the comparable French Dictionnaire had taken 55 years to compile and required the dedication
of 40 scholars.

Figure 1.7: Caxton and his printing press in

Westminster, London.

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 Figure 1.8: Cawdrey’s 4th edition, Figure 1.9: Johnson’s 2nd edition
published in 1617

Literature

There was a rise in literary works written in English in what is known as the ‘Golden Age’ of
English literature, that happened between the 16th and 18th centuries. Notable writers such as
John Donne, Andrew Marvell, John Milton and William Shakespeare preferred English language
to Latin or French, which had previously been the languages of choice for the social elite and the
educated classes. What impact did this have on the English language? Firstly, the attitudes
towards the language had shifted to more positive ones with English taking on an increased sense
of social status. Secondly, vocabulary size increased as writers created new word forms with new
word meanings and finally, the increase in written publications which had helped in standardising
the language. Hundreds of words, phrases and idioms that are still being used today were actually
introduced by Shakespeare and he actually did some experiments with the syntax of English in
unique and creative ways.

Figure 1.10: William Shakespeare (1564-1616),

an English poet, playwright, and actor often
called the English national poet and the greatest
playwright of all time

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The Great Vowel Shift

A major development in English Phonology occurred over the 15th and 16th centuries and it was
known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS). The major or distinctive feature of GVS was that the
sounds of the long vowels in English changed their places of articulation. Vowels shifted to
different points of articulation in the mouth. The ‘vowel shift’ is related to the sound of long
vowels. For example, a word like ‘goose’ would have been pronounced ‘goas’ (oa as in boat) in
the 15th century and it would not be pronounced ‘goos’ until sometime in the 16th century. ‘Mice’
would have been pronounced ‘mees’, ‘house’ –‘hoos’; ‘name’ — “nahm”, ‘feet’ — ‘fayt’ (ay as in
‘pay’), etc. The language was in a radical shift starting from the 15th century to the middle of the
16th century.
Table 1.1: The Great Vowel Shift

Word ME Vowel Sound PDE Vowel Sound

life, bite [i:] [ai]
meet [e:] [i:]
meat [ :] [i:]
gate [a:] [eI]
how, town [u:] [au]
mood [o:] [u:]
boat [ɔ:] [ou]

LATE MODERN ENGLISH (1800 PRESENT)

From 1800 onwards, the English language accumulated more speakers and a larger vocabulary.
Two of the contributing factors were the growth in other aspects or areas: industry and the
British Empire.

The Industrial Revolution

The British Industrial Revolution was a period of great technological change, lasting from 1760
to 1840. A rise in mass production, transport technology, standards of living and new inventions
meant that new words and phrases were needed. As a result, new terms from semantic fields
emerged at this era such as technology (telephone, camera, electricity), science and medicine
(cholera, oxygen, vaccine), and transport (train, engine, piston). The process or urbanisation
during the era had resulted in greater population densities and increased levels of language
contact. The migration or mass movement of people from rural farming backgrounds to the cities
had placed them in a sociolinguistic concept called accommodation. This is a situation or
process whereby people are gradually and unconsciously adjusting their own speech to more
closely match that of someone else, especially the dominant groups of people. The process of

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accommodation can affect lexis, pronunciation, stress patterns and the mixing dialects between
groups of people of generally different social and economic backgrounds.

The Expansion of British Empire

The British empire expanded the usage of English language throughout the world between the
late 16th and 20th centuries. The empire reached far and wide with the colonisation in countries
such as Egypt, America, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong
Kong and many others. English was imposed as an official language in many of these colonies
especially in the administrative and government sector. For the coloniser, imposing English as a
language was an important way of establishing authority, when it was considered as a political
tool for gaining control and power in the new lands. English had spread across the globe as a
consequence of the largest empire ever by the beginning of 19th century. However, in the first
half of the 20th century, the British empire began to decline. The declination of the empire did not
stop the language from being used widely. It all began with colonisation or the expansion of
British empire but somehow, English was turned into a global language with the development of
technology, economics and politics.

The Oxford English Dictionary

The codification of English that had begun in Early Modern English with the publication of
grammars and dictionaries has continued right up to the present day. The Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) was first proposed by the British Philological Society who saw the need for a
comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the English language. The work began in 1882 and
it was only in 1928 that the final volume was completed. What made the OED stood out on its
first publication was a combination of its sheer size (ten volumes comprising over 400,000 words)
and its comprehensive nature. Besides definitions, each entry contains an etymology of the word
that is an explanation of the word’s development or origin over time. Other features in OED
included a guide to pronunciation, information about part of speech, details of when the word
was first used and quotations from published sources demonstrating the use of word in context.

Figure 1.11: Sir James Murray, the first

editor of Oxford English Dictionary

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 Figure 1.12: The original 2 pages of Oxford English Dictionary published in 1928

Received Pronunciation (RP)

Received Pronunciation or RP was the term given to a spoken variety of English which was
accepted as a standard accent in Britain. This received or accepted variety was a London accent
associated with the educated classes of people. RP was introduced by a philologist and
phonetician A.J Ellis in 1869 and the concept was elaborated in his book, On Early English
Pronunciation. The development of standard spoken variety of English began with the introduction
of Education Act of 1870 whereby children at schools were exposed to it RP was also known as
Public School Pronunciation. RP was more prestigious when it was adopted by BBC (the British
Broadcasting Corporation, founded in 1922).

Present Day English

Present Day English or PDE is defined as any of the varieties of English currently spoken/used
around the world. Due to the vast usage of English around the globe today, it can be said that
people not only speak ‘one English’ but ‘many Englishes’, each with its own unique linguistic
characteristics. The key features of PDE can be seen in many aspects today such as the arrival
of new vocabulary and meanings (anime, fantabulous, hipster, click bait, butthurt, awesomesauce
and many others). Technology has influenced the way we use English today, particularly in multi-
modal communication such as social media and computer tools. The language continues to be
used widely and regarded as the international language of trade, education, political/diplomatic
affairs, culture/society and the internet. English in the present days is seen as a prestigious and
desirable global language.

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