Latin borrowings in English

Despite the growth of towns and all the other essentials of civilization that came with the Roman conquest, the standards of living changed little. Britain was an agricultural province, dependent on small farms. Peasants still built round Celtic huts and worked in the fields in the same way. Despite the 400 years of Roman influence, Britain was still largely a Celtic society.

The conquest of Britain by the Roman Empire lasted up to the beginning of the 5^th century. In 410 the Roman legions were called back to Rome, and those that stayed behind were to become the Romanized Celts (Britons) who faced the invasion of the barbarians – the Germanic tribes of Angles and Saxons.

The Anglo-Saxon period

· The Invasion

Germanic tribes had raided the British shores long before the withdrawal of the Roman legions. But the 5^th century became the age of increased Germanic expansion and by the end of the century several West Germanic tribes had settled in Britain. The first invaders, in fact, came at the request of a British king who needed their assistance in a local war. The newcomers soon overran their hosts, and other Germanic tribes followed them in families and clans. At first they only came to plunder: drive off the cattle, seize the stores of corn and be off again to sea before the Celts could attack them. But as time went by they would come in larger numbers, and begin to conquer the country.

First came the Jutes, and then the Angles and the Saxons. (See Map 3.) The latter came from the territory lying between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers which was later called Saxony. The Jutes and the Angles came from the Jutland Peninsular. The beginning of the conquest was in 449 when the Jutes landed in Kent. Eventually, Britain held out longer than the other provinces of the Roman Empire.

Map 3

(From David MacDowell. An Illustrated History of Britain, Longman.)

It was only at the beginning of the 7^th century that the invaders managed to conquer the greater part of the land. The Angles settled down to the north of the Thames, the Saxons – to the south of the Thames, the Jutes spread in the extreme south-east – the Kent Peninsular and the Isle of White.

The pagan tribes did not spare their enemies. The Celtic historian Gildas described the Anglo-Saxon invasion as ‘the ruin of Britain’. The invaders lived in villages and soon destroyed or neglected the Roman roads, villas, baths and towns. London, which had been the main trading centre, saw its decline. The invaders killed or enslaved Britons, most of the British Christians were put to death, and others took refuge in the distant parts of the country where they lived as hermits or in groups of brethren.

After a century and a half of resistance, the Celts were driven off to Wales and Cornwall, as well as to the northern part of Scotland, where they later founded independent states and spoke their native language. The Anglo-Saxons called the northern part of the country weallas (Wales) meaning ‘the land of foreigners’ and the Celts were called welsh which meant ‘foreign’. The Celts of Ireland also remained independent. Some of the Celtic tribes crossed the Channel and settled down on the French coast giving it the name of Brittany.

· Political and economic development

The period covering the 5^th – 11^th centuries saw transition from the tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism.

By the beginning of the 7^th century, 7 kingdoms had been formed on the conquered territory which later came to be known as England. These were Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex (the lands of the South, West and East Saxons), Northumbria (the land that lay to the north of the river Humber, hence the name North-Humbrian), Mercia and East Anglia. (See Map 3.) The kingdoms were constantly at war for the supreme power in the country. At the beginning of the 7^th century Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex dominated the other four kingdoms.

In the 8th century Mercia developed important diplomatic and commercial ties with the Continent. King Offa of Mercia became powerful enough to claim ‘kingship of English’. He managed to make a huge dyke along the border with Wales to protect his kingdom from the Celtic raids. Parts of this earth wall still exists and is known as Offa’s Dyke. After Offa’s death, though, Mercia lost its supremacy.

Social changes in the Anglo-Saxon society took a long time to come. It is recognised that the Anglo-Saxons were far less civilized than the Romans, yet they had their own institutions. Anglo-Saxon kings were elected by the members of the Witan, the Council of Chieftains, and in their decisions were advised by the councillors, the great men of the kingdom. In return for the support of his subjects who paid taxes and gave him free labour and military service, the king granted them land and protection.

Originally, all Saxon men had been warriors. From the very beginning English society had military aristocracy, or thanes. The rest of the population were peasants who cultivated the land. The division of labour led to a class division: thanes got more land and privileges from the king, and became lords, while peasants took an inferior social position and finally turned into serfs.

The basic economic unit was the feudal manor which grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. The lord of the manor administered justice and collected taxes. It was also his duty to protect the farm and its produce. The word ‘lord’ meant ‘loaf ward, or bread keeper’ and the word ‘lady’ meant ‘loaf kneader, or bread maker’.

In agriculture, the Anglo-Saxons introduced the heavy plough which made it possible to cultivate heavier soils. All the farmland of the village was divided into two fields. When one field was used for planting crops, the other was given a ‘rest’ for a year so as not to exhaust the land. After harvest time, both would be used as pasture land. That is known as the two-field system. The Saxon methods of farming remained largely the same for many centuries to come, until the 18^th century.

· Christianity in England

By the end of the 6^th century England had become Christian due to the energy of the Christian missionaries from Ireland and the efforts of Pope Gregory who decided to spread his influence over England. The Roman mission headed by the monk Augustine (‘St. Augustine’s mission’) landed in Kent in 597 and built the first church in the capital town of Canterbury. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601. Ever since that time, Canterbury has been the religious centre of major importance in Britain.

Later, Christianity spread over to Northumbria where there were still some traces of the influence of the first Celtic Christians. Soon the Roman Church prevailed over the Celtic Church. The Church established monasteries, or minsters (Yorkminster, Westminster), which became centres of learning and education. It was there that men could be educated and trained both for theological and civil studies. The unified organisation of the Church was an important factor in the centralisation of the country.

With the arrival of St. Augustine and his forty monks, England resumed direct contact with the life and thought of the Continent, especially its Mediterranean part. Benedict Biscop, founder of Jarrow monastery (Northumbria), on several occasions brought manuscripts from Rome, and his pupil, the Venerable Bede (?673-735), had access to all the sources of knowledge brought from continental Europe. Bede was a prominent religious and public figure of the period, who contributed to the development of English history and law. He is considered to be the first English historian. He is the author of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) dated 731, which was the only book on Anglo-Saxon history of the time. It is the source of almost all information on the history of England before 731.

The Church enhanced the status of kings. At the time when the eldest son of a king did not automatically inherit the throne, it was the Witan that chose the next king. Evidently, it was important for the king to obtain the support of the Church and arrange for his chosen successor to be crowned at a Christian ceremony led by a bishop. If a bishop supported the king, royal power was hard to be questioned. In their turn, kings rendered support to the Church. The first baptised Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelberht I, recognized the right to church shelter in his Code of Laws in 600.

In a way, the Church contributed to the economic development of the country. Villages and towns that appeared around monasteries increased local trade. The monks and bishops who were invited to England, came from the biggest monasteries of the Frankish lands (France and Germany) which lay on Europe’s main trade routes. They used Latin, which spread in England as the official language of the church and official documents, and that encouraged closer contact with Continental countries. England exported cheese, hunting dogs, wool and metal goods. It imported pepper, jewelry, wine, and wheel-made pottery.

The second wave of Christianity brought into the language such loan-words as arithmetic, mathematics, theatre, geography, school, paper, candle.

· Anglo-Saxon culture

The development of Anglo-Saxon culture is inseparable from the development of Christianity in England.

During the time of Pope Gregory there appeared a new form of plainsong which came from Europe and was called Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant remained the musical symbol from the 6^th to the 9^th centuries.

In architecture, there developed a new style in church building. One of the most completely preserved Saxon churches in England is St. Laurence in Bradford-on-Avon, built probably between the 7^th and the 10^th centuries. With its thick walls, narrow rounded arches and small windows it represents typical Anglo-Saxon church architecture.

The monasteries of Northumbria possessed rich collections of manuscript books which were brightly illuminated, bound in gold and ornamented with precious stones. One of the best known manuscripts of the period is St. Luke’s Gospel made at the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne in about 698.

The first Anglo-Saxon writers and poets imitated Latin books about the early Christians. Although it was customary to write in Latin, in the 7^th century there appeared a poet who composed in English. Caedmon,a shepherd from Whitby, a famous abbey in Yorkshire, composed in English for mere want of learning. One of the few recorded pieces of Caedmon’s poetry is a nine-line hymn, an English fragment in Bede’s History. It may be considered as the first piece of Christian literature to appear in Anglo-Saxon England. The hymn is especially notable because, according to the Venerable Bede, it was divinely inspired. Much of Old English poetry was intended to be chanted or sung by scops, or bards. One night, at a feast, when each of the guests was asked to sing a song, Caedmon quietly stole out and lay down in the cow-shed, ashamed that he had no gift of singing. In his sleep he heard a voice telling him to stand up and sing the Song of Creation. Caedmon obeyed the mysterious voice and sang the verses he had never heard before. When he woke up, he returned to the guests and sang the song to them. That made him so famous that Caedmon was invited to the abbey where he spent the rest of his life composing religious poetry. Almost all this poetry was composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line of four stressed syllables alternating with a number of unstressed ones.

Old English poetry was mainly restricted to three subjects: religious, heroic and lyrical. The greatest heroic poem of the Anglo-Saxon period was Beowulf, an epic poem written down in the 10^th but dating back to the 7^th or 8^th century. It is valuable both from the linguistic and the artistic point of view. Beowulf is the oldest poem in Germanic literature. Although Beowulf is essentially a warrior’s story, it serves as a source of information about the customs and ways of the ancient Jutes, their society and their feasts and amusements.

The poem consists of several songs arranged in three chapters and numbers over 3,000 lines. It is based on the legends of Germanic tribes and describes the adventures and battles of legendary heroes who had lived long before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. The scene is set among the Jutes and the Danes. The poem describes the struggle of a Scandinavian hero, Beowulf, who destroyed the monster Grendel, Grendel’s evil mother and a fire-breathing dragon. The extraordinary artistry with which fragments of other Scandinavian sagas are incorporated in the poem and with which the plot is made symmetrical has only recently been fully recognised.

· Formation of the English language

As a result of the conquest, the Anglo-Saxons made up the majority of the population. Their religion and languages became predominant. The Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles were much alike in speech and customs. When the Angles and the Saxons migrated to the British Isles, their language was torn away from the continental Germanic dialects and started its own way of development. At first, the Germanic invaders spoke various dialects but gradually the dialect of the Angles of Mercia prevailed. They also intermixed with the surviving Celts and gradually merged into one people – the Anglo-Saxons as they were called by the Romans and the Celts. Already in the 8^th century they preferred to call themselves Angelcyn – Anglish/English people, and called the occupied territories Angelcynnes land – land of the Anglish/English people, which later transformed into England. The language they now spoke was called Anglish/English.

The 5^th century marks the beginning of the history of the English language.The history of the English language can be divided into four periods:

· Old English period (OE) – from the mid-5^th to the late 11^th century

· Middle English period (ME) – from the late 11^th to the late-15^th century

· New Englishperiod (NE) – from the late 15^th century up to the 21^st century, including Modern Englishperiod – from the 19^th century and up to now.

Germanic tribes used runic writing – a specifically Germanic alphabet with runes carved in stone, bone or wood with vertical or slanted lines. The number of runes in different Old Germanic languages varied: from 16 or 24 runes on the Continent to 28 or 33 runes in Britain. Runes were never used in everyday writing. The word ‘rune’ itself originally meant ‘secret, mystery’ that is why the main function of runes was to make short inscriptions on objects, which was thought to give them some magic power. The number of objects with runic inscriptions in Old English is about forty: amulets, coins, weapons, rings, tombstones, fragments of crosses. The two best preserved records of Old English runic writing are the text on the Ruthwell Cross in the village of Ruthwell in Scotland, and Franks Casket – a whalebone box found in France, which was given as a gift to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W. Franks.

Later, Christian missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet to which several runic letters were added to mark the sounds [Y] and [T]. These were the letters Þ and T as well as the letter G which in certain positions was pronounced as [g] or [j]: GeonG [jeong] – young, Grene [grene] – green. The OE verbs sittan, beran, teran, findan, sinGan are quite recognisable. The first English words written down with Latin letters were personal names and place names which were inserted into Latin texts.

The Germanic tribes were pagans who worshipped the Sun, the Moon and a whole number of gods. Their principal gods were those of later Norse mythology – Tiw, Woden, and Thor. They are remembered in the day-names Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as well as a number of place-names (Tuesley, Wednesbury, Thursley) which were presumably cult centres. Even when converted to Christianity, the Saxons named one of the main church festivals, Easter, after their old dawn-goddess Eostre.