English has changed. § 7. From about the end of the sixth century the English were settled in the land as though it were their own home. They were broken up into many communities or kingdoms, speaking several dialects, but the same English language. We find, however, that the early written specimens of this language are very different from what we now call English. Thus Her cuom Ælla on Bretonlond and his iii suna mit iii scipum, on þa stowe be is nemned Cymenesora, and þær ofslogon monige Wealas and sume on fleame bedrifon on bone wudu be is genemned Andredesleage. This year came Ælla to the land of Britain and his three sons with three ships, to the station that is named Cymenesora, and there slew many Welsh, and some in flight they drove to that wood that is named Andred's-lea 1. So different indeed that people often talk as if it were quite another language, and call it Anglo-Saxon, to distinguish it from English, speaking of our English as a language descended from Anglo-Saxon. But the name, though in some ways convenient, is apt to mislead, because it is one which the people did not use, and because it may lead us to suppose that the changes in our language have been so unusual as to amount to an absolute break in its history instead of a very regular and natural development. In order to show clearly the relation of our present English to the English of those early times, it is needful to explain of what kind the changes in the language have been, and how they have come about. How languages change. § 8. First it must be understood that a language never remains long the same. Change is in fact always going on, 1 Earle, Saxon Chronicles, p. 12. so that the speech of each generation differs somewhat from that of the last. The change is of various kinds, and especially in those three points which have been already laid down as points of difference between languages. Thus in the specimen in § 7 we have changes of pronunciation, as monige, now many; of vocabulary, as mit, now with; stowe has given place to station, a word borrowed from Latin; of grammar, as suna, marking its plural by a, has changed into sons, marking its plural by s; Bretonlond has become the land of Britain, marking relation by a preposition for greater clearness. Such changes go on in almost all languages, though with more or less quickness and regularity according as the language is little or much disturbed by the influence of people speaking a different tongue. Change from Synthetical to Analytical. § 9. The most important change has been the change in the grammar of the language from the synthetic to the analytic condition, that is, from a grammar which expresses the relations of ideas and so of words in a sentence by inflexions, as case-endings, tense-endings, and person-endings, to one which expresses them by prepositions, auxiliaries, and pronouns. A tendency to this change is natural to all modern European languages. Thus modern Greek is analytical compared with ancient Greek, and French is analytical compared with Latin. All languages of the Teutonic family have changed or are changing in the same manner as English, but not all to the same extent, so that among them the law is of universal application, The earlier the stage, the fuller the inflection; and as languages become modern, they lose their inflections 1.' This tendency is always aided 1 Latham, English Language, p. 269. and hastened by any admixture of a foreign language, or any fresh mingling of dialects, causes which have been at work upon English1. Scandinavian invasions and influence. § 10. The English became Christians during the seventh century, taught in part by missionaries from Rome, who landed in Kent, in part by Scottish missionaries from Iona, who converted the northern kingdoms. In the ninth a new wave of invaders poured down from Northern Europe. They were of the Scandinavian race, and, starting from Norway and Sweden and Denmark, they wasted those parts of the coast of Neustria which were afterwards called Normandy, and the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Danes settled on the eastern coast, radiating from the Humber; the Norwegians settled on the western coast, radiating from Morecambe Bay. These new-comers wrought the first great disturbance upon English speech. Their tongue was of the Scandinavian branch (§ 3) of the Teutonic family, and so nearly akin to English that it was rather a new dialect than a new language. By and by they made good their footing in the north and east of the land. Then by degrees they and their language coalesced with the northern English; and this all the more easily since they were of much the same habits as the English had been. They followed the same course, landing as plunderers, fighting for a home, settling as tillers of the soil, adopting Christianity. 1 Inflexions are lost, because to the uneducated and to foreigners the idea in the word is the main thing, and therefore they lay stress on the root syllables, not on the inflexions, and hence the consonants of the flexion syllables drop off, and the full-toned vowels weaken to the vague e, which soon becomes mute. They became, one might say, another tribe of Englishmen, just like the Saxons and Angles. They were a people that readily accepted a higher civilisation wherever they found it, even giving up their own language, as in Neustria, where they learned to speak French; or as on the west coast of Scotland, where 'group after group of Norse invaders were absorbed into the Irish-speaking population,' and where, though the Norsemen were conquerors,'' all spoke Irish together1.' So, while they changed English much, yet in the end they gave up most of their own tongue for the English. Though, from their roving habits, and from a Danish king Cnut having ruled all the land for a time with his home at Winchester among the West-Saxons, here and there a trace of Danish influence might be found all over the country, yet for a rough division we place Danes in the Angle lands, Northumbria, East Anglia, and the larger half of Mercia, north-east of Watling Street, 'from the Firth of Forth to the heart of Mercia,' and the English in the Saxon lands of Wessex and its subject kingdoms. Accordingly, close likeness to Scandinavian dialects is to be found in northern English, close likeness to Frisian dialects in southern English. On the borders of these; that is, in central England, where Danes and English met, the speech differed from both, and yet was somewhat like both. It kept middle English forms, not like the softer forms of Wessex, and yet less hard than those of the north. But the great distinction was between the south and the north, just as we read that it was at a 'Men of the est with men of the west . . ... much later time: acordeth more in sounynge of speche than men of the north with men of the 1 Burton, History of Scotland, i. p. 215. south: therfore hyt ys that Mercii, that buth men of myddel Engelond, as hyt were parteners of the endes, undurstondeth betre the syde longages, Northeron and Southeron, than Northern and Southern undurstondeth oyther other. Al the longage of the Northhumbres and specialych at Yorke, ys so scharp, slyttynge and frotynge, and unschape, that we Southeron men may that longage unnethe undurstonde 1.' The result of the 'commyxtion and mellynge with Danes' was to make the northern tongue harder and harsher than the more southern dialects, as is seen in later writers, and as it has remained always. 1. Some common forms or words which are now of daily use throughout the country are traced to the very early influence of the Scandinavian dialects, or to that of these various settlers, on the northern speech; as the plural form are (aron) of the auxiliary verb, which expelled the English plural sindon the use of she, the demonstrative pronoun, as the feminine of the 3rd personal pronoun; and the word egg. And many more are to be found which did not spread far beyond those districts in which the Danes settled, as bairn (child), foss or force (a waterfall), gill or ghyll (a ravine), quern (a handmill), greet (to weep): and terminations of proper names, as patronymics in -son, Nelson, Swainson: local terminations, -thwaite, Crossthwaite; -beck, Troutbeck, in the Norwegian settlements in Cumberland and Westmoreland; thorpe, Althorpe; -by, Derby, Grimsby, in the Danish settlements of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire. 2. The northern dialects began more quickly and readily to develope into an analytical form of speech. Thus in the tenth century, that is, before any other foreign in 1 Trevisa, Translation of Higden's Polychronicon, A.D. 1387. |