¡Descarga The Origins and Borrowings of Old English: A Historical Linguistic Overview - Prof. Fuster y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! The Origins of Old English Old English is one of the Germanic group of Indo-European languages. It was spoken, and written, in England before about 1100AD. It is sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon. There were four distinct dialects of Old English: Northumbrian, Mercia, Kentish and West-Saxon. This is known through differences in spelling. After 900AD West-Saxon became widely used as a standard written language, and is sometimes referred to as 'Classic West-Saxon'. Two stages of the West-Saxon dialect can be distinguished - early West Saxon (eWS), which is the language of the time of King Alfred (c. 900), and late West Saxon (lWS), which is seen in the works of Ælfric (c. 1000). The most important difference is that in eWS ie and īe appear in lWS texts as y and ŷ (for example, eWS fierd becomes fyrd in lWS). Another is that ea may be spelt e in lWS (for example, eWS scēap becomes scēp in lWS). Within the Germanic group the family tree looks something like this: According to Tacitus the West Germanic people were divided into three major tribal groups: Ingvaeones, Istvaeones, Erminones. It is not clear what these groups corresponded to, but they mark out some important geographical distributions that correspond to later dialect groups. Borrowings in Old English This whole issue of word origins is very difficult as Latin, the Germanic tongues, Old English (derived from Germanic), and the Celtic tongues are all ultimately derived from a common Indo-European root, and are cognates (related). This can easily be demonstrated by looking (for example) at the words I, me, is, brother, ten. English I me is mother brother ten Sanskrit aham ma asti matar bhratar daca Iranian azem me asti matar bratar dasa Greek ego me esti meter phrater deka Latin ego me est mater frater decem Old English ic me is moder brothor tien Old Irish me is mathir brathir deich Lithuanian asz mi esti mote broterelis deszimtis Russian ia menya jest' mat' brat' desiat' I hope that this clearly shows that these tongues are related! It is similarly easy to demonstrate that the "Romance" languages are 'derived' from Latin. The picture for English is even more complicated. Old English is cognate with Latin, but also borrowed a few words from Latin; even more words got borrowed in the 7th century. Then with the Norman conquest, there was a large influx of Norman French (and yet more Latin) words. Consequently, English is in places cognate with Latin, and in places derived from Latin. For instance "brother" is cognate with the Latin frater but "fraternal" is derived from frater. Other examples: English Latin cognate English derivative mother mater maternal two duo dual, duet tooth dens, stem dent- dental foot pes, stem ped- pedal heart cor, stem cord- cordial bear fero fertile Generally, when a word entered the language can be discovered but it's not always easy! Returning to Old English, borrowings come from a number of different places, at different times. These are discussed below. 1. Borrowings into proto-West-Germanic Borrowings from non-Germanic Indo-European (IE) into the proto- WestGermanic stock which evolved via Anglo-Frisian to become Old English. It is known that these words had already been borrowed before Old English (OE) appeared as a separate language because they appear, fully integrated, in the entire West Germanic family of languages. These fully integrated loans are mainly from Celtic and Latin, with Latin loans being the more important. There are very few (2-3) well attested non-Latin loans from this period: proto-Celtic */ri:k-/ "king" appears in Old English as rice "kingdom". Note: the "*" means the word is a reconstruction -- a word that is not found in any surviving document, but who's existance has been deduced from the linguistic features found in other words. Gaulish ambactos "servant" appears in Old English as ambeht "servant" In contrast, the influence of Latin on Old English cannot be overstated. A large fraction of the population -- monks, clerics, and even some laymen will have had some competence in this international language. This does not just start in the Insular period but extends back to the continental origins of the Anglo-Saxons. During the continental period a number of words were borrowed, most are terms of war, trade, agriculture and household. A few typical examples are: Old English Latin win "wine" < winum (< means derived from) ċēap "goods" < caupo pund "pound" < pondo camp "battle"
