Lesson 3. The Anglo-Saxon Civilization

The Germanic Invasions
1. Year 449. Beginning of the invasion of Britain by Germanic tribes.
  1. For more than a 100 years: from the region of Denmark and the Low Countries. They established in the south and east of the island and occupied all the area except the highlands in the west and north.
2. Account of Germanic invasions: Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731) and the A-S Chronicle.
  1. (Bede) Germanic tribes were the Jutes, Angles and Saxons.
    1. Jutes came from the Danish peninsula, the northern half, in Jutland.
      1. At the time of the invasions, they were in contact with both Frisians and Saxons.
    2. Angles came from the Danish peninsula, southern half, in Schleswig-Holstein.
    3. Saxons came from the south and west of the Angles, between the Elbe and the Ems, maybe as far as the Rhine.
    4. Frisians (some went to England) came from a narrow strip along the coast from the Weser to the Rhine together with the islands opposite.
    5. Britain had been exposed to attacks from as early as the 4th century.
      1. Saxons' attacks: Romans necessitated the appointment of an officer, known as the Count of the Saxon Shore, to police the south-eastern coast.
      2. Picts and Scots (not Germanic) from the north of the island.
      3. Also Celts had come to depend on Roman arms for this protection and lead a more peaceful life.
        When Romans withdrew in 410, the Celts were no longer able to keep out the Picst and Scots.
        Vortigern, a Celtic leader, entered into an agreement with the Jutes in order to drive out Picts and Scots in exchange for the Isle of Thanet on the northeastern tip of Kent.
        However, Jutes also decided to stay in the island and settled in the southeast, in Kent.
        Then, they came in numbers and settled on the lands of the Celts, meeting their resistance by driving them out.
        (A-S Chronicle) Other continental tribes followed the examble.
        In 547, Angles established an Anglian kingdom north of the Humber.
        Saxons in 447 established in Sussex. Then, in 495 more Saxons settled in Wessex.
        By the end of the 5th century
        Saxons were north of the Thames, as the names Essex and Middlesex indicate (East Saxons and Middle Saxons).
        Angles had begun to settle in East Anglia.
Periods in the history of English
1. Old English. 450-1150. The period of full inflections because the endings of the noun, adjective and verb are preserved more or less unimpaired.
2. Middle English. 1150-1500. The period of leveled inflections because inflections become greatly reduced.
3. Modern English. Since 1500. The period of lost inflections because a large part of the original inflectional system has disappeared entirely.
Dialects and characteristics of OE
1. The Dialects of OE
  1. Earliest written records (about A. D. 700)
    1. West Saxon. Dialect of the West Saxon kingdom in the southwest. An extensive collection of texts.
      1. The ascendancy of the West Saxon kingdom made the dialect a sort of literary standard. The abundance of the materials has made the basis of OE.
        Finally, the Norman Conquest reduced all dialects to a common level of unimportance.
        In the late Middle English period, a standard English once more began to arise but it was on the basis of the East Midlands.
    2. Kentish. Dialect of the Jutes in the southeast.
    3. Northumbrian and Mercian are sometimes known as Anglian. Found in the region north of the Thames settled by the Angles. They possess certain features in common. Preserved in runic inscriptions, fragments of verse, and some interlinear translations of the Bible.
      1. Northumbrian. Spoken north of the Humber.
      2. Mercian. Spoken between the Humber and the Thames.
2. OE pronunciation
  1. Linguistic changes that mark the transition from one stage to the next often comprise a mix of phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic features.
    1. By contrast, the transition from Indo-European to Germanic (described by Grimm's Law) was purely phonological. And then we have: Germanic, West Germanic, OE.
  2. The pronunciation of OE words (See personal notes).
3. OE Vocabulary
  1. Rarity of words derived from Latin and absence of those from French.
  2. Almost purely Germanic. However, a large part disappeared progressively when the Norman Conquest brought French into England as the language of the higher classes.
  3. (See examples in personal notes)
4. OE Grammar
  1. Inflectional languages fall into 2 categories: Synthetic and Analytic.
    1. A synthetic language indicates the relation of words in a sentence by means of inflections. In the Indo-European languages, inflections take the form of endings on the noun and the pronoun, the adjective and the verb. OE is relatively synthetic.
      1. Example: in Latin, the nominative "murus" (wall) is distinguished from the genitive "muri" (of the wall), dative "muro" (to the wall), accusative "murum", and so forth.
        A single verb like "laudaverunt" (they have praised) conveys person, number and tense along with the meaning of the root.
        "Nero interfecit Agrippinam" means "Nero killed Agrippina", and it would mean the same thing if the words were arranged in a different order like "Agrippinam interfecit Nero". That is because "Nero" is the form of the nominative case, and the "-am" ending of "Agrippinam" marks the noun as accusative. It does not matter where they stand.
    2. Analytic languages make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs and depend upon word order to show other relationships. Modern English is relatively analytic.
The Origin of English
1. A-S Civilization
  1. Population used to life in the open, hunting and agriculture.
  2. Organization of society: by families and clans with a sharp distinction between eorls (hereditary aristocracy), and the ceorls (simple freemen).
  3. Business transacted in local assemblies or moots.
  4. Justice administered through fines (wergild) according to the nature of the crime and the rank of the injured party. Guilt determined by ordeal or by compurgation.
  5. Some tribes combined for greater strength or to produce small kingdoms.
    1. 7 kingdoms are recognized and known as the A-S Heptarchy: East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex.
      1. Sometimes 2 or more were united under one king, at other times they were divided.
      2. Early 7th century, Northumbria gained political supremacy.
      3. In the 8th century, Mercia gained leadership.
      4. In the 9th century, Wessex (under Egbert) extended its influence until in 830 all England (including the chieftains of Wales), acknowledge Egbert's overlordship.
        Not a United Kingdom but West Saxon kings claimed they were kings of all the English.
2. The Names "England" and "English"
  1. The term Angli and Anglia soon occur beside Saxones and refer not the Angles individually but to the West Germanic tribes generally.
    1. In time, Angli and Anglia became the usual terms in Latin texts.
      1. The word is derived from the name of the Angles (OE Engle)
      2. The land and its people are called Angelcynn (Anglekin or race of the Angles)
      3. Around the year 1000, Englaland (land of the Angles) takes place.
  2. Possibly, England took its name from the Angles due to a desire to avoid confusion with the Saxons, and the early supremacy of the Anglian kingdoms was a factor determining usage.
3. The Origin and Position of English
  1. The English language of today resulted from the history of the dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who came to England.
    1. It is impossible to say how much the speech of the Angles differed from that of the Saxons and that of the Jutes.
  2. English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family.
    1. Then, it shares certain characteristics with all Germanic languages: shifting of some consonants under Grimm's Law, "weak" and "strong" declension of the adjective, a distinctive type of conjugation of the verb...
    2. It shares certain characteristics with West Germanic languages as contrasted with the Scandinavian languages (North Germanic) and Gothic (East Germanic): certain phonetic changes, especially the gemination or doubling of consonants.
    3. Then, English did not participate in the further modification of certain consonants, known as the Second or High German Sound Shift.

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Lesson 3. The Anglo-Saxon Civilization

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