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8 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What languages are English related to? |
They're closest related to Frisian, and from there it is somewhat closely related to all the germanic languages, and even more distantly to the Romance and Greek languages, but the language family stretches as far as India. Sanskrit and Pali. It is part of the Indo European language family. |
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What was Britain like before the invasions started and what was the linguistic sitaution and impact for later? |
It was inhabited and ruled by celtic tribes. The celtic languages live on, but greatly weakened. Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gael are descendant languages from these celtic tribes. Lingustically, the celts left very little impact on English. Mostly in the form of place names. Especially so in the descendant Celtic countries. |
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What was the first significant invasion of Britain, and what did it mean linguistically for the English? |
The roman invasions. First in around year 50bc, and then 43ce. The romans do not leave much linguistic impact, a few latin words here and there, but most of the latin influence comes from later. Wine = Winum, Cheese = Caseus ALSO a lot of placenames. The places in Britain with names ending in caster is latin derived. |
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What was the second invasion of Britain, what did it mean for language in Britain? |
The second invasion was the Germanic invasions of the 5th and 6th century. They invaded from Germanic Mainland Europe, and took the language with them and pretty much forced out the celtic language. They brought with them OLD ENGLISH, or ANGLO-SAXON. |
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What is OLD ENGLISH, and what dialects can we divide them into? Which one of these dialects came out on top? |
The language that the Germanic tribes brought with them. It is not a unified dialect, but it certainly has very many similarities with present day English, even though it might be very hard to understand at first glance. * 4 main dialects. WEST SAXON, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian. These had spelling differences that proves the existence of these 4 dialects. King Alfred the Great was a West Saxon and his rule unified England pretty much, and the west saxon dialect is the one which present day English takes most of its influence from. |
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What was the 3rd invasion of Britain, and what changes did they make to the English language? |
The third invasion of Britain was the viking invasions. The vikings from Scandinavia brought with them NORSE. The norse vocabulary contributed a lot of common words to English. They were closely related to the previous Germanic languages though. |
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What was Danelaw? |
Danelaw was an area of Northern England and Southern Scotland, where the Vikings were allowed to rule, thereby the name Danelaw. This has led to a lot of norse influence continuing in Northern England and Southern Scotland even to the present day. Examples: Bairn meaning Child |
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What characterizes OLD ENGLISH? |
Vocabulary A lot of germanic sounding words. They only remotely look like present day English though. A few borrowed words from Latin, mostly to do with Christianity. Writing - The old english wrote in Runes. GRAMMAR: Much more complex than Modern English. 4 different cases for nouns. Nominativ form for the noun, accusativ for the direct object. Dativ for the indirect object. 3 genders of nouns, meaning the nouns got 3 different kinds of ENDINGS. It also had verb second, which is now lost in modern English. |
